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What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

citylab.com

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Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#131

Post by kingo55 »

megaremote wrote: post #87
kingo55 wrote: post #23

I live in St Kilda, Australia and our council recently changed one of our iconic streets to almost exclusively be for pedestrians and trams. Businesses protested for months about potential lost business, however as a resident I feel so much safer walking down the street. It feels like foot traffic has increased there, too. It's such an improvement. I also like to think tunnels to apartment buildings could help us tak…

Do you mean Ackland st? A small part of it was blocked off, there are still far too many cars going down there. But it is a great start. St Kilda is a such an awesome area, but like lots of places far too many cars. Melbourne has a serious problem with cars, most of the large parks even include roads running through them. Even with a fantastic inner city tram system, too many people are addicted to cars.

Yep, that's the one... Only the Acland St / Barkly St intersection is gone. It's enough that most vehicles don't head down the street.

They could easily expand the pedestrian section further up the street - and I'd like to see it too, but smaller measured steps will probably be more sustainable until parking gets "solved".

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#132

Post by kingo55 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #119
lmm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those pedestrian tunnels are pretty unpleasant; everyone I know regards them as a necessary evil at best. Tunnels are inherently not human-friendly spaces (limited natural light) so I don't think you'll find any real success stories for pedestrian tunnels; better to put the cars in tunnels if you must go that route.

Montreal's underground is a pretty strong counterexample. The pedestrian "tunnels" have retail, dining, etc on the sides, with strong artificial lighting and skylights when possible. It's closer to a mall than a tunnel, and they're quite nice.

This is the same for Korean cities - you physically can't cross roads of busy intersections... and like in Montreal, there are plenty of shops and amenities underground.

Carrot AND stick.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#133

Post by NicoJuicy »

smallnamespace wrote: post #86
wenderen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both Germanic languages! Learning Norwegian definitely helped me brush up on my German for free - at least, reading and to a lesser extent speaking.

And of course 'footganger' almost makes sense in English — 'gang' in the sense of a passage is preserved in 'gangplank', and modern 'gang' has the related sense of 'group of people who go together'.

Footwalker would be a more appropriate translation, German uses more describing words.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#134

Post by NicoJuicy »

benc666 wrote: post #108
smallnamespace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course 'footganger' almost makes sense in English — 'gang' in the sense of a passage is preserved in 'gangplank', and modern 'gang' has the related sense of 'group of people who go together'.

In Afrikaans - spoken in ZA (south africa) - that is pretty much the actual word :) "voetganger" "voet" - foot/feet "ganger" - someone who moves along using the former noun The Latin Root is what connects many European languages.

Voetganger is the same in Dutch ;)

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#135

Post by enjo »

dylan604 wrote: post #96
darkerside wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been to Times Square in a while, but I have to assume that's a good example of a busy pedestrian zone in America.

There are examples of this working in other cities. The 3rd St Promenade in Santa Monica comes to mind.

The 16th street mall in Denver and the Pearl Street Promenade in Boulder for two more examples.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#136

Post by manmal »

ashton314 wrote: post #55

I lived in Germany for two years without a car. The public transportation there was amazing—I learned to appreciate how little I needed a car, provided the infrastructure was good enough/I had a bike. In many cities there's a "Fußgängerzone": pedestrian-only areas; these were mostly found in the city center where the streets and shops are too dense to allow much traffic. I remember specifically in Frankfurt am Main a…

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most people rather use the newly rebuilt, comfortable malls with free parking and major brand chains over the harder-to-reach-by-car town center with parking fees and mom-and-pop stores.

The administration is taking desperate measures now, trying to keep shops from closing by promising funding etc, but it turns out the big malls made exclusive deals with brands and there’s not much anyone can do.

I guess Fußgängerzonen only work with an intact public transport system that people can rely on and that won’t take you thrice as long to get there.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#137

Post by Ericson2314 »

darkerside wrote: post #72
thomasahle wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was tried some places in the US in the part. Unfortunately most times they failed. Unable to attract enough people, they felt even less alive than the streets and entered a cycle a of death. However there are some signs of a rebirth: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275887405_American_...

I haven't been to Times Square in a while, but I have to assume that's a good example of a busy pedestrian zone in America.

The tourist hordes make the comparison harder; it's a whole nother form of foot traffic. But Broadway from Columbus circle to Union square is almost car free, so the non-Times Square portions are probably a better example.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#138

Post by cauldron »

rememberbitcoin wrote: post #8

I feel really bad for the children who seem to grow up in the backseat of some monstrous luxury SUV. I can't imagine it leads to the best types of citizens.

While their politicians and presidents cruise the streets in "cool" gas-guzzling SUV motorcades.

Re: What Happens to Kid Culture When Streets Are Closed to Cars

#139

Post by smileysteve »

tudelo wrote: post #130
TulliusCicero wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in the US don't really go the speed limit even in a 25mph zone so I don't know how well that will work. If you just change the signs, obviously it would fail miserably. You need to change the actual design of the street to match the ideal. There are lots of ways to do this, just google "road diet".

The only way I could see this happening is with really damaging speed bumps every car length.

Given speed bumps are frowned upon for this very reason, narrowing roads and adding obstacles (brick and concrete islands, parking endcaps, flower beds) is preferred
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