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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.
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. Downtown retailers wanted to preserve their businesses; the cities wanted to defend their tax base. 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. 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. 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. Most were re-converted to accommodate automobile traffic within twenty years (originally 200 were founded of which around 30 remain). 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 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.
Legal status
In some locations, the definition of a pedestrian mall is codified. Samples include the
City of Las Vegas and
Riverside, California.
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.
