Pedestrian
malls, once thought as a way to save declining downtowns, are now viewed as a
failed experiment in urban design. Of the
over 200 communities that had closed off blocks to automobile traffic around
180 have since reopened their streets.
Despite these failure some cities such as Washington,
D.C.; Boston; and Fulton County, Ga., are now considering the concept.
History
Kalamazoo, Michigan is credited with
being the first U.S. city to convert a downtown street into a pedestrian mall in
1959. According to an article by Alan Loomis "the plan developed by the architecture and planning firm Victor Gruen Associates was designed deal with the inability of downtown streets to handle the postwar influx of
automobiles. Car ownership exploded dramatically in the 1950s, a result
of America’s postwar prosperity and the Federal government’s support of
home ownership in new suburbs. The resulting commuting patterns brought
unprecedented numbers of cars into downtowns without adequate streets or
parking. Traffic congestion, polluted streets, unfriendly sidewalks,
and inefficient urban centers were the consequence". Additionally, Kris Rzepcyynski,
a Kalamazoo public library researcher, noted that “the growth of suburban shopping centers
raised fears that downtown would lose its place as the business and cultural
heart of the community. Many other communities followed suite, desperate to bring
back business and counter the decline in real estate values brought about by
the development of shopping centers and malls in the suburbs”.
Despite the high hopes for
pedestrian malls, research
conducted by the Downtown Memphis commission has shown that; in most cases, pedestrian malls in North America have “experienced
negative economic results from the original conversion, including an increase
in the vacancy rates along the mall and a decline in the retail mix”.
Additionally, retail focus shifts from “comparison and destination
goods/services,” such as department stores and high-end retail, to convenience
stores. Kalamazoo
had similar results and Rzepcyynski noted that the City finally re-opened the
street in 1989 because of “a lack of convenient parking, the exposure of shoppers to bad
weather, public perceptions of crime, and less shopping diversity”. Many other cities including Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh have also re-opened their pedestrian malls.
Burdick Street, Kalamazoo before and after development of the pedestrian mall
Why Pedestrian Malls Fail
There are many reasons for the failure of pedestrian malls.
Tod
Newcombe, Senior Editor of the journal Governing believes that one of the main reasons for these failures was
that “many of the pedestrian malls were ill-planned and had little purpose ….and
because so few people lived downtown, the malls became lifeless after work,
attracting crime and loiterers, rather than large crowds.”
Other reasons for these failures include:
- bad urban design;
- lack of convenient parking and mass transit to the area;
- lack of a major anchor
to drive traffic to the area,
- long block lengths, and
- perhaps most surprising,
being located in a large city.
Next post: What
makes a pedestrian mall successful?
