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Car free ‘natural cultural districts’ in the U.S.

While there are 41 entries on the list of car free places (presented in the previous entry) in the U.S., the number may be misleading. For instance, not many of us will ever hear of, say, golf-cart based Bald Head Island, North Carolina, population 173, much less ever visit it or know anyone who does.

However, many of us do live in or visit natural cultural districts, so here are the car free iterations of those you’d probably want to check out if you’re in the area:

California
Santa Monica - Third Street Promenade, 1/2 mile
Riverside - Several blocks of pedestrian mall.
Colorado
Aspen - Pedestrian malls: Three downtown blocks of E. Hyman Ave., S. Mill St., and E. Cooper Ave. (pictured)
Boulder - Pearl Street Mall - Several blocks at the city center.
Fort Collins - Four streets in downtown.
Florida - Miami - Lincoln Road Mall, 7 blocks in South Beach.
Iowa - Iowa City - Pedestrian mall, several blocks downtown near the University of Iowa
Louisiana - New Orleans - Several blocks between the French Quarter and the river
New York - Ithaca - Ithaca Commons pedestrian mall, two blocks
Oregon - Portland - RiverPlace, 1/2 mile downtown waterfront pedestrian promenade
Texas - San Antonio - River Walk, famous restaurant/shop-lined waterway
Vermont - Burlington - Church Street Marketplace, four blocks
Virginia - Charlottesville - Main Street pedestrian mall, several blocks
Wisconsin - Madison State Street, six blocks, though buses, police cars and taxis are allowed.

The ‘K’ Street Mall in Sacramento; 16th Street Mall, Denver; Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; Downtown Crossing, Boston and Fremont Street, Las Vegas are more corporate scale, chain-driven pedestrian malls.

Image source: Paul_Henry_

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‘The definitive list of car free places

...is on Wikipedia’s list of car free places.

Now the first thing to keep in mind is that a true list would literally consist of thousands of entries. So to present a more meaningful register, the following two criteria are applied:
- They are unusual for their country or region (which explains why there are so many entries from the U.S. and only two from Africa)
- They make up a sizeable fraction of a city, town, or island, though this seems to be relaxed a bit when it comes to the U.S. which mainly counts streets vs other countries which measure by districts. However, this certainly provides evidence contrary to the popular belief that car-free streets don’t work in the U.S.

Below is the list by country followed by the number of car free places.  The Wikipedia list provides the actual cities, location and brief description.

North America
United States - 41
Canada - 12
Mexico - 2
Costa Rica - 1
Puerto Rico - 2

Europe
Austria - 4
Belgium - 3
Denmark - 2
Finland - 1
France - 23
Germany - 33 (12 of which are on islands/resorts)
Greece - 6
Hungary - 1
Italy - 12
Netherlands - 6
Portugal - 8
Spain - 12
Sweden - 5
Switzerland - 25
UK and Channel Islands - 10
Czech Republic - 2
Croatia - 2
Lituania - 2
Bulgaria - 2
Russia, Lativia, Estonia, Turkey, Montenegro - 1 each

South America
Argentina - 9
Brazil - 3
Chile, Colombia - 1 each

Africa
Kenya, Morocco - 1 each

Middle East
Israel - 3
Lebanon - 1

Asia
China - 6
Japan - 1

Australia
Western Australia, Canberra, Sydney (pictured, Pitt Street) - 1 each

Image source: gabriel c.

Apparently that was the attitude of New York’s (DOT) Department of Transportation, a powerful entity in any state, when approached about turning this street into what you see above. According to Streetblog’s Ethan Kent,

“They’ve created a destination for downtown office workers, for people from all over Brooklyn, to come and spend some time in a way they hadn’t been able to before. They great thing about this is they just went ahead and did this. It wasn’t a lot of studies. It wasn’t a long plan. They just said, ‘Hey, let’s try it. Let’s experiment, see if it’s possible.‘“

Check out the video here, on YouTube of course. There’s a nice little crowdsourcing trend here of locals taking matters into their own hands to build the kinds of places they want to be in, the latest being the Meatpacking District’s new public square.

Speaking of closing down streets in the two previous entries, several months ago I profiled how El Paso, Texas began blocking off several miles of major roads to cars every Sunday, allowing only cyclists and pedestrians. Believe it or not, the primary reason was that the city wanted to shed its reputation as being one of the four fattest in the U.S.

The wildly popular event is known as Ciclovia, but the original Ciclovia and inspiration come from Bogotá, Colombia in South America, with 2 million people on 70 miles of car-free streets from 7 am to 2 pm every Sunday. Other cities are following its lead.

While many people have heard of it, it’s not entirely convenient to travel to Bogota to experience and learn more about the event. One thing missing was a concise documentary to assist city officials in not only understanding how it works, but motivating them to raise the bar for their own Ciclovia. Thanks to here.

Some of the highlights:
- An entertainment area, the Reclovia, with 20 stages of free dance (ie rhumba) and aerobics classes. I would hope El Paso has these as well   Of course, there are food and drink vendors everywhere.
- The founding organizing team for Ciclovia, expecting 200 resumes, received only 20 rwhen they first advertised for Ciclovia volunteers. Because Columbia at the time was so enraptured with Baywatch, they promoted ‘Bikewatch’ during the program and attracted 1500 resumes. Who knew Baywatch would help improve quality of life in cities?
- In addition to a dozen Latin American cities, Paris, Ottawa and El Paso, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, Portland, and New York are considering the Ciclovia. Organizers there should watch this video with potential supporters.
- A resident quote, “The Ciclovia is marvelous. It is the best thing to come to Colombia.“

In the end, it’s probably best to just go ahead and hire Gil Peñalosa, Executive Director of Walk and Bike for Life (not sure if that’s even possible, but it would be a coup). His impassioned statement in the video, which sums it up quite nicely:

“The obesity rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed. Almost every state has obesity, not overweight, obesity. And how else can you get thousands and thousands of people doing physical activity. So then, the infrastructure is there, it’s free. The roads are already there. All you gotta do is close it. You need operation and cost to set it up, and then you can get this fantastic idea which is like a party that everyone attends.

A year ago we profiled a neighborhood effort in Manhattan’s tony Meatpacking District to transform a congested, dangerous intersection into a peaceful urban square, A NYC ‘beta community’ to build a piazza. One year later, we present evidence that the process works. Keep in mind this is being referred to as an ‘interim’ plaza - it’ll become even more attractive.

You can even get there by what will be New York’s first ever physically separated bike lane (a planter buffer in between the bike lane and the road).

This is the one of many NY resident collaborations to create more pedestrian destinations. For instance, see the vision to turn 42nd Street into a promenade here.

Ah, the power of crowdsourcing...

Realizing the need for a new generation of terms for pedestrian-only streets, what better process than to ask groups of creatives for suggestions, both virtually and in person. Here’s their starting list of informal creative class market driven terms that they feel communicate a shift in how we think about streets:

Slow streets - There’s the slow food movement, the anti-fast food campaign promoting taste, culture and the environment as universal social values, which inspired slow cities. So you can guess what kind of streets would they have… no cars, lots of outdoor dining with slow food (but hopefully not slow service!)

Eco/enviro/green streets - No carbon emissions, which means no cars, green buildings, renewable energy, local organic restaurants…

Street 2.0 - Ok, another buzz word, but the creatives understand. To support Business 2.0 and Web 2.0, this means wifi-enabled third places supporting throngs of day workers using the street as their informal office at all hours of the day…

Organic streets - See previous entry.

Remixed streets - You’ve heard of remixing songs - composing alternates based on a mix of technologies and sounds toward a certain crowd. A remixed street for creatives would take a typical street and remix it with all of the above to suit their tastes.

Now, replace ‘streets’ with piazzas and third places, and remix all over again.

Continue the discussion here.

Pedestrian-only street. It’s the primary term used to describe a street for pedestrians only.  Makes sense, but it’s clumsy and the acronym is even worse.

We need to reframe these terms. There’s been significant cultural and economic shifts in the last ten years, and thus there are countless words in our everyday lexicon that didn’t exist ten years ago (google, wiki, and increasingly crowdsourcing), and more so, words that have taken on a whole new significance, like ‘organic’ for instance.

Thus, from a city point of view, perhaps we should transition from defining streets and places from a car-oriented point of view (ie pedestrian-only, car-free).  In the food industry, instead of pesticide free (ie car free) or naturally grown (ie pedestrian only) which implies that it’s competing with/giving up another market, the industry went with organic, and it’s done nothing short of significantly evolve supermarkets across the country, even Wal-Mart (and that’s saying something).

Here are some suggested terms:

Promenade - A grand pedestrian street, like Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
Esplanade - A promenade along a large body of water.
Paseo - A narrower, more irregular mid-block pedestrian only street, like in Sienna.
Mews - A residential pedestrian-only street.
Piazza - A primarily pedestrian-only square fronted by buildings (ideally restaurants with outdoor dining) on all sides.

...and now some demand-side/marketing-oriented terms…

Living street - (link) Instead of pedestrian street.
Organic street - Ok, I just made this up when writing this post, but this would imply a street de-emphasizing cars, national chains (which are artificial transplants, not organically grown like people and local indie businesses), and emphasizing green buildings and of course, healther dining/food and health in general (ie yoga, fitness, spas).
Portal - Borrowing a web term, “presenting experiences from diverse sources in a unified way,“ a pedestrian-only town center.

What’s your opinion? Comment below, or continue a threaded discussion here.

Source: Crashworks

El Paso, Texas is a big city (pop. 600,000) without much buzz outside of UTEP, and even worse, it had a less than envious reputation, according to one local representative, “City leaders were faced with a challenge: to get a poor city of overweight, sedentary people moving when there weren’t any parks or [bicycle] lanes. A national magazine declared the city one of the four fattest in the US, and that really got everyone’s attention.“

Welcome Ciclovia! Starting this month, the City will close several miles of road to cars each Sunday morning throughout the summer. The ciclovia (bike path) passes right through the city and is open to, well, anything but driving. So why the excitement?

The original ciclovia was founded in Bogotá, Colombia (pictured) in 1983, which now hosts 70 miles of roads closed every Sunday to cars. That event attracts one-and-a-half million people each week, spurring other Latin American cities to follow, some closing entire urban districts to vehicles. The idea was such an economic success that city merchants such as in Guadalahara, Mexico actually began opening their shops on Sunday to cater to customers they never had.

According to this article, the program is trending in the U.S. as well:

- Golden Gate Park in San Francisco will close down yet another stretch of road for pedestrian/bike traffic only.
- New York is is looking to do the same for its Central Park and Brooklyn Prospect Park perimeter roads.
- Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago are planning car-free days in public parks with the idea of making it more permanent.
- Davenport, IA, and Huntington Beach, CA are establishing car-free zones.

True piazzas (pedestrian-oriented plazas completely enclosed by buildings, ringed by restaurants and shops and offices and housing above) are everywhere in Europe, but nowhere to be found in the U.S.

Rockville in Maryland is doing their part with its upcoming Rockville Town Square, a new $360 million, 15-acre town center for their rather suburban town just north of Washington DC.  It’s not a true piazza in that there are auto-oriented streets on two sides, but if you take a look at the map, it’s getting close… and yes, city officials were indeed using Italy’s piazzas as a model.

Not surprisingly the housing prices aren’t attainable by most and national chains will occupy much of the commercial, so it isn’t a very ‘cool town’. However, hanging out in the ‘piazza’ along with its many events is free, and the City is offering $10 million in rent subsidies and relocation funds for local merchants that were dislocated in the redevelopment.

Vitals:
- 108,000 s.f. of restaurants and shops, 644 condominiums in three stories above
- 100,000 s.f. library on the town square
- Two blocks from Washington DC Metro/subway.

Read more in this NY Times article.

No cars on 42nd Street, for starters, if Vision42 is executed, an initiative for a cross-city pedestrian mall with light rail backed by seven NY elected officials, the Hilton Times Square Hotel and numerous organizations.

This is not just another social cause, it’s a significant economic one.  With the overall economic trends of cities gaining in popularity and population, Vision42 recently completed a study concluding that business would grow by 35% to $1.49 billion a year, city and state tax revenue would thus increase by an additional $28 million a year, and property values would rise by $3.5 billion, translating into another $277 million in property tax revenue. This doesn’t reflect the fact that restaurants could also double their seating area into the street (now a pseudo piazza) at no cost, transforming a street and corridor into a place and destination.

The main obstacle?  The group wants the City to invest an estimated $360 to $510 million to convert the streets and build a light rail system to connect commuters at the ferry terminals on either side of the street.  Frankly, I’m not so sure a light rail system is not more a product of an outdated industrial economy (it’s a 19th century invention with a different skin), being replaced by the ‘just as cool’, flat-to-the-ground, ‘fraction of the cost’, flexible second generation BRT (not those ugly articulated buses aka bus rapid transit), and even ‘STVs’ (‘sports transit vehicles’).  You could fund five of these streets with flexible mass transit rather than just one with an inflexible system, five times sooner, and with just as much if not more pizzaz and style.