Why is it so important to know what a paseo is?  One key reason is that it’s tough creating a kind of place if people don’t even know what to call it… you know, those streets with no cars that only pedestrians are strolling along, lined with casual diners at outdoor cafes, bustling waiters, and an ever-changing diversity of sights, scents and sounds.  That’s what a paseo is.

At dictionary.com, a paseo is defined as:
1. a slow, idle, or leisurely walk or stroll.
2. a public place or path designed for walking; promenade.
3. (esp. in Spanish-speaking countries) a usually tree-lined thoroughfare; avenue.

It’s derived from the Spanish word pasear, to walk.

Paseos can be wide and the premiere destination for city life, or they can be narrow and offer intimate dining.  They can be level, or on a hill.  They can be rectilinear, or organic (which gives a better sense of being in an outdoor room).  Key to its economic success is a collection of unique restaurants and cafes with outdoor seating, entertainment venues and shops that establish the paseo as a destination.  Also, one of the most important design elements that makes a paseo feel just right is the human scale of the buildings, since this is after all, a street designed for walking and being.

To get a better understanding of why paseos are on the rise, check out Is it time for the return of the pedestrian street?

For guidelines on how to establish a successful paseo, peruse How to do a pedestrian street right

Images:  Sienna, Spain; Nanjing Lu, Shanghai, China; Dublin, Ireland; French Street, Istanbul, Turkey

As profiled in the previous entry, the Temple Bar quarter is a wildly popular and economically successful multi-block pedestrian-only district in Dublin, Ireland.  The question is, how did a city begin to establish such a place to reap such fiscal and cultural benefits?

It starts with affordability and pedestrian-oriented urban fabric.  As late as the 1980s, the state began to buy up and demolish buildings in the area in favor of a major bus terminus. While the plans were delayed due to opposition (not surprisingly), the purchased buildings were let out at low rents.  We all know what happens when you have low rents in a neighborhood with potential beauty - the artists, creatives and entrepreneurs moved in.  Further protests preserved the area for good, and in 1991 the government established the nonprofit Temple Bar Properties to continue the revitalization of the area into what is now Dublin’s preeminent cultural quarter. Its creative development framework was crafted by John Montgomery of Urban Cultures.

As for the multi-block pedestrian-only zone?  The streets date back to medieval times and were thus initially planned as pedestrian-only.  However, pedestrian-only streets are beginning to thrive in downtowns across the U.S., as documented here.

How can a city best create a strong identity for itself, provide that place one can count on for weekend entertainment, set the stage for public gatherings and pass the postcard test?

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) features an ideal solution: Beautiful central public squares, or for more progressive cities, a piazza.  If you’re looking to understand, design, or better yet, develop a square, there’s no better resource than their December newsletter on squares, which includes design principles, trends, and case studies on this growing trend.

For starters, here is PPS’s list of the top squares in the U.S./Canada and the World, some of which are riding the rediscovery wave of public squares:

U.S./Canada
1. Jackson Square, New Orleans, LA
2. Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY
3. Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland, OR
4. Campus Martius, Detroit, MI
5. Union Square Park and Greenmarket, New York, NY
6. Bryant Park, New York, NY
7. Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA
8. Portsmouth Square and
9. Washington Square, San Francisco
10. Square St. Louis, Montreal, Quebec
11. Squares of Savannah, GA
12. Washington Square Park, New York, NY

The World
1. Rynek Glowny, Krakow, Poland
2. Plaza Hidalgo, Mexico City, Mexico
3. Piazza Navona, Rome, Italy
4. Piazza del Campo, Sienna, Italy
5. Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Covent Gardens, and Leicester Square, London, UK
6. Hotel de Ville (City Hall), Paris, France
7. Old Town Square, Prague, Czech Republic
8. Plaza de la Constitucion (Zocalo), Oaxaca City, Mexico
9. Plaza Santa Ana, Madrid, Spain
10. Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, Peru
11. Trg Bana Jelacica, Zagreb, Croatia
12. Östermalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden
13. Plaza de Entrevero, Montevideo, Uruguay
14. Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
15. Imam Square, Isfahan, Iran
16. Campo Santa Margherita, Venice, Italy

g src=“/images/alysbeach.jpg” align=left alt=“Alys Beach” >Why is it that the most pedestrian-oriented streets in the U.S. are found in resorts? The reason being that people in second-home communities have no need to commute to work, so the car is de-emphazed. Plus, they’re looking to pay for a higher quality of life. Well, that sounds a lot like the lifestyle of minipreneurs, so expect to see these pedestrian-first principles in more everyday, urban neighborhoods.

Here’s a preview - just use your imagination and apply the following to urban settings for everyday people. Shown above is a master plan of Alys Beach by the world-renowned town planning firm DPZ & Company, a new resort with miles of pedestrian-only streets - no cars. Notice that all the parking is in the rear, and no cars are allowed on many of the streets in between the front doors of the homes, which can be identified by the green pathways. There’s even a pedestrian-only neighborhood commercial plaza.

You will start to see such pedestrian-priority streets soon enough. Just be ready to get on the waiting list because they’re going fast.

For a vibrant, active, economically successful pedestrian street (paseo), it must have the following:

1. Unique, independent restaurants, cafes, coffeehouses, bars (preferably half the number of venues) so the area is worth visiting in the first place.
2. Outdoor seating for all of the above, providing a strong sense of street life.
3. Significant amounts of housing surrounding the district, ideally also above the first or second floors of the pedestrian street.
4. Lots of trees to provide shade, motivating people to stay longer.

...and the following tips are important to note:

1. Don’t base decisions on failed downtown pedestrian malls in the 1970s and 1980s. Hardly anything prospered downtown in that period.
2. Terminating the street with a key building or landmark provides a much more comforting sense of being in an outdoor room.  Curving or organically crooked streets also help provide this sense of place.
3. Make them one block at first to hedge your risk.  Mid-block paseos work well in this regard.
4. Ensure you’re near a university and/or transit, parking, housing to provide foot traffic.
5. Brick pave them for human-scaling.
6. Run the architectural review/management through a main street program for quality control.
7. Engineer two-way streets around the pedestrian zone to keep traffic flowing efficiently.
8. Plan a variety of events, as a ‘stage’ is now set for entertainment and community building.

You now have a city icon; a compelling reason to come to the downtown that’s safe for everyone, and something unique to pass the postcard test.  It’s not that difficult, it just needs progressive leadership.

Hundreds of pedestrian malls built in downtowns across the country in the 1970s and 80s failed.  However, downtowns overall failed during that time, as regional malls became all the rage in a time before people experienced traffic congestion.

Back to the future:  However, regional malls are failing in the 2000s.  Cities and downtowns are regaining population for the first time in 30 to 50 years in the 2000s.  People are migrating back to city centers because sprawl traffic is relentlessly rage-inducing, in the 2000s.

So…

Look for the return not only of simple and modest pedestrian streets and places (rather than overdone pedestrian malls), but vibrant pedestrian streets and places, like:

Pearl Street, Boulder, CO
Main Street, Charlottesville, VA
Church Street, Burlington, VT
Ithaca Commons, Ithaca, NY
Aspen, CO
Iowa City, IA
Riverwalk, San Antonio, TX
Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, CA
Powell Street, San Francisco, CA
Lincoln Road, South Beach, Miami, FL
Sacramento, CA
Denver, CO

Are there others?  Please comment!

Here are some guidelines. to establishing a successful pedestrian street.

Italians in the second millennium were all about socializing.  Not only does the city have a grand piazza upon where city-wide events, announcements and demonstrations took place, but every neighborhood had one, two or three of them for their own purposes as well.  In fact, the neighborhood piazza has its own name - the campo, or campi for plural.

There were probably fifty to sixty campi in Venice alone - the piazza capital of Italy.  Of course it has its grand piazza, the famous Piazza San Marco, but unless you’re shopping for $100 shot glasses, this isn’t the place to hang out too long.

If you want to see the piazzas and campi in their best form - visit Venice in the summer (same as the U.S. calendar summer), as even 30 degrees is too cold for Italians to eat outside.  50 degrees is another story however.

No.  There will be one day, but right now there really isn’t anything close.  A true piazza is an urban square enclosed on all four sides by buildings to make a grand outdoor ballroom of sorts.

The closest new development resembling a piazza is Pentagon Row by Post Properties, image below.  It’s much better than what’s been developed over the last 50 years.  However, they’re calling it a piazza, and here’s why it’s not:

1. It’s only enclosed on three sides, not four.
2. Just as a grand ballroom has an open floor, so should a piazza.  This plaza has permanent landscaping all over the place, but at least they left enough open floor for an ice rink.  I skated there at night, and I felt more enclosed by the street lamps and trellises than the buildings, which also looked more suburban than urban.
3. Just as a grand ballroom has flat walls (sounds silly doesn’t it?), so should a pizza.  Unfortunately, the “walls” of Pentagon Row are all fighting for attention.  In contrast, what’s cool about Drubrovnik is that the architecture is beautifully subtle, providing a soft backdrop to highlight the real attention-getters - people.  What would YOU rather look at?