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

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Manhattan loses an intersection, gains a plaza

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

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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,

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crowdsourcing), and more so, words that have taken on a

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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

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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 …

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What will the next generation of Manhattan look like?

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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How to do a pedestrian street right

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

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Is it time for the return of the pedestrian-only street?

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

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The neighborhood piazza - the campo

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

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Is there a true piazza in the United States?

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

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