Pedestrian Malls,Walkways and Experiential Trails

Links, as part of urban design projects, can take many forms depending on the mode of transport being used. At one level of speed of movement it involves the use of vehicles. At another, walkways, stairways and arcades have been designed to enhance the experience of pedestrians. Sometimes the purpose is simply to provide shelter and comfort, but at other times it is to enhance the sequential experiencing of cities as one walks their streets.

One of the prejudices of many design professionals is that cars are bad and need to be kept out of the way. What needs to be recognized is that automobile usage is very much part of many lives and the generator of activity. Often cars and pedestrians really need to be segregated. The standard manner is to provide streets with pavements/sidewalks. Pedestrianizing streets and forming superblocks is another way. Yet another way of separating pedestrian and vehicular traffic has been vertically. Skywalks and subterranean passageways have been designed to ease the flow of people. However, their designs have not been considered to be the purview of landscape architects.

In many cities around the world, key streets have been closed to vehicular traffic and converted into pedestrian malls. Some, such as the Strшgret in the narrow winding streets of Copenhagen are internationally famous (see Figure 5.5). Such conversions continue to be built (e.g. Nanjing Road, Shanghai, 1999). The goal has been to make life more pleasant for pedestrians and so to enhance their shopping experience and thus boost the economic status of the shops. In some places, usually where the street is narrow and there are clear destinations at both ends, these conversions have been highly successful. At other times they have failed and many have been converted back to use by vehicular traffic. In these cases, they have been accused, sometimes unfairly, of having speeded up the process of retail decay.

Experiential trails highlight places and link them together based on some theme. These themes are usually historical but could be based on odours and touches for the blind or some set of activities or simply a set of aesthetic experiences. One of the goals of these trails has been to enhance the image of areas and/or the self-image of subgroups of people by bringing attention to sociohistoric places whose importance might otherwise not be recognized. Places along the routes have had their images enhanced primarily through landscape design and building renovation. Some of the trails simply link places where events took place without much additional detail (e.g. the Haymarket Massacre trail in Chicago), while others have plaques and photographs and have received considerable recent landscape architectural attention to raise their ambient qualities. This step may include special paving and street furniture (lamp poles, seating and rubbish bins), murals and planting.

There are many such trails. Almost every large city and many smaller cities have them. Many cities have architectural trails showcasing their architectural histories. To many people the design of these trails is urban design work; to others it is landscape architecture or even social planning. Much depends on the extent to which the trail integrates buildings and the space between them, and to what extent it is simply a path through a city’s streets. Boston’s Freedom Trail has had much attention to its design over the years; Ahmedabad’s almost none.

CASE STUDY

Oak Park Center Mall, Oak Park, Illinois, USA: a mall built and demolished (1967, 1989)

City planners, architects and landscape architects promote the ‘malling’ of streets in many countries, as a mechanism to help marginal retail activity along them thrive. Retailers have collaborated because they were ‘clutching at straws’ in the hope of their businesses surviving. Sometimes they have been rewarded by the closures, sometimes not. Lake Street between Harlem Avenue and Forest Avenue in Oak Park, Illinois was closed to traffic and pedestrianized in the early 1970s. It has now been reopened to vehicular traffic.

In the mid-1960s Oak Park city planner followed a well-developed generic urban design solution of the era with the goal of renewing interest in Oak Park’s downtown. The street became the Oak Park Center Mall. Joe Karr and Associates of Chicago were the landscape architects. Street furniture was installed and 10-year-old oak trees were planted to create an attractive pedestrianfriendly retail area at a cost of $1.5 million (see Figure 5.6a and b). Trees dominated the design as can still be seen on the one segment of the malled area, Marian Street, that remains. The design of the mall was much admired but by the late 1980s the total retail sales on the strip had declined and a number of stores had closed.

Retail sales along the mall peaked at $50 million in 1972 but declined to $26.5 million in 1987. The mall was blamed. Fairly? The major anchor stores – the Wiebolt, Lytton, Montgomery Ward and Marshall Field had left. The first three had planned to leave before the mall was built and the last mentioned had vehicular access so the mall could not be blamed for their demise. In 1988, Projects for Public Spaces (PPS) worked with the Oak Park Mall Commission, property developers, and city officials to determine the mall’s successes and lack of them. It conducted surveys and used time-lapse photography to ascertain the frequency and intensity of pedestrian activity on the mall. The results were presented in a series of public meetings and consequently a set of design and management decisions were made.

The city-planning commission decided, over considerable local opposition and that of critics, to re-open the street to vehicular traffic. Opposition to the idea arose because people liked to stroll down the mall. It was a pleasant place. Henry Arnold (1993) said it would have become an exemplar of urban design if it had been allowed to develop for another 10 years and shops to adapt to the changes in the surrounding neighbourhood. In addition, the idea of spending $2.76 million on returning the street to what it was before the conversion when the original bonds were only due to be retired in 1992 was anathema to many people. PPS prepared a design and integrated the reopened street with a retail management plan and a public space plan. The master plan was prepared by the Lakota Group with S. B. Friedman and Company, DLK Architecture and Metro Transportation on the team (see Figure 5.6c and d).

The destruction of the mall and the reconstruction of Lake Street took place in 1989. Considerable attention was paid to the landscape design of the sidewalks and to the planting in order to retain the admired atmosphere that the pedestrian mall had possessed. In 1990, there was a decline in vacancy rates to 19% and much interest in other retail properties by potential new tenants. Pleasant enough, Lake Street is now simply another suburban shopping street (see Figure 5.6e).

What city planners have learnt is that a landscape architectural project by itself will not improve business in such situations however well it is executed. It is not a lesson that has been universally taken to heart (Fitzgerald, 2004). The pedestrianization of streets is still an idea that appeals. To be successful such road closures have to be in highly strategic, well-functioning locations. Lake Street is successful now because two unobtrusive parking structures were built to enhance access and the mix of types of stores has responded to marketplace demands. It serves the affluent shoppers that the gentrification of Oak Park has brought into the area but on a considerably smaller scale than in its heyday.

In the smaller cities in the United States that have strong competition from suburban strip retail development and shopping centres, such ‘malling’ of main streets does not work. In Europe, there are many examples of highly successful pedestrianized central areas of cities: Gloucester in England, Wageningen and Arnheim in the Netherlands, Grenoble in France and Munich in Germany are amongst them. Pedestrianization is not, however, a panacea for a city’s ills. Nor is it strictly urban design. At the policy level it is city planning and at the design level it is landscape architecture.

CASE STUDY

The Freedom Trail, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (1951–8_)

The Freedom Trail through the heart of Boston is a 4-kilometre (2.5-mile) pedestrian route that links 16 sites of historical interest in the city (see Figure 5.7a). They are primarily places of importance in the United State’s independence movement but the trail touches on many twentieth century developments. It begins at Boston Common, once a cattle pasture, and leads via important buildings (e.g. the Old State House; the home of the British colonial government prior to independence), the location of important events (e.g. the Boston Massacre site), a site of literary importance (Old Corner Bookstore), burial grounds (e.g. Granary Burial Ground; see Figure 5.7c), the Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall area (an eighteenth century public meeting hall revitalized as part of a shopping district in mid-twentieth century; see Figure 5.7d) to an ending at the Bunker Hill Monument across the Charles River.

The Government of the City of Boston provided the funds and sponsored the trail. Since 1976 (spurred by the bicentennial of the American declaration of independence) the National Park Service has spent more than $50 million on capital improvements of sites along the trail. The project was, however, initiated in 1951 as the result of public pressure led by a journalist, William Schofield of the Boston Herald-Tribune. Schofield wrote editorials decrying the lack of recognition of the role of Boston in the history of the United States and agitating for the trail to be created. He received political support from the Mayor of Boston, John Hynes. The development of the trail illustrates the power of simple, workable ideas in fostering a variety of public realm designs. Schofield lived until 1996 seeing his dream fulfilled.

The Freedom Trail Foundation (FTF) was established in 1958 with the John Hancock Insurance Company a major sponsor. The Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Advertising Club of Boston later joined the group. The Foundation finances maps and guides but volunteers run the whole programme. In 1964, the FTF was incorporated as a non-profit organization committed to the development of the trail and to a variety of activities, such as educational programmes, related to it.

Although the trail has been added to continuously over the years, its development can be said to have taken place in two phases. The first was somewhat casual with a red line painted on the surface of the ground leading from one site to the next. The line was regarded as aesthetically unacceptable. During the second phase more attention was paid to the landscape quality of the trail. The red line was replaced with red paving stones, pedestrian ramps were installed, signage quality was enhanced and bronze medallion location markers were put in place. The trail is regarded as a major success. Over 4 million people walk it each year and the visitors to each point along the trail increased as soon as it was put into place. It is estimated to contribute $400 million to Boston’s $9 billion per annum tourism industry.

Walking the trail is an emotional experience for patriotic Americans and many international tourists alike. It has enhanced the knowledge that Boston’s citizens have about their own city’s history and, particularly, in the historic preservation of significant buildings. The existence of the trail has indirectly raised the city’s profile. It might be regarded as a catalyst for the later Quincy Market redevelopment because it showed what could be done when interested parties rally around a cause. In the year 2000, the Freedom Trail was one of 16 such trails in the United States to receive an award as part of the White House’s Save Our National Treasures project.

Places change. As the Freedom Trail winds its way through the city’s financial district the fear is that the increasing number of skyscrapers being built along the way will overshadow it. The question then arises: ‘What is in the public interest – development and/or preservation?’ The French government decided to maintain the scale of buildings of the historic core of Paris and displace development to the periphery of the city. The creation of outlying Amsterdam Zuidas as a business district is preserving the historic core of that city. This tactic has not been pursued in Boston.

A NOTE

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