The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (June 2009)

Nanjing Road (Shanghai)

A pedestrian mall (also known as a pedestrian street) is the most common form of pedestrian zone in large cities. It is a street lined with storefronts and closed off to most automobile traffic. Emergency vehicles have access at all times and delivery vehicles are restricted to either limited delivery hours or entrances on the back streets.^[1]

In the 1960s and early 1970s many mid-sized cities in the United States experimented with installing pedestrian malls in their downtown areas, as a response to the commercial success of self-contained edge-of-town shopping malls.^{[citation needed]} Downtown retailers wanted to preserve their businesses; the cities wanted to defend their tax base.^{[citation needed]} In 1959, Kalamazoo, Michigan became the first American city to adopt a pedestrian mall for their downtown area, closing two blocks of Burdick Street to automobile traffic.^{[citation needed]} The conversion was planned by Victor Gruen Associates, the same firm responsible for the first modern shopping mall in the country, Northland Shopping Mall in suburban Detroit.

In 1997 there were about 30 pedestrian malls in the U.S.^{[citation needed]} Some notable examples are the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vermont; the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Oak Park, Illinois; the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California; the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada; the Buffalo Place Main Street Pedestrian Mall in Buffalo, New York; Ithaca Commons in Ithaca, New York; the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado; St. Charles, Missouri; Salem, Massachusetts; Ped Mall in Iowa City, Iowa; Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida; the Fulton Mall in Fresno, California; the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado; State Street in Madison, Wisconsin; Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, Minnesota; The Grove in Los Angeles, California; Fort Street Mall in Honolulu, Hawaii; City Center in Oakland, California; Walnut Street in Des Moines, Iowa, Downtown Crossing and Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market in Boston; Washington Street Mall in Cape May, New Jersey; The Downtown Cumberland Mall in Cumberland, Maryland;and many others. Typically these downtown pedestrian malls were three or four linear blocks simply blocked off to private street traffic, with fountains, benches, sittable planters, bollards, playgrounds, interfaces to public transit and other amenities installed to attract shoppers.

Most of these experiments were failures in the respect that they cut off automobile traffic from retailers.^{[citation needed]} Most were re-converted to accommodate automobile traffic within twenty years (originally 200 were founded of which around 30 remain).^{[citation needed]} However, some of these areas are still popular attractions today. The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder continues to thrive with its college crowd atmosphere and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica thrives on tourist traffic. The Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia, now a vital business, entertainment, and retail area, spent roughly twenty years as a somewhat depressed stretch until an ice skating rink and multiplex opened on it in the mid-1990s. Broadway St. in Eugene, Oregon, is finally being developed with a hotel, movie theater, and retail after decades of limited economic activity following its experiment with a pedestrian mall. The Federal Plaza in Downtown Youngstown, Ohio is a similar case. Since the unsuccessful Federal Plaza has been ripped up and redesigned in 2004, the city of Youngstown has seen the development of a new entertainment district erupt. A new arena, two new courthouses, federal buildings, bistros and other new night-spots have placed themselves in Youngstown's core. Burlington, Vermont's Church Street Marketplace has been expanded from the original three blocks to four, encompassing the entirety of the city's commercial "main street," and remains a thriving cultural center with shops, restaurants, vendor carts, sidewalk performers and special events which does not appear to be affected by the development of big box store farms in neighboring Williston, Vermont. Poughkeepsie, New York, on the other hand, has reverted its Main Mall to vehicular traffic, having failed at maintaining a place pedestrians wanted to be (it was, at least in part, the initial success of the Main Mall which convinced Burlington to proceed with the Marketplace project).

The San Antonio River Walk is a special-case pedestrian street, one level down from the automobile street. The River Walk winds and loops under bridges as two parallel sidewalks lined with restaurants and shops, connecting the major tourist draws from Alamo Plaza to Rivercenter, to HemisFair Plaza, to the Transit Tower. Most downtown buildings have street entrances and separate river entrances one level below. This separates the automotive service grid (delivery and ambulance/police vehicles) from pedestrian traffic below, provides bridges, walkways, and staircases, and attempts to balance retail, commercial, office, green space and cultural uses.

In the last decades of the 20th century many urbanists^{[by whom?]} have listed and explained what they see as the virtues of pedestrian streets. Urban renewal activists have often pushed for the creation of auto-free zones in parts or in all of the sectors of a metropolitan area.

[edit] Legal status

In some locations, the definition of a pedestrian mall is codified. Samples include the City of Las Vegas^[2] and Riverside, California.^[3]

[edit] Pedestrian Streets Worldwide

The idea spread widely, and today Pedestrian Streets are found in almost every large city, (and even many small ones) throughout the world.

[edit] References