Ideas - Pedestrian Shopping Streets
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Shopping is a regular and necessary human activity. Bread, cheese,
fish, fruit, and vegetables, for example, are part of our daily purchases.
Despite our increasingly commercialised culture, shopping is often an enjoyable
and recreational experience. The bright colours and fragrances of
a farmers’ market and the exuberance of a street festival bring people
together and help to encourage a sense of community. The city of
Montréal could benefit from pedestrian shopping streets. In
the middle of the Plateau Mont-Royal, Montréal’s avenue Mont-Royal
is one such street where more and more local citizens are beginning to
consider its conversion into a pedestrian/public transit street.
The world’s population is ever increasingly urbanising. When managed properly, high population densities can be very desirable in terms of land-use efficiency; bustling cultural development; lower infrastructure costs, and energy savings from public transit and greater walking. Ideally, the city can be a locus of ecological awareness and sensitivity promoting less dependence on automobiles, public transport, densification, and open public pedestrian streets. These shopping streets can encourage community participation, local economic activity, cultural amenities, greater safety, and the mix of social strata. 
Vaci Street, Budapest Witold Rybczynski’s book, City Life, makes the point that North Americans still enjoy ‘old-fashioned’ pedestrian-based urbanism. Furthermore, Rybczynski illustrates that tourists and suburbanites still search for ‘urban experiences’ in city centres. The pedestrian shopping street is not the only way of creating an urban experience; nonetheless, it is an option that has succeeded in improving European as well as North American city centres since the 1940s. In the 1930s, Essen, Germany was the first European city to create a pedestrian shopping district. Subsequently, most of Europe’s initial pedestrian-free zones were created in the early 1940s after the devastation of World War II. This was in response to several factors (Brambilla & Longo 1976). European cities were never built to accommodate high car traffic and thus they needed traffic control strategies. Due to their age and historic significance, these cities were looking to preserve their urban fabric and historic precincts. Emphasis was also placed on improving residential conditions in the city centre. Commercial and residential functions in the same area would also promote the traditions of outdoor urban living and ultimately increase tourist appeal. In North America, in keeping with our economic obsessions, the primary goal of creating pedestrian malls was to economically revitalise dying city centres. |
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