I've always thought my hometown was lame and lifeless all my years growing up. I realized now that it's because it has exactly ZERO public urban spaces or pedestrianized streets. It's just a mess of urban sprawl and strip malls.
@@trainluvr Do you mean spoken like someone who grew up in the U.S. and doesn't agree with the design of urban spaces here? Or, are you just being snarky for no reason because you have nothing better to do?
Shop owners in the US think that multi lane roads with parking in front of the shop is a prime location, an advantage. But shop owners hardly earn a penny from people in cars, driving in bunches past their shop. You earn money from pedestrians strolling past your shop and seeing something interesting in the shop window. People in cars go to big box stores with endless parking.
We should explain this to shop owners in streets that are great to pedestrians. Like most main streets in small to medium towns where high speed backroads (50-60mph) lead into the Main street and dispite the Main Street having a speed limit of 25mph. Using your Main Street as a throughfare kill business.
You'd think shops would also prefer locations where their rent doesn't pay to support acres of parkin lot infrastructure. Surely smaller walkable spaces are cheaper for businesses too.
the irony is that small towns that focus on walkability often become regional hubs for weekend travel. new hope, pa, for example. people will drive hours and spend 200n bucks a night on hotels just to go to new hope and walk around getting dinner and drinks and visiting shops without realizing they could have the same thing in their little towns. nothing inherently special about new hope. just planned better.
This is all that happens with these initiatives in America. Build something "walkable" and people just drive to it and walk around and then drive home. Even worse, it's typically bars they're driving to.
@@ab8817 Trains are the missing link, literally. You can go around Europe with a minor buzz on, just stick to the trains. If you get plastered and disruptive, you will be seriously fined at best. But hey, that’s just more revenue and nobody can make excuses when they are surrounded by other people watching them fkk up.
@@macriggland6526 Well no US city, especially with the incoming recession we may or may not already be in, will be reluctant to plunk down billions of dollars for rail projects.
I was living in Eastern France in the late 1970s, when the city of Metz created the country's first "pedestrians only" street. We heard all the usual arguments about how the city center would die. Three years later, a major cross-street was also made pedestrian... and within the decade, all of downtown was car-free, and it still is.
lived in Metz a few years ago. It's amazing how livable such a small insulated city becomes when it's entire downtown is pedestrianized. So much more lively at night than any comparably populated city in NA
@@mmhoss What's interesting in Metz's example is that it exists because very smart municipal leaders saw the future. The city CHOSE to favor people over cars.
@@rodniegsm1575 Car-centric cities aren't a "destiny". Metz could have gone either way, fifty years ago. Some nice plazas were already invisible, occupied by parked cars. I can't remember the mayor's name, but he was a nationally-known CONSERVATIVE. He said he could see no good end to car-centric planning, so he wanted to try something else.
I remember travelling to the US while I was young, and travelling by cars to shops and restaurants and thinking "when are we going to visit the city center, where the places, small streets, cafes and shops are?", not realising I wasn't in a commercial zone, that this parking lot WAS the city center.
Yes , i had the same experience. This was pre-internet , so we didn't know anything about American urban planning. I remember we ended up in Miami, and we had no clue where to go. So we asked around for 'the center' , and people didn't understand why a group of young people wanted to go the center at night. We ended up in between highrise offices andempty parking lots 😅
My small city started off as a limestone mine and a mill with company housing and a company store. Basically, it's center was the mine or the mill and the railroad track that loaded/unloaded freight. (The mill only lasted about 10 years before a tornado destroyed it.) A lot of cities in the USA started off in similar fashion with a particular industry being built first with its employees giving rise to the town, then city. It's not like the government planned for and built them. The people built them from the ground up after settling there. Most administrative buildings were put on land donated by some individual for the purpose of starting a town. A lot of towns and cities have the names of the individuals who helped to found them. Usually, they were the largest landowners in the area.
@@GUITARTIME2024 Yes, you just have to know where to look for it .I've seen a lot of a fun neighborhoods allover the U.S . With 1920/30thies architecture bars, nightlife and small shops, etc . It's a shame the U.S adopted this strict way of urban planning .
As a European, I was over in Fort Lauderdale many many years ago. The hotel was on the other side of a busy highway and a little further along to the offices I was visiting. I remember my colleague and I arranged to walk between the two places after breakfast and we were struck by how difficult it was to cross the road. We mentioned this to the staff in the office and they were shocked we had not taken a taxi! I mean, as I recollect, it was just a five or ten minute walk and we never even considered a taxi.
I had the same problem while in holidays at Honolulu. I wanted to go at a shopping mall near our accomodation (we saw it from the window) and we had to walk around a four line road and walk at least a kilometre more of what we intended because all the possible ways were cut down by the speed road or with a fence. And when we arrived to the destination we had to walk half kilometre more to get to the shop, the parking lot was soooo huge. For an European perspective it's shocking you dont't have any option to go there without a car. Near my town we had a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere and you can arrive there by bus or by your own car. What do you do if you don't bother to have a car like me?
@@vanesag.9863 @Vanesa G. Is it Ala Moana you're talking about? I had basically the same experience. Just cooking in the hot hawaiian sun in a concrete jungle waiting for the light to change across a 4-5 lane stroad... I am American and used to this kind of infrastructure, but Ala Moana was a shockingly hostile pedestrian experience even for me lol
I noticed that when I visited a few years ago. I was stationed in Rota in the 80s and most Spanish cities may have had walkable areas but they still allowed motor vehicles. When I visited just before the pandemic, I noticed several blocks in both Madrid and Marbella were now completely pedestrian and I've seen on this channel Spain is creating even more pedestrian-only areas. Like others have stated, we do this in America but sadly we can only drive to them (NE Corridor somewhat exempted). If only I could take EASILY take a train from Palm Springs (where I live and we have a walkable downtown every Thursday evening LOL) to LA, San Fran, or Phoenix.
The first time we visited Europe (from the US) was about twenty years ago. Our first stop was Milano and a few hours after our arrival we attended a performance at La Scala. When we left the opera house at a late hour I was astonished to see thousands of people wandering the streets. I was both shocked and I absolutely loved it. Why did I love it? Because of the way groups of people were strolling and socializing in public on darkened streets. Why shocked? Because people weren't afraid to walk around after dark. We kept returning to Europe after that. The more I saw the more I loved what I was seeing. In 2017 we moved from just outside Austin, TX to a mountain village a bit south of Valencia, Spain. I don't think I will ever become tired of walking pasaos and pedestrian areas filled with locals of all ages and sidewalk cafes. But it all comes back to a basic feeling of safety out on those streets. Something that occurred to me after I'd been here for a while is that in the US we keep our children and elderly family members in boxes. Those boxes are houses, event centers, cars, classrooms and so forth. Some American parents have even been brought up on charges for letting their children go free range. Why? Fear, I guess. It's nice that Europeans don't feel a need keep their families in boxes.
The following was actually a reply in another thread. But I think, we have the same idea about those "boxes". So here's my repost: "Here's my kitchen psychology: Humans are not meant to be put in cages, we need openness and a clear view to stay sane. The reality: We wake up confined in our houses, go to work imprisoned in our cars, enter our prison aka office building, stay there for 9 hours, then leave work and go back into the confines of our car, do some shopping in a big enclosed mall and drive back to our home prison. All day around we're in cages, surrounded by concrete walls. That can't be good for mental health, we're not made for that, it makes us depressive long-term. Probably better: Hop on the bike to go to work (if it's not too far away), stop for a coffee at the cafe and sit outside, go to work, go for a walk during lunch break, hop on the bike to ride home, make a small detour to the park, when you're home relax in your garden (nearby park, whatever). Be outside. Not inside cages. Walk, run into friends, look around, get some fresh air."
Congratulation with your decision. Well...just as you noticed and liked the socialising at dark, you maybe also have noticed the lack of the American gun culture. It are not like it are illegal to own a weapon in Spain, its just that people tend to use them for hunting. The easy access to guns in USA combined with close to unhindered immigration while starving the educational system that could ensure some social mobility, have caught up with USA increasingly last decades. Having been to both USA and Spain many times I would also point to the lack of general "noise" in the public space. US cities are so ugly because there are advertising and billboards everywhere, same with TV. I salute you for taking the consequences of your experiences and will use the opportunity to remind you that the happiness institute of Copenhagen (not a joke, Danes have a happiness institute) have made a larger survey showing that if an immigrant move to a place where people are more content/happy they too become more content/happy. Next time you enjoy some Sangria on a dark night, then sing a song in the open, and be happy!
With the ridiculous gun laws, aggressive cops and lack of decent social healthcare (keeping the nutters in therapy) i am not amazed you are afraid. Maybe that ''socialist'' or better said modern way of running a nation gives you more freedom then whatever is going on in the states.
Baltimore did this to Thames Street in a vibrant bar/restaurant district and some of the shop owners started complaining that they didn't have anywhere for customers to park since the street closed despite the area being CONSTANTLY full of people walking all over because of how popular it was. Refusing to accept that maybe her weird knick-knack shop just wasn't interesting.
US development patterns made a lot of the old "main street" shops pivot to specialty and niche areas that draw people from a wider radius, aka drive cars. And those customers tended to be people invested in that hobby/whatever, so business depended more heavily on those far-off customers. Changes that make the street more attractive to locals who want more practical things (food, entertainment) and aren't necessarily invested in the store's niche are threatening. The other (and perhaps more compelling) part is that most small business owners understand the current state of their business very well, but are nowhere near sophisticated enough to be able to understand how the future can play out. So they tend to want to "play it safe"
This is happening in Chicago as well. An old hardware store that had been in operation for a hundred years is shutting down. Of course they're blaming the bike lanes and ignoring the changes in shopping habits that are fueled by the pandemic. It is a sad story I'll admit, as losing a historic business is always painful, but I'd bet a savvy business person could absolutely make it work.
@@jamalgibson8139except theres street parking on the other side of the street, and also an empty parking lot 20 feet down from the front door of this business.
There is an ironic point you missed. All those fancy pedestrian streets you saw were open to traffic at some point. If they were broad enough to run a horse carriage through, they naturally moved to motor cars and continued like that until the '90s or '00s, which is when pedestrianization started in earnest in Spain. Even better, almost universally that happened amid much protest about the murder of local businesses by whatever city hall was leading the process.
And it DOES murder local businesses which the elite that are pushing these SMART or 15-minute cities do not care about at all, because they only care about giant corporations. All over the world, small business is dying under a hundred different agendas that are designed to drive them out.
Exactly, All over Europe cities and towns make their central streets and squares car free, for shopping, restaurants and events, whenever there is a good opportunity. The narrow back streets are used for vans for deliveries and access for people living there.Through traffic will take the wider avenues around the city centre, when it's done right. (Also people actually live in the city centre when it's not just office towers, highways and wind)
It blows my mind that in even relatively more pedestrian-friendly cities in the US, like Washington, DC, you have no pedestrianized streets. The main shopping street in Georgetown, M Street, is always full of people and shoppers, but sidewalks are very narrow and crowded while you have SIX LANES FOR TRAFFIC on the same street
There are amazing streets in the US that are no-brainers for pedestrianization. The arguments against pedestrianization in some of these places seem really flimsy to me!
@@CityNerd We used to have the same discussions in Spain. In fact most of these pedestrian spaces had cars 20 or 30 years ago. We still do everytime a new pedestrianization project is more ambitious than the previous ones. Many people complained when the Gran Vía was reduced from 6 to 4 lanes, for example. And of course, pedestrian spaces can be still accessed by delivery vans in the early mornings. It's all about finding an equilibrium.
Salt Lake City had a lot of success with temporary pedestrian-only nights on a core section of downtown Main Street during early COVID. They're currently studying making it permanent. Fingers crossed that works out.
My small city had the same positive response to a spring-fall pedestrianized downtown core from last year. They already close it one night a week for a farmers market anyway, and whenever there's Pride or other festivals. I hope everyone else is putting pressure on the city to bring it back, it was such a good change.
Terrible idea to go permanent. My city did that in the 70s and reversed it 30 years later. The current "hybrid" street works much better, and its closed for events. It's an attractive street and traffic goes slow, which means more eyes on the street.
That's a great way to get people to see what it can be without having shops freak out about not having car traffic. Parking on the back side of the buildings and walk thru access is helpful.
We have a downtown historic street in STL with restaurants and bars called Washington Avenue and its closed to car traffic for various events. Very fun.
That's exactly what they did in Santa Barbara, CA. State street, a very busy street downtown where many restaurants locate is made permanently for pedestrians. It also makes perfect sense that two one-way roads going opposite direction are only about 2-300ft away in either direction of it so that traffic is pretty much unaffected. Consider a lot of cities in US has this similar road patterns, this should be an expandable way of doing it.
Cafe culture is why I gravitate towards walkable places in the US. There is something sublime about a good cup of coffee, a walk, and running into friends
Here's my kitchen psychology: Humans are not meant to be put in cages, we need openness and a clear view to stay sane. The reality: We wake up confined in our houses, go to work imprisoned in our cars, enter our prison aka office building, stay there for 9 hours, then leave work and go back into the confines of our car, do some shopping in a big enclosed mall and drive back to our home prison. All day around we're in cages, surrounded by concrete walls. That can't be good for mental health, we're not made for that, it makes us depressive long-term. Probably better: Hop on the bike to go to work (if it's not too far away), stop for a coffee at the cafe and sit outside, go to work, go for a walk during lunch break, hop on the bike to ride home, make a small detour to the park, when you're home relax in your garden (nearby park, whatever). Be outside. Not inside cages. For me, this is what you called "sublime". Be outside around, walk, run into friends, look around, get some fresh air.
@@vergildisparda Then you drive as a hobby? When I lived in Japan, a drive was considered a fun activity that people liked to do on weekends or after work, not a requirement to get around. The requirement aspect is the biggest issue.
The most frustrating thing to me is that people assume we can't change things. Cities are perpetually being rebuilt. With very few exceptions, every building needs taken down and rebuilt, or at the very least remodeled eventually, streets need regular overhauls just from wear and tear. If we set a policy of making significant improvements every time we rebuild something, it will still take decades to complete, but we can still see the first results fairly quickly. No matter how bad a city is, every year we have hundreds of chances to make it better.
It's because transit advocates when they see a real project morph into bad faith assholes committed to making things worse for people on the ground, at least in Canada.
Welcome to Portugal! I was in Tavira last week, now back home in Lisbon, living a car-free life, and much happier for it. If you get the chance, visit Braga, they turned the entire city center into a pedestrian only zone.
The cow is everywhere in Spain. Let us know if one charges you in Lisbon. Pedestrian corridors/streets are sadly an alien concept here in the United States. We honestly detest the idea that unless one can park directly in front of a desired storefront then some kind of "right of access" has been taken away. We also hate related bicycle paths. A street here in Berkeley, California has plans to install a bike path along Hopkins Street which has a lot of shops and a famous grocery store. The neighborhood is fighting it with signs exclaiming 'SAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD'. Save it from what? Bicycle terrorism? This is in 'liberal' Berkeley, in one of the most liberal places in the United States. We LOVE our cars, we WANT OUR CARS EVERYWHERE, anything else is an attack on our FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT. Sad.😓
We need to show WAY more Americans what good urbanism is like and how it will benefit them. Otherwise we'll probably never be able to change the country.
Berkeley has a decent, or at least long lived bike culture, but the structure is still pretty car dependent. Telegraph, for example, is crazy. Its like a highway through the town. There are incremental improvements but its gonna be a long project to ever get much of the town to a truly walkable state.
@@Kizarat I agree. The current trend in the United States is to buy the largest vehicle possible such as SUVs. Our addiction to ever larger cars fuels the desire to maintain as much road space for them as possible. We are overdosing on a commodity that is harming us far more than helping.
Never forget that even in urban, progressive areas, the *property owners* are still largely соnsеrvаtіvе. They are a small but loud segment of the population. Give them as little attention and air time as possible.
My hometown eliminated 20-30 parking spaces in the center of downtown so vendors could set up and restaurants could have some outdoor dining areas. The outcry at first was insane. You'd have thought they were putting in a toxic waste dump as much as people freaked out over the loss of those parking spots. Later on some shop owners complained about people sitting on the benches and heaven forbid someone sits down without having to spend money first, so they removed all of those.
In the USA, if you are going to use store property, then it is expected that you make a purchase from said store. Benches and the like are for customers, not pedestrians. I'm in my 50's and was taught that by my parents. When I was a kid traveling with my parents and we had to make a toilet stop at a place like a McDonald's to use the restroom because there are no public bathrooms in most places, my parents would always make the smallest purchase in exchange for having used the fast food restaurant's facilities. We weren't told to do that, there was a sort of unspoken expectation of that. Nowadays, some places will outright tell you to do that.
@@laurie7689 generally it is more welcoming to people considering entering a business and spending money if the space around the store is open and inviting.
3:18 Great central plazas were a key part of the Leyes de Indias, a set of legislations that among other things specified that all new cities in Spanish America had to have one, that's why you see them on practically every Latin American city today.
Pedestrianizing the wide streets and allowing cars on the narrow ones is actually genius, because it allows cars into the city in a way that minimizes their downsides, which largely are a function of *speed*. Posted speed limits are actually ineffective at limiting car speeds, but what does work is putting cars in a place where drivers will naturally moderate their speeds. The Dutch seem to be master of this, narrowing down rural highways when they enter villages and putting in contrasting road surfaces.
During Covid, a street in Philly became pedestrianized (at least banned cars) and full of “Streeteries”. Now, most of the streeteries are gone and cars are back :( It’s a small, skinny street too. Like, surely driving through somewhere else is more efficient for you?
whats nutty is walnut or chestnut or whatever hsd the pedestrian block since the 70s or so and its highly successful. Youd think people could notice the positive examlle in tgeir own city.
Good video. Agree about the European cities and walkability, it's simply a joy. This past September we enjoyed walking in Cefalú, Taormina, and Madrid for the reasons you mentioned. On the bright side, Houston just last week announced the permanent pedestrianization of about 7 blocks of Main st in the center of downtown. So there are elected officials in the US doing the right thing. Maybe not that many of them, but they do exist. We elect them so WE are the change after all. Thx.
‘mid-lifers’ like me can’t keep waiting for the US to figure the out. Adding a few pedestrianized blocks per year in a city of 4M+ is just too slow. Retirement will not be in Houston if I can help it. Too many other places already have this worked out.
@@scruf153 When your city is like Seville, and you live on a narrow street, and SUV starts to look less appealing. SUV's and Stroads go together like narrow streets with bikes, pedestrians and sensible-sized cars.
I am on my second year in Barcelona and I love that I dont need a car to move freely around the city. public transport and lots of pedestrian streets makes it very easy. There is a point that is often overlooked. For spanish people, at least in Barcelona, LOVE to hang out after work and have a beer or two. By having walkable streets and easy mass transit, they dont have to worry about driving after drinking or designated drivers, etc. Everyone goes out, have fun and then go home.
We love our few car-free places in the US: Disneyworld and other theme parks, Beaches, Waterfront piers, Mackinac Island, Shopping Centers, State/county fairs, Sports-adjacent plazas, Block parties, Parades, etc. But we can't figure out how to let everyone have local access to these places all of the time... we can only have the simulated commercialized versions for *reasons*
Because exclusive access is the only way to prevent crime. That is the #1, if not only reason. Beach areas without good security are ghost towns for this reason. Crime, safety and walkability go hand in hand.
One thing to note about the pedestrian-only streets of France and Switzerland is that they aren't pedestrian-only all day. It's wall to wall delivery and disposal and cleaning trucks from like 3am to 6am. In the US, most of those services would be happening between 9am and 5pm, which means they have to share the space with pedestrians and other traffic.
Church Street in Burlington, VT is open to delivery trucks until 9 AM. Trash removal is done through the day with golf-cart micro-pickups (enclosed cabs and pickup beds on a golf-cart-size trucklet), the newer ones are electric.
I've just travelled to Malaga, Seville, Cordoba and Granada and saw all the references you were making and can relate so much to everything you're saying... It's crazy how nice it is to have anything at a 5-10min walk
In every pedestrian street in the US you need a car to reach it. But, in Europe you can use the public transportation to reach it, walk in the street, enjoy it and return to your house in public transportation. I think this is the big difference too.
Burlington's church street is easily reachable by city bus, intercity bus (Vermont Transit) and passenger rail (Amtrak). You can also walk, bike, ski, skate, sail, scooter or drive to it!
And then, we have Burlington, Vermont. Back in the 1980s, our then-mayor, Bernie Sanders, closed off our main downtown street and businesses thrived. Tourism thrived. It's tougher now because retail isn't what it used to be (yes, it's moved out of town), but the eating is still great, and there is a variety of shops that we downtown residents use more and more; the most recent is a hardware store. There is an active street dining culture there, which operated for all but the worst two winter months during Covid; many of those season-extender facilities remain in place and well-used. During Covid, some of our feeder streets into the downtown (we have very few of them) and many of our side streets ( a tangle) were closed to cars, to promote walking, which is already a key activity in our small towns. It was a great success, and many of us considered it a sad day when the barricades came down and the cars returned.
Sad to hear the retail is gone. I moved to an apartment next to the church at the turn of the century. Bought books, clothes and shoes up and down Church St. and in the little mall. Not to mention many cups of coffee, meals, and bus tickets. Miss you, Burlington!
I would note that you can also easily get around without a car in these cities, which makes pedestrian only areas much more feasible. For example, an annual public transit pass in Vienna cost a very reasonable 365 euro, and the network will get you just about anywhere you need to go within the 160 square mile limits of this amazing city.
Similar situation in nyc w/ 14th street. There was some pushback but the restriction of cars made the m14 bus travel much quicker and there are about TEN subway lines that stop along 14th, so it's easy to get there.
@@CleverAccountName303 I think a similar line of reasoning could be applied to park & rides. Doesn't make sense to build them if train frequency is low and parking is abundant and cheap downtown.
THIS! This is what a lot of American progressives don't seem to get - for that pedestrian zone to actually work, they'll have to give up on suburbia. Eg. in Vienna, nobody from, say, Vösendorf (a suburb in the south of Vienna) is going to use Mariahilfer Straße regularly. And if Mariahilfer Straße wasn't surrounded by a sea of 5 story apartment blocks and had 3 metro stations along its length so it's easily accessible to any Viennese in Vienna proper, it would simply fail. If everyone lived in places like Vösendorf, we'd all just drive over to Shopping City Süd (one of the biggest malls in Europe). Which is what my friends who live in Vösendorf (and all of their neighbors) prefer. In contrast to me, who can just hop on public transport and reach any pedestrian zone in Vienna in under 30mins. Having to drive to a pedestrian zone is pretty useless. It's way more inconvenient than driving to a big box store or mall because of the parking problem. Pedestrian zones have no parking (or expensive garages) and since they're in the inner city, getting there by car is much more of a hassle. Once you have to start your trip by car because you live in a suburb, you want to end that trip by car, everything else is a hassle. And then you'll probably much rather order online. So, how exactly would those stores in pedestrian zones stay alive?
@@TheFeldhamster Progressives? I don't understand the political reference. Suburban Americans love these car-free urban places because they provide them with shopping/walking/dining/entertainment experiences that they can't get in their mind-numbing suburban enclaves. However, they DRIVE to get there. So, they work in the US economically, but not environmentally. As an aside, suburban shopping malls in the US are failing, with many of them closing down, or even being converted in to mixed-use residential development.
@@lrdxgm Congratulations! You're from Europe or Asia or something! We have been waiting so long for you. Here is your sash and here is you $100,000 prize.
My city (Santa Rosa, CA) has absolutely moved in the right direction on this. After decades of wrangling, they re-united our pre-1900 era central square by closing to traffic an artery that once was the main commute route through town. It need not be the main route any more, though, because Highway 101 parallels this route three blocks over. The new square is slowly but surely re-gaining a character that had been lost, as is the now much-more pedestrian friendly corridor of 4th Street that runs along one side of the Square (also a one-time commute path). All due to moves the city made, which much of the public opposed at the time.
I was a teen when they built Santa Rosa Plaza. At the same time, the city narrowed Fourth Street from 4 lanes to 2 and put in all the pedestrian stuff to make sure downtown shops didn't die when the mall opened. Now its the mall that needs to be put out of its misery, and fast.
@@michaelkiesling8148 I'm of a mind to repurpose the Plaza rather than killing it. It's got the walkable areas of 4th Street and RR Square on either side of it and a bunch of newly constructed or re-purposed housing nearby. It isn't perfect, but I can see it being revitalized with a few tweaks. Put a grocery store where Sears used to be, for example. Convert some of the parking garages to bicycle parking. You get the idea.
I lived in SR ages ago … left in 2007. Anyway I remember back then there was a pedestrian street downtown closed to traffic but I recall they were trying at the time to open it back up to traffic… I guess that never happened? Miss it there, will have to make a visit again someday.
@@Eric_Garrison I don't believe they've ever closed off any streets here permanently. But they do close off 4th for events, like Pride, and when they do, the whole area becomes a festival. It's really cool and I still hope they will model 4th after the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica at some point.
I just came back from a month in Guadalajara Mexico and one of the things that consistently struck me as different from the US was the culture of public gathering and by that I mean gathering for socializing not just for shopping. Plazas are filled with people sitting on benches and socializing, especially older people far into the evening, enjoying the outdoors. This is not a common scene in the US, even here in Chicago. On Chicago's most popular shopping and pedestrian area, Michigan Ave, people don't gather to sit and hang out to socialize. People are always on the move, walking, strolling, shopping, anything but standing still, let alone "hanging out" socializing. The same is true of Union Sq in San Francisco or even Times Sq in NYC. We're always moving and rarely stop to "hang out". Seeing the scenes of Spain, it looks a lot like Mexico with people sitting and hanging out, socializing, and just enjoying being there. People there appreciate and actively use the pedestrian spaces and plazas. It seems more fun than staying home and binge streaming Netflix. It's a culture of "stopping and enjoying" vs a culture of "moving and doing". People expect and appreciate traffic mitigation measures to make these places better. How much do you attribute cultural attitudes to the success of public spaces there and the difficulty of building them in the US?
First, Times Square is mainly a tourist attraction that’s overcrowded and sometimes filled with media blitzes. Most New Yorkers won’t suggest meeting up in Times Square unless they’re with tourists or REALLY have to meet someone there. Second, One can socialize at Union Square and/or Washington Square Park where I’ve met up with friends in the past. Now I’ve only been to Union Square in SF once so I can’t say I know the place well but I’ve been to Pershing Square in LA and there is so much potential for that place to be a meeting space but it’s usually deserted or sparsely populated.
As the Shopper's Code of Conduct says, you MUST keep moving in an orderly fashion! (But you mustn't run, or cycle, or skateboard, or do anything that might remotely resemble fun)
@@97nelsn Pershing Sq has been a disaster since they remodeled it into the mess that it is now back in the 80s. It's primarily an underground parking garage which is why trees can't be grown in most parts of it and also why access into Pershing Sq is limited. The same is true of Union Sq in San Francisco. It's an underground parking garage. These are prime public spaces diminished by their primary use as parking. Yes, Times Sq is mainly a tourist attraction but many of the plazas in Mexico and Spain are also tourist attractions. That doesn't preclude their use by locals. The tourists just walk through, take a pic, and leave. The locals actually use the plazas. You "can" socialize in Union Sq Park or Washington Sq Park in NYC but, after dark, not so much. I would venture to say that every park or plaza in The Bronx, Queens, or Brooklyn, and most of Manhattan empties out as soon as the sun sets. Manhattan squares probably get more use than in any other US city but they are outliers. Even so, they pale in comparison to the way public squares are patronized in Mexico and Spain, well into the night. It seems Americans just prefer to keep moving rather than stop and smell the flowers. People wonder what you're doing if you're just hanging out in most places.
In many public spaces in the U.S., "hanging out" is not allowed. Many outdoor spaces are designed only for movement (think trails, outdoor malls, parade grounds, etc) and anything else is considered loitering, which is forbidden. Children are not allowed to play. Skateboarding, rollerblading, wading, all forbidden. Sports are not allowed. Alcohol, tobacco, and cooking not allowed. These types of restrictions pretty much drive the public back into private spaces, which merchants and authorities prefer.
@@elenataylor-garcia8781 It sounds dystopian when you think about it, a kind of "1984" dystopia. I think that's is one of the reasons why American society has become a sick society. I read somewhere that many people, young and old, are lonely and don't know how to meet people or socialize in today's environment. That isn't good and goes against our human nature.
I was very shocked & saddened last time I visited NOLA. (Granted this was about 2 years ago) I saw signs all over the French Quarter saying “No More Pedestrian Malls”. If the Nimbys there, in one of the most pedestrian friendly neighborhoods in the U.S., are rly that concerned about not being able to conveniently drive, they should probably just move to Texas instead. :/ I would LOVE if the French Quarter (and many other dense mixed use areas in America) stopped allowing cars!
I love how absolutely hilarious you are without ever changing your tone of voice. Not to mention the way you talk about "non official businesses" with such humble pride, thank you for that.
I really appreciate financially supporting your travels abroad while I am stuck back in the US. If I can't afford to go to Europe, at least you provide the opportunity vicariously. 🙃
Europe is not as expensive to travel through as US. It is quite easy to find a cheap hotel, private lodging (Airbnb) or to book bed in a very cheap room in a hostel. The public transportation, food etc is also cheaper than in US.
They turned East 4th Street in Cleveland to pedestrian only about a decade ago and the street went from a fully boarded up street that was really only used for free parking to the city’s most vibrant street that is now 100% occupied by restaurants, bars, a bowling alley, a concert venue and a clothing store. It really is awesome, and every suburbanite’s favorite place to be before Cavs and Guardians games.
I hear ya... I visited Cleveland (I'm from New York) in 2016, and I was extremely pleasantly surprised at how interesting and walkable it was. I hadn't realized how abandoned East 4th Street might have been just a few years ago.
I’m driving from LA to SF right now, stopping in Santa Barbara, Monterey and other beautiful communities along the way. And I can’t believe how these beautiful small towns and villages are just lacking all kind of basic walking infrastructure and is just filled to the brim with parking lots. Drivning highway 1, I have seen so many bikers willing to risk their lives, biking on the beautiful coast. There is sooooo much potential for great walking and cycling infra. Hope to see some rapid change here :) I really start to understand some of the other US commentators in comment field of this channel and other similar channels. Just some thoughts from a Swede living in Amsterdam 😋
Unfortunately there will not be any kind of rapid change. Americans are TERRIFIED of change and we don't have any kind of leadership at either the local, state, or national level, that would be willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Enjoy your trip and do yourself a favor and stay away from downtown San Francisco. It is a sad place to be.
I wish it would be rapid but it's slow. If we introduced a bunch of Americans to urbanism and stuff like that, we could change stuff up more quickly, but even so, it would be time-consuming.
Nowhere in California is going to come close to meeting the expectations grown from Sweden and Nederlands. Things are starting to improve but it will be a very long journey. Some places trying harder than most for bikeability sre San Louis Obispo and of course Davis. But walkability is patchy even in San Francisco itself. My city of oakland has over three hundred thousand people, but hasblarge food deserts, four highways cutting up the city, and former streetcar business roads that havent been vibrant for 80 years. I recommend finding some time to hike up some hills away feom everything. California does that better than Amsterdam, and enjoy some good mexican cuisine. I cant think we do much else better.
@@jsrodman I've recently been watching some walking tour videos of smaller California towns, and I came across one from Carmel-by-the-Sea which was filmed when a number of the streets had turned street parking areas into dining spaces for cafes and restaurants. I was seriously impressed. The lovely architecture of the town, the trees everywhere, the small lanes and courtyards coupled with the cosy vibrancy of the on street dining areas really appealed to me. Then watching a video filmed more recently I discovered that all these dining areas had been removed and the streets handed back to big ugly cars again - and that this was done despite the local residents not wanting them removed. I just don't understand how after experiencing the beauty and value of making streets more people-focused, those in power could still have opted to go backwards.
Luckily Friedrichstr in Berlin recently got pedestrianised. I remember experiencing many dangerous situations with high speed cars nearly killing me when coming out of the subway station. As a positive side effect the traffic at the famous Gendarmenmarkt is also way less now. Unter den Linden could also benefit from this kind of city planning.
hate to tell you not for long, the new conservatives wrote its "in a not acceptable state" which equals to them allowing cars back on the short strip. However Unter den Linden between Brandenburger Tor and Alexanderplatz is a strong candidate for a car free axis, change only got delayed :/
As somebody who used to live on Friedrichstr this is amazing to hear! There's so much walkable stuff around there and making it pedestrian-only is a great choice.
Three reasons to pedestrianize streets. The first is that it is good for human health. Walking is a magnificent physical exercise that is very beneficial for health. The second is that it promotes social interaction and humanizes people. The third is that by limiting access to cars we protect the environment. Thank you. Greetings from Murcia. Spain
I live in Curitiba, Brazil, and when they created an Pedestrianized Street at central down town, there was resistance from local shops, but after some weeks the shops along the street start asking to Pedestrianize all the street, because the sales went up, more people wore going there, this days those streets are landmark and tourist attractions , and those streets wore avenues, so, they are large and very nice to walk all of its extension
Visitei curitiba pra ir num evento ano passado, fiquei em São José dos Pinhais. Lá era um inferno, tudo longe, o aeroporto era longe, os mercados e restaurantes eram longes, os parques eram longes (São lindos, aliás), era horrível ir de um lugar pro outro. Daí fui pro centro e que cidade linda! Consegui passar em vários lugares e aproveitar a cidade, se eu precisasse de um carro pra fazer tudo isso, sem dúvida minha experiência teria sido muito pior.
Iowa City has a great pedestrian area downtown. It's often busy and has many of the same establishments you mention in Spain. edit: It's been a while since I've lived in IC, the ped mall is smaller than I remember, they really should expand it. Living in Belgium now, I've seen pictures of towns in the 70s with cars running through them in areas that are now re-pedestrianized. These spaces are uniformly very busy and pleasant places to be.
A vibrant pedestrian plaza in the US: Market Square in historic downtown Knoxville. Lots of outdoor dining that’s hugely popular. Shops and a boutique hotel too. If it can work in Tennessee, it can work in any US city. Baffles me why there aren’t more.
I don’t know if you have been to Zaragoza, but it has some great examples of public spaces that removed cars. In fact, Zaragoza has the biggest pedastrian square in the European Union, Plaza del Pilar, and all that space is taken by people during holidays and celebrations with no car in sight (just another advantage of this type of public spaces).
@@Kakonan Los de las rotondas son los navarros, cada noche crece una. Lo de los semáforos en Zaragoza no lo he entendido nunca, además de estar mal secuenciados
San Diego is doing this in a few places in the Gaslamp. I wish they'd do this to a few blocks up in my neighborhood (a relatively walkable neighborhood just north of Downtown).
@@Bizcachi comic con? They shot four blocks down for that every year and it's great. They will be permanently turning a few of those blocks into pedestrian only areas.
It's how crazy how historical areas in Lating American cities look like Spanish cities. I guess it makes sense, lol, but his video reminded me so much of my home town of Guadalajara, MX.
@@PossibleBat what you say is absolutly true. it is very easy to find in the archives in Spain and in Hispanic America how they process the "quinto real" and all the taxes. All this was not done haphazardly, and at the expense of the provinces and vireinatos of America, as is implied by people who have never studied this period of human history.
In mexico city, there were already walkable streets way before the Spaniards came, they changed the Infrastructure but the city was already one of the largest in the world. The north of Mexico in the other hand oftentimes have very strong American influence, Los mochis in sinaloa looks like a random place in California.
I love how the final B-roll shot exemplifies the “how do you carry bigger, heavier, bulkier things between properties without a car??” non-issue. The guy has a pallet mover. He could also have used a cargo bike. There’s other rubber-tyred options than cars!
I think the main stumbling block is that in the US- even in dense cities, people don't seem to like having a lot of other people around. Pedestrian areas work best when most of the people walking about are local to the area. This is facilitated by mass transit (to let you get to a job in other parts of the city) and by dense homes. Owning a home is tied to economic security in the US, and beyond that a lot of people would get stressed or annoyed at having people constantly around in an urban area unfortunately and not getting any peace and quiet at home. It's a multi-faceted thing where pedestrian areas are reliant on local residents that in most cities still need cars. So what gets built are apartment blocks with garages since mass transit takes a decade to build just one line (not an interconnected network). So aside from maybe brunch downtown, people still expect to need a car to do whatever. So whenever a half-hearted pedestrian zone gets built or converted in the US they don't see the results we see in Spain because society is so different. A shop on a Spanish ped zone can get deliveries by bike and cart and 1000 local passerby while a US one would rely on a distributor coming by box truck and have 100 local passerby in the same unit time. The most successful ped street I know is in my hometown of Silver Spring MD on Ellsworth Dr. Why this works is because it's got restaurants, a movie theater, a civic center. It's right near a grocery store and the library. The MD Purple Line will go by it eventually. But they're still pretty reliant on commuters passing by from garages to the metro. They kind of incentivize commuters to stay downtown by making weekday parking free if you leave after 9PM. But it took years of that setup before residential density got built up enough to "self-sustain".
I agree. Successful pedestrianization goes hand-in-hand with good car-free access to the walkable area. To me, driving+walking feels like a "mixed mode" much more than transit+walking. Having to think about parking, traffic, how long I can stay, whether I can drink, and so on takes something away from the feeling of freedom that comes with being on foot.
_"I think the main stumbling block is that in the US- even in dense cities, people don't seem to like having a lot of other people around."_ This seems to be a vicious cycle in the US, unfortunately. Living in socially isolated single-family suburban houses has been shown to make people more anxious and paranoid. So these people are frightened of strangers and busy public places, and so they resist attempts to create density that would expose them to these things, perpetuating their paranoia-inducing lifestyle.
I wouldn't want to be near people either if I lived in anything but the smallest American cities. That would be like being outside in Barcelona, which is just asking to be mugged, stabbed, beaten or raped. Even Madrid is pushing it, to be honest, with an increasing number of neighborhoods becoming off-limits in recent times.
I’m fact. One of the big pedestrians streets showed in this video, Avenida de la Constitución in Seville, that now has just a tram, bike lanes and lots of walking space used to be a four lane car street in the 80s. Spain has turned around dramatically in their city planing policies when they understood the advantages to city livability.
Great video! We discovered Spain after retiring to SW Florida. So we are actively seeking to relocate to the S Med coast of Spain. In a walkable village. After years of vacations to SW Florida, we had thought we'd found a nice medium retirement city of Cape Coral Florida. Well those intervening twenty years, and the three we've been here had changed our minds. We just seem to have traded our West coast "rat race" for a unseasonably hot and muggy, global warming urbanized retired "rat race". Wishing you young folks all the best.
Another point is public transport to reach these pedestrianised areas. I live in Manchester in the north of England. Apart from a few weeks in summer the weather here is not conducive to the outdoor life. Nevertheless, in the very centre of the city there are a fair number of pedestrianised roads and squares where only trams and buses are allowed. Another main square (Albert Sq) is at present undergoing extensive renovations and will be car free when re-opened. I find this makes walking around Manchester city centre very pleasant so I go there often. I live five miles from the centre. I actually can't remember the last time I drove there. It's certainly years since I did. But there is a tram stop ten minutes walk from my house and the tram takes me directly to the centre in 15 minutes. There is a bus stop at the end of my road and the bus takes about 30 minutes. Both bus and tram cost about £4 for a return ticket, which is about $5. I always take the tram. It's direct, fast, easy, I don't have the hassle and expense of trying to find somewhere to park, I can read or even doze instead of having to negotiate urban traffic and when I'm in town if I want to pop into somewhere for a beer or a glass of wine I can do because I'm not driving!
And just for the people not understanding: Even in pedestrianized areas usually delivery vans and cars can come for exceptional purposes. It is just not allowed unless essential. So, in reality, delivery vehicles and worker vehicles have an easier time. Because they don't have to fight for parking spots and work around speedy traffic.
For what it's worth - from what I have seen I think the idea behind the small roads where cars are permitted is so vans/trucks can supply the businesses with goods and merchandise. That's the case where I live, anyway!
Amazingly, American NIMBYs are capable of noticing commercial stroads are a blight on the earth. The weird thing is they assume the commercial part is the problem, not the stroad part, so they fight mixed-use zoning because they think the presence of shops will turn small streets into stroads. They lack the imagination to recognize you can separate the two.
God, Spain is awesome in so many ways. I consider myself pretty lucky living in the Netherlands, but Spain is a level up in terms of urbanism. If they get their cycling on our level, than we are doomed to not win any urbanism contests anymore. (Well, unless climate change transforms Spanish summers from hot to unbearable that is.)
There is a reason why in Spain cycling is not popular, unlike the netherlands, which is mostly a completely flat country, Spain is a very Hilly country, so the bycicle culture that the netherlands belgium or Germany have Will never develope too much in Spain.
Spain is the 2nd most mountainous country in Europe after Switzerland. I'm from Barcelona and the city is literally on a mountain. Biking is very hard unless you are going to the beach which means just going down. Even with the electric bikes the city has added it becomes tough work.
The way climate change is going, I think you are right in the last part. I definitely see Central Europe becoming more "Mediterranean" with temperatures rising, it will inevitably change the culture. And Spain will be left behind, and that makes me so sad. To think my country could suffer so much, could potentially lose our identity over time, it just sucks. Spain gets drier every single year and I see a lot of potential problems in the future for us. I hope I’m wrong.
I went to Seville at Christmas and it was so nice in the centre it was crazy. The uk isn’t as bad as America for the car stuff but we’re so far behind mainland Europe it’s depressing
I have been pondering the financial failure of Harborplace in Baltimore and Waterside in Norfolk. Both were popular destinations when they opened but have fallen out of favor as other destinations were developed. Perhaps a key factor that is missing for both is adjacent residential development. Perhaps the pedestrianized areas shouldn't be thought of as destinations but rather as serving neighborhood residents. Perhaps they should include residential development. Perhaps they should follow the traditional model of shops on the ground floor and residences above.
Bloody pedestrianized street, I went out to get some band-aids and I came back with that and a pizza from a next door pizza place. (I'm visiting Madrid right now, it's awesome. Also it's metro).
I live in the US and grew up in South America. It is interesting to see how the concept of progress in both places is closely associated with the idea of bigger roads, bigger cars, more parking lots, etc. The pickup truck is a symbol of status in both continents. But this does not seem to be the case in Europe at all. I wonder why, culturally, the continents moved in opposite directions.
I mean, an expensive car is definitely a status symbol in Germany too, at least in more socially conservative circles. But nobody here would buy a delivery vehicle like a pickup truck as a status symbol. In fact pickup trucks basically don't exist here, delivery drivers use vans.
It is considered to be not classy in Europe to show too much that you have money. People appreciate a lot good education, knowledge about the world, savoir-vivre, in some countries aristocratic heritage (England). Of course someone who makes good money is admired as an enterprising person, but it is not the only thing which makes a difference. I think it is more about “to be”, not “to have”.
In Europe we had the aristocracy for a very long time. Everyone admired their lifestyle: they were not only wealthy, but also well-mannered, well educated, had some knowledge about the world, knew foreign languages and played instruments. If someone only had money, it was usually a peasant, so someone lower in the hierarchy, without other aristocratic features. I think it is the pattern which still exists here, although in most countries the aristocracy is over.
9:28 haha, the Ale-Hop cow is probably one of the top tourist destinations in Spain at this point, each city has at least one such shop with a mandatory cow in a central tourist location.
Crazy how civilized, joyful and inspiring Spain looks as compared to the US. And I couldnt help but notice the different in people size: The US has an obesity rate of 42% while Spains is 24%. I wonder how, I wonder why...
In Córdoba, Argentina a large swath of downtown area has been pedestrianized for many decades (1969 to be exact). The worst traffic I've seen there is on weekends and holidays when it gets a bit crowded. Other than that it's wonderful. Also, to the point of "lack of motor vehicle traffic will hurt businesses": the most prized real estate, SOLELY DEDICATED TO SHOPS at ground level is in that area. No shop keeper complains about the lack of cars, just the rent. 😎
I live in Rome, not so far from the colosseum. This morning I heard two American guys complaining about this "so called hop on and off tour where you have to walk 70 miles to go to the bus". The bus was literally 100 meters (or 100 yards, it's more or less the same) from the colosseum. Or 200 if they walked the long way around. I mean, what the fuck, do they want the bus INSIDE the arena ? 😂
I recognised my hometown, Málaga, then Sevilla, Granada and Madrid. Thanks for the interesting video. Makes me see things I am used to see in a different way.
I live in Pasadena, California and I think the old town Pasadena area would benefit from pedestrianizing. It’s really difficult to drive through the area anyway due to the massive number of pedestrians drawn to the restaurants and shops there throughout the day. There are alleys which are pedestrian only and they are full of people, and I don’t see the benefit of having cars driving through the main drag (Colorado Blvd) clogging the street when most end up parking in a nearby parking structure or side street anyway.
Home of the first outdoor mall, actually. The street is a single lane one way with parking on either side. It could be worse, but it’s not what it used to be…
Same here in Raleigh, but it's much better. People feel safer with the "slow traffic" feel instead of an empty plaza, and the street sreet is closed off for 5 blocks for events. Wide sidewalks too.
In Pontevedra, a small city in the northwest of Spain, a process of pedestrianization began 30 years ago, there were many protests from merchants because they said that if cars did not pass in front of their stores, people would not buy... today the The city is almost completely pedestrianized and the merchants are the ones who are happiest. There are no shopping centers on the outskirts and people from the small surrounding towns come to do their shopping in Pontevedra and drink a few beers and eat tapas on the terraces. while the children play in the street
I'd be interested in your view on how to reverse the decline in use of pedestrianised high streets in smaller towns. In the UK many cities are becoming less and less car centric, however smaller towns, which are surrounded by small villages that aren't super accessible by public transport, are dying and the high street shops are disappearing and moving to 'malls' or retail parks. It's a huge problem here! Love the videos!!
You partly answer your own question when you say "smaller towns, which are surrounded by small villages that aren't super accessible by public transport, are dying " - in England (outside central London) public transport is appalling and expensive whereas is most of Europe its very good and subsidised to keep costs low. Secondly weather plays a role in that much of the time even in summer in England its wet and overcast and open pedestrian streets are unpleasant to walk and sit in. Thirdly the rise and rise of e-commerce and home delivery means that a lot of shopping in physical shops has died off.
Something that I think makes it (perhaps psychologically) easier to pedestrianize streets is having paving that's not asphalt. When you have bricks, cobblestones, or some other kind of non-asphalt paving, you can just close the street and it looks like a perfect pedestrian space. But, when there's nasty black asphalt with a yellow line down the middle, it's harder to imagine a pedestrian-only future for the street.
I think a major difference between European and American cities is the distinction between the business area and the touristic area. The touristic area is really well located in the centre of the city or the older part of it while the business heavy district is more in the outer parts of the city
London has its main business district ‘the city’ right in the centre and it’s almost traffic free, there is virtually no parking but fantastic public transport . Less than 10,000 people live there but over half a million work in its offices and businesses. It’s also a major tourist area with St. Paul’s Cathedral, the museum of London, the Roman walls and top class restaurants but the tourists use public transport and walk as well. Good public transport is the key to European cities liveability and without it they wouldn’t work.
There’s aren’t that many tourists in city. Most of them are in Westminster/Kensington and across the thames in lambeth/southwark. And London is not really your typical European city compared to Paris, Madrid or Lisbon
I live in and love Montreal. I walk everywhere and, sometimes, meet my wife in a cafe or bar on the way back home in the evening. My suburban friends always complain about the traffic, but always come back from Europe in love with cities like Rome or Paris. I tell them that they love those cities because they went without their cars… and Montreal would be the same if only they’d visit on foot. I dont have a problem with the traffic 😅 In Chicago recently. Landing for 30min watching suburbia is depressing. Needing a Ford Navigator to get milk in a giant shopping mall. One train built in 1910 to go in the city center. Great city center, but 6 car lanes in every streets ruining it… could work with 2-3, replacing those car lanes by larger sidewalks snd terrasses.
My pedestrian only street is my college campus. I graduate in about a yr and ive been living car lite! The idea of having to go back to driving everywhere is giving me hives
Regarding that black cat at 6:20, I noticed "El gato negro" on the name of the establishment too ("the black cat" if I'm not mistaken). Oh and followed by what is probably "administration number 13", this seems like the most lucky gambling establishment I'm aware of.
We had a pedestrian only street in Vancouver and it didn’t take off. I think that’s because the street lacked mixed use buildings in the surrounding blocks. One end of the street is in the financial district and was pretty vacant after office hours the other end is in an entertainment district that was active late into the night but desolate during the day. It’s currently a transit street and the street is still crappy.
Outdoor dining is the secret to success for any pedestrian street. If that’s not prioritized and supported, then overall failure for the pedestrianized area is pretty much inevitable.
And what's left of Granville Mall now is a short length of street with basically zero-street facing storefronts. It's been bleak as long as I've been going (since Skytrain opened, essentially). I think Robson between Granville and Bute would be a great place to pedestrianize, and eventually all the way to Denman. Commercial between Broadway and 1st would be another great location, eventually all the way to Venables.
@@dreimer2112 yeah. Pacific centre for better or worse put the retail inside and off the street. I agree with your suggestions that commercial and robson would make great ped streets.
In 4:58 they are training for a holly week procession. The "costaleros" have to be very coordinated, height and strength-wise. For the actual event the structure is covered and on top of it will sit the statues instead of rods of concrete.
I’d love to see a video on North American plazas / town squares. I feel there are a few leaning in the right direction - full of gathering spaces, food vendors, performance spaces, public art - and maybe a pop up ice rink around the holidays.
I live in Pittsburgh and they have a downtown "square" that has such potential but never does the right thing with it. Instead of offering unique, cozy restaurants with sidewalk eating, it's mostly chain restaurants and also you can still drive around the perimeter of the square. It only comes alive for occasional crafts shows and such. It was used in a movie once but even THEY had to spruce it up and make it look better than it actually is. Pittsburgh has such potential for charm but just never lives up to it. No forward thinking or ability to think outside the box. Sad since downtown Pittsburgh is very walkable. If you try to put a bike lane in here drivers will of course bitch that you took their precious parking spots away.
San Francisco and San Jose (nearest) have giant roads running right through the most obvious public gathering places. Seattle is similar. I dont remeber anything pedestrian plaza like in Boston or New York. Do you have any examples? For greater North America, Mexico City and Montreal fare better. In europe it was like, many in every town. Nurnberg, Fuerth, Muenhen, Liepzig, Amsterdam Utrecht, Helsinki, Oulo, Den Haag, even tiny towns i bikes through and don't remember the names.
In Cincinnati where I live we have Fountain Square, which won’t be mistaken for an Italian Piazza, but it’s a nice respite in the heart of downtown - and a central gathering place to meet people, anchor events/festivals/races, sip coffee from a vendor while sitting under trees at a cafe table, etc. it’s usually a pretty bustling place every day.
What's funny to me is that the US ended up with old spanish cities that were actually planned with central plazas and other walkability features in mind, guess they just completely ignored those.
@@maximipe I'm only aware of one surviving Spanish city in the USA and that is St. Augustine, Florida. Just googling it for plazas and it mentions the Plaza de la Constitución in the heart of the old historic district. I don't know if that is all that is left from Spanish colonialization here.
Recently they closed off another street for cars in my closest city. It's so much more safe now and I think it's brought a lot more people to that part of the city.
Portugal is going in the opposite direction, unfortunately. Cities like Aveiro should be super cyclable, but the parking is still seen as a right here. Hope you enjoy the trip though!
You should visit the Balkans. In countries like Albania or Bulgaria many towns completely close a main road or an area in the town center from around 6 or 7 pm to 10 or 11 pm for all traffic. Bars, restaurants, ice cream shops etc. then expand out onto the pavement, while the locals saunter along in style, stop for a drink or a snack and meet friends, neighbours and acquaintances. This is one of the most important times of the day for many and is real fun (and good for business, too).
@8:25 we have hard data for this here in Vienna. Surprisingly, our local businesses (and politics) still often believe in the "cars bring business" fairy tale, so there is still a lot of backlash whenever streets are pedestrianized (despite the usually overwhelming success!). But more and more often those conversions are now accompanied by scientific evaluations, to compare the before and after. A prominent example is the (half) pedestrianization of Mariahilfer street in Vienna. It has been one of the most busy shopping streets here in Vienna for centuries, so you'd think it should have been a no-brainer. Even more: the local 'economic chamber' (which represents business interests) _knew_ before that only 8% (!) of customers came by car (that's already drivers and passengers, i.e. includes taxis - which can still access parts of the street!). And getting a parking spot was a nightmare anyways, nevermind one in the vicinity of the shop you wanted to visit. Also, there are some parking garages directly beside the street (accessible from the other sides of the blocks), so those who insist on driving can still very much do so. Yet despite this very mild change there was (and still is!) a lot of arguing against it... Now, 8 years after the central section has become pedestrian only, and the rest is a calmed mixed-traffic area with pedestrian precedence, the shops are of course still thriving. There are a lot more people on the street, and customer frequency has almost doubled in some shops. Only a few have had to close - mainly because of the increased rents, _because_ of the high demand (and most of those shops had already been struggling before; e.g. a high-end tableware shop, which just isn't 'en mode' anymore nowadays).
K Street in Sacramento, California, with light rail on it, has vacillated between car accessible and ped only over the decades, most recently switching back to car accessible for some reason. Dunno why ped only doesn’t stick there.
Cities never were "pedestrianzed", pedestrians have been there first, long before cars existed. In some places there is not even space for cars. And you took samples of eternal summer here. In Spain and France this is much more popular of course. But you find those pedestrian zones also in colder climate like in Copenhagen or Stockholm. US cities have their walkability only inside buildings, either vertical in skyscrapers or horizontally in Malls. But this is the concept of the owner of the building, it's not the concept of the city.
Us cities biggest issue is zoning which makes no one lives near businesses. North America used to get this but it changed in the 1920's. If you get rid of cars but no one lives in the area businesses do die. Which is why zoning for more mixed use should be the first step to better cities.
11:11 this is true for practically EVERYTHING in society, conditions are legislated. It's amazing how difficult it can be to get that through to a North American conservative, its like they think big box stores and highway living is an inevitability of freedom or something
I live in Whistler, BC. Definitely not a city, but the town's main feature is a pedestrian-only street so it can be done in Canada. But the next two towns on highway 99 (Pemberton to the north, Squamish to the south) both have car-friendly roads running through them and Vancouver is mostly pedestrian-hostile.
Can you make a video explaining how European cities handle logistics of goods in general? In America, it seems like everything is delivered in a semi/box truck whether it's in a dense city or suburb. What's the difference?
I've seen very small box trucks, think Nissan NV/200/250, as well as bicycle UPS/FEDEX deliveries. A common practice in Europe is to allow motorized deliveries from 1 a.m. to six a.m. Europeans have NO problems bringing supplies to their storefronts. I never saw a large delivery truck unless it was transporting goods from one city to another and used a major highway. .
Generally they will have a distribution hub at the edge of the city near the motorway. There the goods will be transferred from the large lorries to small Ford Transit or similar vans and taken to the store.
as a brit delivery driver, i can say that in the UK you either have loading/unloading times - 6am to 9am for example or as has been said already, you use vehicles up to a weight limit (5 to 7 tons) at a 5mph speed limit and pedestrians have right of way. it generally works well.
not a "in general"-case at all (seems like a huge exception even for Europe) but I've read that Swiss coop gets their dairy and meat into the city (Geneva) by train in order to avoid traffic on motorways. Then has trucks roll over to the siding to pick up their container using this containermover-3000 apparatus that lifts the container from the train onto the car in about 10 minutes. Followed by deliveries to supermarkets by trucks, which have loading docks anyway. In Spain I've seen drivers use a cart to get their delivery to small businesses while parking their truck where appropriate or not appropriate (but never on the sidewalk).
You were commenting on narrow streets not being pedestrianised -- a lot of that is so that deliveries can be made - access is usually limited to certain times of the day.
Something else that has a pretty big impact on things; open-container laws. In Europe, or at least Portugal where I now live, there are no open container laws, and I'm assuming licensing laws in general are a LOT more relaxed than in the US. It seems like any place can be a bar. You stop at an ice cream shop for the kids, you can get yourself a mojito while you're at it. As a result, there is pretty much zero need to design in controlled access to alcohol serving areas in these cities. That makes things a lot more "organic" in the plazas, streets, and squares and squares of these cities. A cafe can set up a bunch of tables in the street or plaza and let things expand a bit, without having to worry about the puritans pitching a fit over me drinking a beer within eye sight of some kids. If you want to see the true meaning of "family friendly" spend some time relaxing at a cafe on a square or plaza in pretty much any European city.
A good one to look at is Timisoara Romania. Most of the historic center was closed to vehicle traffic and is now the largest pedestrian zone in Romania. You can see how it was around 2011 on Google maps compared to today. There was a lot of backlash about parking but it seems that died down as people experienced how enjoyable it is.
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I've always thought my hometown was lame and lifeless all my years growing up. I realized now that it's because it has exactly ZERO public urban spaces or pedestrianized streets. It's just a mess of urban sprawl and strip malls.
Spoken like a true American.
@@trainluvr Do you mean spoken like someone who grew up in the U.S. and doesn't agree with the design of urban spaces here? Or, are you just being snarky for no reason because you have nothing better to do?
Same here, when I discovered Not Just Bikes it rang like a bell in my head.
@@DiogenesOfCa 100% same. It was one of the biggest OH now it all makes sense moments I've ever had.
4K60fps video quality please!
Shop owners in the US think that multi lane roads with parking in front of the shop is a prime location, an advantage. But shop owners hardly earn a penny from people in cars, driving in bunches past their shop. You earn money from pedestrians strolling past your shop and seeing something interesting in the shop window. People in cars go to big box stores with endless parking.
right on the money
@@asgdhgsfhrfgfd1170 not even at 10 mph
We should explain this to shop owners in streets that are great to pedestrians.
Like most main streets in small to medium towns where high speed backroads (50-60mph) lead into the Main street and dispite the Main Street having a speed limit of 25mph. Using your Main Street as a throughfare kill business.
You'd think shops would also prefer locations where their rent doesn't pay to support acres of parkin lot infrastructure. Surely smaller walkable spaces are cheaper for businesses too.
@@ericwright8592 yes walkability is better for business
the irony is that small towns that focus on walkability often become regional hubs for weekend travel. new hope, pa, for example. people will drive hours and spend 200n bucks a night on hotels just to go to new hope and walk around getting dinner and drinks and visiting shops without realizing they could have the same thing in their little towns. nothing inherently special about new hope. just planned better.
don't mind me, just marking this down as a cool idea for my own town
This is all that happens with these initiatives in America. Build something "walkable" and people just drive to it and walk around and then drive home. Even worse, it's typically bars they're driving to.
@@ab8817 Trains are the missing link, literally. You can go around Europe with a minor buzz on, just stick to the trains. If you get plastered and disruptive, you will be seriously fined at best. But hey, that’s just more revenue and nobody can make excuses when they are surrounded by other people watching them fkk up.
@@macriggland6526 Well no US city, especially with the incoming recession we may or may not already be in, will be reluctant to plunk down billions of dollars for rail projects.
New Hope is a great example.
I was living in Eastern France in the late 1970s, when the city of Metz created the country's first "pedestrians only" street. We heard all the usual arguments about how the city center would die. Three years later, a major cross-street was also made pedestrian... and within the decade, all of downtown was car-free, and it still is.
lived in Metz a few years ago. It's amazing how livable such a small insulated city becomes when it's entire downtown is pedestrianized. So much more lively at night than any comparably populated city in NA
@@mmhoss What's interesting in Metz's example is that it exists because very smart municipal leaders saw the future. The city CHOSE to favor people over cars.
People are inherently afraid of new things. Until it's a reality, and they get to see and experience how to change to.
@@rodniegsm1575 Car-centric cities aren't a "destiny". Metz could have gone either way, fifty years ago. Some nice plazas were already invisible, occupied by parked cars. I can't remember the mayor's name, but he was a nationally-known CONSERVATIVE. He said he could see no good end to car-centric planning, so he wanted to try something else.
Sounds awesome
I remember travelling to the US while I was young, and travelling by cars to shops and restaurants and thinking "when are we going to visit the city center, where the places, small streets, cafes and shops are?", not realising I wasn't in a commercial zone, that this parking lot WAS the city center.
Ouch. It's unfortunate what we've done.
Yes , i had the same experience. This was pre-internet , so we didn't know anything about American urban planning. I remember we ended up in Miami, and we had no clue where to go. So we asked around for 'the center' , and people didn't understand why a group of young people wanted to go the center at night. We ended up in between highrise offices andempty parking lots 😅
My small city started off as a limestone mine and a mill with company housing and a company store. Basically, it's center was the mine or the mill and the railroad track that loaded/unloaded freight. (The mill only lasted about 10 years before a tornado destroyed it.) A lot of cities in the USA started off in similar fashion with a particular industry being built first with its employees giving rise to the town, then city. It's not like the government planned for and built them. The people built them from the ground up after settling there. Most administrative buildings were put on land donated by some individual for the purpose of starting a town. A lot of towns and cities have the names of the individuals who helped to found them. Usually, they were the largest landowners in the area.
We do have cozy streets in various cities, though. It depends on which city, etc.
@@GUITARTIME2024 Yes, you just have to know where to look for it .I've seen a lot of a fun neighborhoods allover the U.S . With 1920/30thies architecture bars, nightlife and small shops, etc . It's a shame the U.S adopted this strict way of urban planning .
As a European, I was over in Fort Lauderdale many many years ago. The hotel was on the other side of a busy highway and a little further along to the offices I was visiting. I remember my colleague and I arranged to walk between the two places after breakfast and we were struck by how difficult it was to cross the road. We mentioned this to the staff in the office and they were shocked we had not taken a taxi! I mean, as I recollect, it was just a five or ten minute walk and we never even considered a taxi.
I had the same problem while in holidays at Honolulu. I wanted to go at a shopping mall near our accomodation (we saw it from the window) and we had to walk around a four line road and walk at least a kilometre more of what we intended because all the possible ways were cut down by the speed road or with a fence. And when we arrived to the destination we had to walk half kilometre more to get to the shop, the parking lot was soooo huge.
For an European perspective it's shocking you dont't have any option to go there without a car. Near my town we had a shopping mall in the middle of nowhere and you can arrive there by bus or by your own car. What do you do if you don't bother to have a car like me?
Some people can't imagine going anywhere outside their house on foot
Americas will slowly understand the concept and how good it is.
Americans will slowly understand the concept and how good it is.
@@vanesag.9863 @Vanesa G. Is it Ala Moana you're talking about? I had basically the same experience. Just cooking in the hot hawaiian sun in a concrete jungle waiting for the light to change across a 4-5 lane stroad...
I am American and used to this kind of infrastructure, but Ala Moana was a shockingly hostile pedestrian experience even for me lol
Another thing is that most cities in Spain were car-centric in the 80s, we’ve just been moving away from it in the last decades
I noticed that when I visited a few years ago. I was stationed in Rota in the 80s and most Spanish cities may have had walkable areas but they still allowed motor vehicles. When I visited just before the pandemic, I noticed several blocks in both Madrid and Marbella were now completely pedestrian and I've seen on this channel Spain is creating even more pedestrian-only areas. Like others have stated, we do this in America but sadly we can only drive to them (NE Corridor somewhat exempted). If only I could take EASILY take a train from Palm Springs (where I live and we have a walkable downtown every Thursday evening LOL) to LA, San Fran, or Phoenix.
They weren’t built as car centric though.
They didn’t tear down stroads and replace them with beautiful dense 4-6 story labyrinth buildings and car free streets and city squares.
Noticed this in Florence, Italy too when we returned after a 10 year gap. A lot more pedestrianization and with it a lot more vibrancy.
@@yungrichnbroke5199 many american cities weren't built to be car centric either. Listen to what he says at 12:50
The first time we visited Europe (from the US) was about twenty years ago. Our first stop was Milano and a few hours after our arrival we attended a performance at La Scala.
When we left the opera house at a late hour I was astonished to see thousands of people wandering the streets. I was both shocked and I absolutely loved it. Why did I love it? Because of the way groups of people were strolling and socializing in public on darkened streets. Why shocked? Because people weren't afraid to walk around after dark.
We kept returning to Europe after that. The more I saw the more I loved what I was seeing. In 2017 we moved from just outside Austin, TX to a mountain village a bit south of Valencia, Spain.
I don't think I will ever become tired of walking pasaos and pedestrian areas filled with locals of all ages and sidewalk cafes. But it all comes back to a basic feeling of safety out on those streets.
Something that occurred to me after I'd been here for a while is that in the US we keep our children and elderly family members in boxes. Those boxes are houses, event centers, cars, classrooms and so forth. Some American parents have even been brought up on charges for letting their children go free range. Why? Fear, I guess. It's nice that Europeans don't feel a need keep their families in boxes.
oh, did you move to Xativa?
@@MelonJoose no, La Drova
The following was actually a reply in another thread. But I think, we have the same idea about those "boxes". So here's my repost:
"Here's my kitchen psychology: Humans are not meant to be put in cages, we need openness and a clear view to stay sane.
The reality: We wake up confined in our houses, go to work imprisoned in our cars, enter our prison aka office building, stay there for 9 hours, then leave work and go back into the confines of our car, do some shopping in a big enclosed mall and drive back to our home prison. All day around we're in cages, surrounded by concrete walls. That can't be good for mental health, we're not made for that, it makes us depressive long-term.
Probably better: Hop on the bike to go to work (if it's not too far away), stop for a coffee at the cafe and sit outside, go to work, go for a walk during lunch break, hop on the bike to ride home, make a small detour to the park, when you're home relax in your garden (nearby park, whatever). Be outside. Not inside cages. Walk, run into friends, look around, get some fresh air."
Congratulation with your decision. Well...just as you noticed and liked the socialising at dark, you maybe also have noticed the lack of the American gun culture. It are not like it are illegal to own a weapon in Spain, its just that people tend to use them for hunting. The easy access to guns in USA combined with close to unhindered immigration while starving the educational system that could ensure some social mobility, have caught up with USA increasingly last decades. Having been to both USA and Spain many times I would also point to the lack of general "noise" in the public space. US cities are so ugly because there are advertising and billboards everywhere, same with TV.
I salute you for taking the consequences of your experiences and will use the opportunity to remind you that the happiness institute of Copenhagen (not a joke, Danes have a happiness institute) have made a larger survey showing that if an immigrant move to a place where people are more content/happy they too become more content/happy. Next time you enjoy some Sangria on a dark night, then sing a song in the open, and be happy!
With the ridiculous gun laws, aggressive cops and lack of decent social healthcare (keeping the nutters in therapy) i am not amazed you are afraid. Maybe that ''socialist'' or better said modern way of running a nation gives you more freedom then whatever is going on in the states.
Baltimore did this to Thames Street in a vibrant bar/restaurant district and some of the shop owners started complaining that they didn't have anywhere for customers to park since the street closed despite the area being CONSTANTLY full of people walking all over because of how popular it was. Refusing to accept that maybe her weird knick-knack shop just wasn't interesting.
Businesses usually realize that pedestrian traffic gives them way more customers than car traffic once they give walkability a try
US development patterns made a lot of the old "main street" shops pivot to specialty and niche areas that draw people from a wider radius, aka drive cars. And those customers tended to be people invested in that hobby/whatever, so business depended more heavily on those far-off customers. Changes that make the street more attractive to locals who want more practical things (food, entertainment) and aren't necessarily invested in the store's niche are threatening. The other (and perhaps more compelling) part is that most small business owners understand the current state of their business very well, but are nowhere near sophisticated enough to be able to understand how the future can play out. So they tend to want to "play it safe"
This is happening in Chicago as well. An old hardware store that had been in operation for a hundred years is shutting down. Of course they're blaming the bike lanes and ignoring the changes in shopping habits that are fueled by the pandemic.
It is a sad story I'll admit, as losing a historic business is always painful, but I'd bet a savvy business person could absolutely make it work.
Every time the government does a good thing, complainers make the most noise and ruin things all too often.
@@jamalgibson8139except theres street parking on the other side of the street, and also an empty parking lot 20 feet down from the front door of this business.
There is an ironic point you missed. All those fancy pedestrian streets you saw were open to traffic at some point. If they were broad enough to run a horse carriage through, they naturally moved to motor cars and continued like that until the '90s or '00s, which is when pedestrianization started in earnest in Spain. Even better, almost universally that happened amid much protest about the murder of local businesses by whatever city hall was leading the process.
And it DOES murder local businesses which the elite that are pushing these SMART or 15-minute cities do not care about at all, because they only care about giant corporations. All over the world, small business is dying under a hundred different agendas that are designed to drive them out.
Same in Italy.
People are reluctant to change until they realize that it is good for everyone.
Exactly, All over Europe cities and towns make their central streets and squares car free, for shopping, restaurants and events, whenever there is a good opportunity.
The narrow back streets are used for vans for deliveries and access for people living there.Through traffic will take the wider avenues around the city centre, when it's done right. (Also people actually live in the city centre when it's not just office towers, highways and wind)
I'm guessing that in those early days, much of that traffic was making deliveries?
It blows my mind that in even relatively more pedestrian-friendly cities in the US, like Washington, DC, you have no pedestrianized streets. The main shopping street in Georgetown, M Street, is always full of people and shoppers, but sidewalks are very narrow and crowded while you have SIX LANES FOR TRAFFIC on the same street
There are amazing streets in the US that are no-brainers for pedestrianization. The arguments against pedestrianization in some of these places seem really flimsy to me!
M St is exactly the first street I thought of watching this video, though transit access isn't great.
@@CityNerd We used to have the same discussions in Spain. In fact most of these pedestrian spaces had cars 20 or 30 years ago. We still do everytime a new pedestrianization project is more ambitious than the previous ones. Many people complained when the Gran Vía was reduced from 6 to 4 lanes, for example. And of course, pedestrian spaces can be still accessed by delivery vans in the early mornings. It's all about finding an equilibrium.
in fairness if you just changed over M Street as is without providing a bypass of some kind, nobody would ever be able to make it out of the city
Sounds Crazy to me that anyone would even consider a street a „shopping street“ with a 6 lane abomination dividing the buildings
Salt Lake City had a lot of success with temporary pedestrian-only nights on a core section of downtown Main Street during early COVID. They're currently studying making it permanent. Fingers crossed that works out.
My small city had the same positive response to a spring-fall pedestrianized downtown core from last year. They already close it one night a week for a farmers market anyway, and whenever there's Pride or other festivals. I hope everyone else is putting pressure on the city to bring it back, it was such a good change.
Terrible idea to go permanent. My city did that in the 70s and reversed it 30 years later. The current "hybrid" street works much better, and its closed for events. It's an attractive street and traffic goes slow, which means more eyes on the street.
That's a great way to get people to see what it can be without having shops freak out about not having car traffic. Parking on the back side of the buildings and walk thru access is helpful.
We have a downtown historic street in STL with restaurants and bars called Washington Avenue and its closed to car traffic for various events. Very fun.
That's exactly what they did in Santa Barbara, CA. State street, a very busy street downtown where many restaurants locate is made permanently for pedestrians. It also makes perfect sense that two one-way roads going opposite direction are only about 2-300ft away in either direction of it so that traffic is pretty much unaffected. Consider a lot of cities in US has this similar road patterns, this should be an expandable way of doing it.
Cafe culture is why I gravitate towards walkable places in the US. There is something sublime about a good cup of coffee, a walk, and running into friends
Third places are really important for prevention of cultural atomization, while cars on the other hand accelerate that same heat death of society
Here's my kitchen psychology: Humans are not meant to be put in cages, we need openness and a clear view to stay sane.
The reality: We wake up confined in our houses, go to work imprisoned in our cars, enter our prison aka office building, stay there for 9 hours, then leave work and go back into the confines of our car, do some shopping in a big enclosed mall and drive back to our home prison. All day around we're in cages, surrounded by concrete walls. That can't be good for mental health, we're not made for that, it makes us depressive long-term.
Probably better: Hop on the bike to go to work (if it's not too far away), stop for a coffee at the cafe and sit outside, go to work, go for a walk during lunch break, hop on the bike to ride home, make a small detour to the park, when you're home relax in your garden (nearby park, whatever). Be outside. Not inside cages.
For me, this is what you called "sublime". Be outside around, walk, run into friends, look around, get some fresh air.
@@ThePianoman-- Hmm. What if I like driving?
@@vergildisparda Then you drive as a hobby? When I lived in Japan, a drive was considered a fun activity that people liked to do on weekends or after work, not a requirement to get around. The requirement aspect is the biggest issue.
I’m from Seville!
Fun fact! La avenida de la constitución used to be a 4 lane super busy road and the cathedral was blackened with car pollution!
The most frustrating thing to me is that people assume we can't change things. Cities are perpetually being rebuilt. With very few exceptions, every building needs taken down and rebuilt, or at the very least remodeled eventually, streets need regular overhauls just from wear and tear. If we set a policy of making significant improvements every time we rebuild something, it will still take decades to complete, but we can still see the first results fairly quickly. No matter how bad a city is, every year we have hundreds of chances to make it better.
Maybe, the problem is that cities are built and rebuilt around their sewers.
@@ruedigernassauer Sewers you may note, also need to be rebuilt eventually. If the sewer set up really is that bad (it isn't), it too can be fixed.
but that would reduce profits for car companies! we can't have that.
/s
It's because transit advocates when they see a real project morph into bad faith assholes committed to making things worse for people on the ground, at least in Canada.
What's really stupid is that asphalt roads decay much more quickly than pedestrian pavement, which can last literal centuries.
Welcome to Portugal! I was in Tavira last week, now back home in Lisbon, living a car-free life, and much happier for it. If you get the chance, visit Braga, they turned the entire city center into a pedestrian only zone.
Braga sounds cool!
The cow is everywhere in Spain. Let us know if one charges you in Lisbon.
Pedestrian corridors/streets are sadly an alien concept here in the United States. We honestly detest the idea that unless one can park directly in front of a desired storefront then some kind of "right of access" has been taken away. We also hate related bicycle paths. A street here in Berkeley, California has plans to install a bike path along Hopkins Street which has a lot of shops and a famous grocery store. The neighborhood is fighting it with signs exclaiming 'SAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD'. Save it from what? Bicycle terrorism? This is in 'liberal' Berkeley, in one of the most liberal places in the United States.
We LOVE our cars, we WANT OUR CARS EVERYWHERE, anything else is an attack on our FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT.
Sad.😓
We need to show WAY more Americans what good urbanism is like and how it will benefit them. Otherwise we'll probably never be able to change the country.
Berkeley has a decent, or at least long lived bike culture, but the structure is still pretty car dependent. Telegraph, for example, is crazy. Its like a highway through the town.
There are incremental improvements but its gonna be a long project to ever get much of the town to a truly walkable state.
It's like cars seem to encourage selfishness when it comes to space.
@@Kizarat I agree. The current trend in the United States is to buy the largest vehicle possible such as SUVs. Our addiction to ever larger cars fuels the desire to maintain as much road space for them as possible. We are overdosing on a commodity that is harming us far more than helping.
Never forget that even in urban, progressive areas, the *property owners* are still largely соnsеrvаtіvе. They are a small but loud segment of the population. Give them as little attention and air time as possible.
How about a top ten North American pedestrian-only streets?
Doesn't that already exist?
Sparks Street in Ottawa is a great one!
Church Street in Burlington VT
Yes please !!
Broadway in Nashville on the weekends
My hometown eliminated 20-30 parking spaces in the center of downtown so vendors could set up and restaurants could have some outdoor dining areas. The outcry at first was insane. You'd have thought they were putting in a toxic waste dump as much as people freaked out over the loss of those parking spots. Later on some shop owners complained about people sitting on the benches and heaven forbid someone sits down without having to spend money first, so they removed all of those.
that is one of the main problems
In the USA, if you are going to use store property, then it is expected that you make a purchase from said store. Benches and the like are for customers, not pedestrians. I'm in my 50's and was taught that by my parents. When I was a kid traveling with my parents and we had to make a toilet stop at a place like a McDonald's to use the restroom because there are no public bathrooms in most places, my parents would always make the smallest purchase in exchange for having used the fast food restaurant's facilities. We weren't told to do that, there was a sort of unspoken expectation of that. Nowadays, some places will outright tell you to do that.
@@laurie7689 These were public benches on city property not store specific sitting.
@@laurie7689 benches are for everyone, what the FUCK are you talking about
@@laurie7689 generally it is more welcoming to people considering entering a business and spending money if the space around the store is open and inviting.
3:18 Great central plazas were a key part of the Leyes de Indias, a set of legislations that among other things specified that all new cities in Spanish America had to have one, that's why you see them on practically every Latin American city today.
Pedestrianizing the wide streets and allowing cars on the narrow ones is actually genius, because it allows cars into the city in a way that minimizes their downsides, which largely are a function of *speed*. Posted speed limits are actually ineffective at limiting car speeds, but what does work is putting cars in a place where drivers will naturally moderate their speeds. The Dutch seem to be master of this, narrowing down rural highways when they enter villages and putting in contrasting road surfaces.
During Covid, a street in Philly became pedestrianized (at least banned cars) and full of “Streeteries”.
Now, most of the streeteries are gone and cars are back :(
It’s a small, skinny street too. Like, surely driving through somewhere else is more efficient for you?
Parts of South St should be pedestrianized.
The reclaiming of pedestrianized areas by cars is the saddest thing happening now that normalcy has returned.
Yeah? Almost like it was done to abide by Covid restrictions, and not because of some grand love of eating in the middle of the street.
East Passyunk should be pedestrian only
whats nutty is walnut or chestnut or whatever hsd the pedestrian block since the 70s or so and its highly successful. Youd think people could notice the positive examlle in tgeir own city.
Good video. Agree about the European cities and walkability, it's simply a joy. This past September we enjoyed walking in Cefalú, Taormina, and Madrid for the reasons you mentioned. On the bright side, Houston just last week announced the permanent pedestrianization of about 7 blocks of Main st in the center of downtown. So there are elected officials in the US doing the right thing. Maybe not that many of them, but they do exist. We elect them so WE are the change after all. Thx.
@@TheDredConspiracy What city do you live in? Sounds like a place I'd wanna visit!
SUV drivers will protest that will end that
‘mid-lifers’ like me can’t keep waiting for the US to figure the out. Adding a few pedestrianized blocks per year in a city of 4M+ is just too slow. Retirement will not be in Houston if I can help it. Too many other places already have this worked out.
@@worldtrav72 You make a good point. Change is happening in the US but it's painfully slow.
@@scruf153 When your city is like Seville, and you live on a narrow street, and SUV starts to look less appealing.
SUV's and Stroads go together like narrow streets with bikes, pedestrians and sensible-sized cars.
I am on my second year in Barcelona and I love that I dont need a car to move freely around the city. public transport and lots of pedestrian streets makes it very easy. There is a point that is often overlooked. For spanish people, at least in Barcelona, LOVE to hang out after work and have a beer or two. By having walkable streets and easy mass transit, they dont have to worry about driving after drinking or designated drivers, etc. Everyone goes out, have fun and then go home.
We love our few car-free places in the US: Disneyworld and other theme parks, Beaches, Waterfront piers, Mackinac Island, Shopping Centers, State/county fairs, Sports-adjacent plazas, Block parties, Parades, etc. But we can't figure out how to let everyone have local access to these places all of the time... we can only have the simulated commercialized versions for *reasons*
With America’s corporate soul, wouldn’t it be natural for automakers to lobby walkability away in this country?
@@faheemabbas3965 that happens. Also the oil industry.
@@faheemabbas3965 I mean, they do. They're also hard at work in Europe, Germany is suffering.
Because exclusive access is the only way to prevent crime. That is the #1, if not only reason. Beach areas without good security are ghost towns for this reason.
Crime, safety and walkability go hand in hand.
One thing to note about the pedestrian-only streets of France and Switzerland is that they aren't pedestrian-only all day. It's wall to wall delivery and disposal and cleaning trucks from like 3am to 6am. In the US, most of those services would be happening between 9am and 5pm, which means they have to share the space with pedestrians and other traffic.
Church Street in Burlington, VT is open to delivery trucks until 9 AM. Trash removal is done through the day with golf-cart micro-pickups (enclosed cabs and pickup beds on a golf-cart-size trucklet), the newer ones are electric.
I've just travelled to Malaga, Seville, Cordoba and Granada and saw all the references you were making and can relate so much to everything you're saying... It's crazy how nice it is to have anything at a 5-10min walk
In every pedestrian street in the US you need a car to reach it. But, in Europe you can use the public transportation to reach it, walk in the street, enjoy it and return to your house in public transportation. I think this is the big difference too.
Burlington's church street is easily reachable by city bus, intercity bus (Vermont Transit) and passenger rail (Amtrak). You can also walk, bike, ski, skate, sail, scooter or drive to it!
And then, we have Burlington, Vermont. Back in the 1980s, our then-mayor, Bernie Sanders, closed off our main downtown street and businesses thrived. Tourism thrived. It's tougher now because retail isn't what it used to be (yes, it's moved out of town), but the eating is still great, and there is a variety of shops that we downtown residents use more and more; the most recent is a hardware store. There is an active street dining culture there, which operated for all but the worst two winter months during Covid; many of those season-extender facilities remain in place and well-used.
During Covid, some of our feeder streets into the downtown (we have very few of them) and many of our side streets ( a tangle) were closed to cars, to promote walking, which is already a key activity in our small towns. It was a great success, and many of us considered it a sad day when the barricades came down and the cars returned.
Sad to hear the retail is gone. I moved to an apartment next to the church at the turn of the century. Bought books, clothes and shoes up and down Church St. and in the little mall. Not to mention many cups of coffee, meals, and bus tickets. Miss you, Burlington!
I would note that you can also easily get around without a car in these cities, which makes pedestrian only areas much more feasible. For example, an annual public transit pass in Vienna cost a very reasonable 365 euro, and the network will get you just about anywhere you need to go within the 160 square mile limits of this amazing city.
Similar situation in nyc w/ 14th street. There was some pushback but the restriction of cars made the m14 bus travel much quicker and there are about TEN subway lines that stop along 14th, so it's easy to get there.
This is an important point. Pedestrian streets are much less successful in places where most people would drive to them.
@@CleverAccountName303
I think a similar line of reasoning could be applied to park & rides. Doesn't make sense to build them if train frequency is low and parking is abundant and cheap downtown.
THIS! This is what a lot of American progressives don't seem to get - for that pedestrian zone to actually work, they'll have to give up on suburbia. Eg. in Vienna, nobody from, say, Vösendorf (a suburb in the south of Vienna) is going to use Mariahilfer Straße regularly. And if Mariahilfer Straße wasn't surrounded by a sea of 5 story apartment blocks and had 3 metro stations along its length so it's easily accessible to any Viennese in Vienna proper, it would simply fail. If everyone lived in places like Vösendorf, we'd all just drive over to Shopping City Süd (one of the biggest malls in Europe). Which is what my friends who live in Vösendorf (and all of their neighbors) prefer. In contrast to me, who can just hop on public transport and reach any pedestrian zone in Vienna in under 30mins.
Having to drive to a pedestrian zone is pretty useless. It's way more inconvenient than driving to a big box store or mall because of the parking problem. Pedestrian zones have no parking (or expensive garages) and since they're in the inner city, getting there by car is much more of a hassle. Once you have to start your trip by car because you live in a suburb, you want to end that trip by car, everything else is a hassle. And then you'll probably much rather order online. So, how exactly would those stores in pedestrian zones stay alive?
@@TheFeldhamster Progressives? I don't understand the political reference. Suburban Americans love these car-free urban places because they provide them with shopping/walking/dining/entertainment experiences that they can't get in their mind-numbing suburban enclaves. However, they DRIVE to get there. So, they work in the US economically, but not environmentally. As an aside, suburban shopping malls in the US are failing, with many of them closing down, or even being converted in to mixed-use residential development.
You can come to Quebec City for ancient city walls in North America. Surprisingly they are making a big part of it car free for this summer.
Which part? I always disliked the skinny sidewalks on Rue Saint-Louis going to Chateau Frontenac
Quebec City has the most km of freeway per capita in North America if I recall correctly.
Although they are getting a Tram network
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Calgary overtook Quebec in the last five years in Canada.
Quebec? Ancient? wut?
@@lrdxgm Congratulations! You're from Europe or Asia or something! We have been waiting so long for you. Here is your sash and here is you $100,000 prize.
My city (Santa Rosa, CA) has absolutely moved in the right direction on this. After decades of wrangling, they re-united our pre-1900 era central square by closing to traffic an artery that once was the main commute route through town. It need not be the main route any more, though, because Highway 101 parallels this route three blocks over. The new square is slowly but surely re-gaining a character that had been lost, as is the now much-more pedestrian friendly corridor of 4th Street that runs along one side of the Square (also a one-time commute path). All due to moves the city made, which much of the public opposed at the time.
I was a teen when they built Santa Rosa Plaza. At the same time, the city narrowed Fourth Street from 4 lanes to 2 and put in all the pedestrian stuff to make sure downtown shops didn't die when the mall opened. Now its the mall that needs to be put out of its misery, and fast.
@@michaelkiesling8148 I'm of a mind to repurpose the Plaza rather than killing it. It's got the walkable areas of 4th Street and RR Square on either side of it and a bunch of newly constructed or re-purposed housing nearby. It isn't perfect, but I can see it being revitalized with a few tweaks. Put a grocery store where Sears used to be, for example. Convert some of the parking garages to bicycle parking. You get the idea.
I lived in SR ages ago … left in 2007. Anyway I remember back then there was a pedestrian street downtown closed to traffic but I recall they were trying at the time to open it back up to traffic… I guess that never happened? Miss it there, will have to make a visit again someday.
How many homeless tents though.
@@Eric_Garrison I don't believe they've ever closed off any streets here permanently. But they do close off 4th for events, like Pride, and when they do, the whole area becomes a festival. It's really cool and I still hope they will model 4th after the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica at some point.
Spain has really incredible urban landscaping, so cool to see regular people take a nap during siesta on a park bench too, i love it.
The parks are hilarious in the late afternoon
I just came back from a month in Guadalajara Mexico and one of the things that consistently struck me as different from the US was the culture of public gathering and by that I mean gathering for socializing not just for shopping. Plazas are filled with people sitting on benches and socializing, especially older people far into the evening, enjoying the outdoors. This is not a common scene in the US, even here in Chicago. On Chicago's most popular shopping and pedestrian area, Michigan Ave, people don't gather to sit and hang out to socialize. People are always on the move, walking, strolling, shopping, anything but standing still, let alone "hanging out" socializing. The same is true of Union Sq in San Francisco or even Times Sq in NYC. We're always moving and rarely stop to "hang out".
Seeing the scenes of Spain, it looks a lot like Mexico with people sitting and hanging out, socializing, and just enjoying being there. People there appreciate and actively use the pedestrian spaces and plazas. It seems more fun than staying home and binge streaming Netflix. It's a culture of "stopping and enjoying" vs a culture of "moving and doing". People expect and appreciate traffic mitigation measures to make these places better. How much do you attribute cultural attitudes to the success of public spaces there and the difficulty of building them in the US?
First, Times Square is mainly a tourist attraction that’s overcrowded and sometimes filled with media blitzes. Most New Yorkers won’t suggest meeting up in Times Square unless they’re with tourists or REALLY have to meet someone there. Second, One can socialize at Union Square and/or Washington Square Park where I’ve met up with friends in the past.
Now I’ve only been to Union Square in SF once so I can’t say I know the place well but I’ve been to Pershing Square in LA and there is so much potential for that place to be a meeting space but it’s usually deserted or sparsely populated.
As the Shopper's Code of Conduct says, you MUST keep moving in an orderly fashion! (But you mustn't run, or cycle, or skateboard, or do anything that might remotely resemble fun)
@@97nelsn Pershing Sq has been a disaster since they remodeled it into the mess that it is now back in the 80s. It's primarily an underground parking garage which is why trees can't be grown in most parts of it and also why access into Pershing Sq is limited. The same is true of Union Sq in San Francisco. It's an underground parking garage. These are prime public spaces diminished by their primary use as parking.
Yes, Times Sq is mainly a tourist attraction but many of the plazas in Mexico and Spain are also tourist attractions. That doesn't preclude their use by locals. The tourists just walk through, take a pic, and leave. The locals actually use the plazas.
You "can" socialize in Union Sq Park or Washington Sq Park in NYC but, after dark, not so much. I would venture to say that every park or plaza in The Bronx, Queens, or Brooklyn, and most of Manhattan empties out as soon as the sun sets. Manhattan squares probably get more use than in any other US city but they are outliers. Even so, they pale in comparison to the way public squares are patronized in Mexico and Spain, well into the night.
It seems Americans just prefer to keep moving rather than stop and smell the flowers. People wonder what you're doing if you're just hanging out in most places.
In many public spaces in the U.S., "hanging out" is not allowed. Many outdoor spaces are designed only for movement (think trails, outdoor malls, parade grounds, etc) and anything else is considered loitering, which is forbidden. Children are not allowed to play. Skateboarding, rollerblading, wading, all forbidden. Sports are not allowed. Alcohol, tobacco, and cooking not allowed. These types of restrictions pretty much drive the public back into private spaces, which merchants and authorities prefer.
@@elenataylor-garcia8781 It sounds dystopian when you think about it, a kind of "1984" dystopia. I think that's is one of the reasons why American society has become a sick society. I read somewhere that many people, young and old, are lonely and don't know how to meet people or socialize in today's environment. That isn't good and goes against our human nature.
I was very shocked & saddened last time I visited NOLA. (Granted this was about 2 years ago) I saw signs all over the French Quarter saying “No More Pedestrian Malls”. If the Nimbys there, in one of the most pedestrian friendly neighborhoods in the U.S., are rly that concerned about not being able to conveniently drive, they should probably just move to Texas instead. :/ I would LOVE if the French Quarter (and many other dense mixed use areas in America) stopped allowing cars!
I love how absolutely hilarious you are without ever changing your tone of voice. Not to mention the way you talk about "non official businesses" with such humble pride, thank you for that.
I really appreciate financially supporting your travels abroad while I am stuck back in the US. If I can't afford to go to Europe, at least you provide the opportunity vicariously. 🙃
Haha, I'm trying to enjoy myself AND bring value in the videos I'm putting out while I'm here! Hope it comes off like that.
Europe is not as expensive to travel through as US. It is quite easy to find a cheap hotel, private lodging (Airbnb) or to book bed in a very cheap room in a hostel. The public transportation, food etc is also cheaper than in US.
They turned East 4th Street in Cleveland to pedestrian only about a decade ago and the street went from a fully boarded up street that was really only used for free parking to the city’s most vibrant street that is now 100% occupied by restaurants, bars, a bowling alley, a concert venue and a clothing store. It really is awesome, and every suburbanite’s favorite place to be before Cavs and Guardians games.
I hear ya... I visited Cleveland (I'm from New York) in 2016, and I was extremely pleasantly surprised at how interesting and walkable it was. I hadn't realized how abandoned East 4th Street might have been just a few years ago.
I’m driving from LA to SF right now, stopping in Santa Barbara, Monterey and other beautiful communities along the way. And I can’t believe how these beautiful small towns and villages are just lacking all kind of basic walking infrastructure and is just filled to the brim with parking lots. Drivning highway 1, I have seen so many bikers willing to risk their lives, biking on the beautiful coast. There is sooooo much potential for great walking and cycling infra. Hope to see some rapid change here :)
I really start to understand some of the other US commentators in comment field of this channel and other similar channels.
Just some thoughts from a Swede living in Amsterdam 😋
Unfortunately there will not be any kind of rapid change. Americans are TERRIFIED of change and we don't have any kind of leadership at either the local, state, or national level, that would be willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Enjoy your trip and do yourself a favor and stay away from downtown San Francisco. It is a sad place to be.
I wish it would be rapid but it's slow. If we introduced a bunch of Americans to urbanism and stuff like that, we could change stuff up more quickly, but even so, it would be time-consuming.
Nowhere in California is going to come close to meeting the expectations grown from Sweden and Nederlands. Things are starting to improve but it will be a very long journey.
Some places trying harder than most for bikeability sre San Louis Obispo and of course Davis. But walkability is patchy even in San Francisco itself. My city of oakland has over three hundred thousand people, but hasblarge food deserts, four highways cutting up the city, and former streetcar business roads that havent been vibrant for 80 years.
I recommend finding some time to hike up some hills away feom everything. California does that better than Amsterdam, and enjoy some good mexican cuisine. I cant think we do much else better.
@@jsrodman is there a reason no one here mentions crime, homeless encampments or public safety?
@@jsrodman I've recently been watching some walking tour videos of smaller California towns, and I came across one from Carmel-by-the-Sea which was filmed when a number of the streets had turned street parking areas into dining spaces for cafes and restaurants. I was seriously impressed. The lovely architecture of the town, the trees everywhere, the small lanes and courtyards coupled with the cosy vibrancy of the on street dining areas really appealed to me. Then watching a video filmed more recently I discovered that all these dining areas had been removed and the streets handed back to big ugly cars again - and that this was done despite the local residents not wanting them removed. I just don't understand how after experiencing the beauty and value of making streets more people-focused, those in power could still have opted to go backwards.
I just love the exasperated tone of the title. I really relate to it.
Luckily Friedrichstr in Berlin recently got pedestrianised. I remember experiencing many dangerous situations with high speed cars nearly killing me when coming out of the subway station. As a positive side effect the traffic at the famous Gendarmenmarkt is also way less now. Unter den Linden could also benefit from this kind of city planning.
hate to tell you not for long, the new conservatives wrote its "in a not acceptable state" which equals to them allowing cars back on the short strip. However Unter den Linden between Brandenburger Tor and Alexanderplatz is a strong candidate for a car free axis, change only got delayed :/
As somebody who used to live on Friedrichstr this is amazing to hear! There's so much walkable stuff around there and making it pedestrian-only is a great choice.
Three reasons to pedestrianize streets. The first is that it is good for human health. Walking is a magnificent physical exercise that is very beneficial for health. The second is that it promotes social interaction and humanizes people. The third is that by limiting access to cars we protect the environment. Thank you. Greetings from Murcia. Spain
I live in Curitiba, Brazil, and when they created an Pedestrianized Street at central down town, there was resistance from local shops, but after some weeks the shops along the street start asking to Pedestrianize all the street, because the sales went up, more people wore going there, this days those streets are landmark and tourist attractions , and those streets wore avenues, so, they are large and very nice to walk all of its extension
Visitei curitiba pra ir num evento ano passado, fiquei em São José dos Pinhais. Lá era um inferno, tudo longe, o aeroporto era longe, os mercados e restaurantes eram longes, os parques eram longes (São lindos, aliás), era horrível ir de um lugar pro outro. Daí fui pro centro e que cidade linda! Consegui passar em vários lugares e aproveitar a cidade, se eu precisasse de um carro pra fazer tudo isso, sem dúvida minha experiência teria sido muito pior.
Iowa City has a great pedestrian area downtown. It's often busy and has many of the same establishments you mention in Spain. edit: It's been a while since I've lived in IC, the ped mall is smaller than I remember, they really should expand it. Living in Belgium now, I've seen pictures of towns in the 70s with cars running through them in areas that are now re-pedestrianized. These spaces are uniformly very busy and pleasant places to be.
I love seeing those plazas anchored by a metro station, it's like they're destined to work well together.
Yeah, you're putting a pedestrian generator right in the middle of a space you wanna activate -- I think that's probably a winner
A vibrant pedestrian plaza in the US: Market Square in historic downtown Knoxville. Lots of outdoor dining that’s hugely popular. Shops and a boutique hotel too. If it can work in Tennessee, it can work in any US city. Baffles me why there aren’t more.
They have those here in Nashville as well!
I don’t know if you have been to Zaragoza, but it has some great examples of public spaces that removed cars. In fact, Zaragoza has the biggest pedastrian square in the European Union, Plaza del Pilar, and all that space is taken by people during holidays and celebrations with no car in sight (just another advantage of this type of public spaces).
Maño, lo que os sobran son semáforos y os faltan rotondas: las pocas que tenéis, tienen semáforos!!!
@@Kakonan Los de las rotondas son los navarros, cada noche crece una. Lo de los semáforos en Zaragoza no lo he entendido nunca, además de estar mal secuenciados
San Diego is doing this in a few places in the Gaslamp. I wish they'd do this to a few blocks up in my neighborhood (a relatively walkable neighborhood just north of Downtown).
Im visiting San Diego in July so id love to know more abt this :0
@@Bizcachi comic con? They shot four blocks down for that every year and it's great. They will be permanently turning a few of those blocks into pedestrian only areas.
@@TimeTravelingBunnis no. Its work-related but id love to check those out! Would love to see it when its doen
ruclips.net/video/EwDZ1uRHlxA/видео.html this is a video about the project.
They are closing one street in the Gaslamp, lame. Close the whole area off.
It's how crazy how historical areas in Lating American cities look like Spanish cities. I guess it makes sense, lol, but his video reminded me so much of my home town of Guadalajara, MX.
Because the Spanish were the originators, and all these countries were Spain, not colonies.
The Spanish invested the riches they found there, there. Only a very small part made it back to Europe, everything else was spent there.
@@PossibleBat what you say is absolutly true. it is very easy to find in the archives in Spain and in Hispanic America how they process the "quinto real" and all the taxes. All this was not done haphazardly, and at the expense of the provinces and vireinatos of America, as is implied by people who have never studied this period of human history.
In mexico city, there were already walkable streets way before the Spaniards came, they changed the Infrastructure but the city was already one of the largest in the world. The north of Mexico in the other hand oftentimes have very strong American influence, Los mochis in sinaloa looks like a random place in California.
I love how the final B-roll shot exemplifies the “how do you carry bigger, heavier, bulkier things between properties without a car??” non-issue. The guy has a pallet mover. He could also have used a cargo bike. There’s other rubber-tyred options than cars!
I think the main stumbling block is that in the US- even in dense cities, people don't seem to like having a lot of other people around. Pedestrian areas work best when most of the people walking about are local to the area. This is facilitated by mass transit (to let you get to a job in other parts of the city) and by dense homes. Owning a home is tied to economic security in the US, and beyond that a lot of people would get stressed or annoyed at having people constantly around in an urban area unfortunately and not getting any peace and quiet at home.
It's a multi-faceted thing where pedestrian areas are reliant on local residents that in most cities still need cars. So what gets built are apartment blocks with garages since mass transit takes a decade to build just one line (not an interconnected network). So aside from maybe brunch downtown, people still expect to need a car to do whatever. So whenever a half-hearted pedestrian zone gets built or converted in the US they don't see the results we see in Spain because society is so different. A shop on a Spanish ped zone can get deliveries by bike and cart and 1000 local passerby while a US one would rely on a distributor coming by box truck and have 100 local passerby in the same unit time.
The most successful ped street I know is in my hometown of Silver Spring MD on Ellsworth Dr. Why this works is because it's got restaurants, a movie theater, a civic center. It's right near a grocery store and the library. The MD Purple Line will go by it eventually. But they're still pretty reliant on commuters passing by from garages to the metro. They kind of incentivize commuters to stay downtown by making weekday parking free if you leave after 9PM. But it took years of that setup before residential density got built up enough to "self-sustain".
I agree. Successful pedestrianization goes hand-in-hand with good car-free access to the walkable area. To me, driving+walking feels like a "mixed mode" much more than transit+walking. Having to think about parking, traffic, how long I can stay, whether I can drink, and so on takes something away from the feeling of freedom that comes with being on foot.
_"I think the main stumbling block is that in the US- even in dense cities, people don't seem to like having a lot of other people around."_
This seems to be a vicious cycle in the US, unfortunately. Living in socially isolated single-family suburban houses has been shown to make people more anxious and paranoid. So these people are frightened of strangers and busy public places, and so they resist attempts to create density that would expose them to these things, perpetuating their paranoia-inducing lifestyle.
I wouldn't want to be near people either if I lived in anything but the smallest American cities. That would be like being outside in Barcelona, which is just asking to be mugged, stabbed, beaten or raped. Even Madrid is pushing it, to be honest, with an increasing number of neighborhoods becoming off-limits in recent times.
I’m fact. One of the big pedestrians streets showed in this video, Avenida de la Constitución in Seville, that now has just a tram, bike lanes and lots of walking space used to be a four lane car street in the 80s. Spain has turned around dramatically in their city planing policies when they understood the advantages to city livability.
Great video! We discovered Spain after retiring to SW Florida. So we are actively seeking to relocate to the S Med coast of Spain. In a walkable village. After years of vacations to SW Florida, we had thought we'd found a nice medium retirement city of Cape Coral Florida. Well those intervening twenty years, and the three we've been here had changed our minds. We just seem to have traded our West coast "rat race" for a unseasonably hot and muggy, global warming urbanized retired "rat race". Wishing you young folks all the best.
Another point is public transport to reach these pedestrianised areas. I live in Manchester in the north of England. Apart from a few weeks in summer the weather here is not conducive to the outdoor life. Nevertheless, in the very centre of the city there are a fair number of pedestrianised roads and squares where only trams and buses are allowed. Another main square (Albert Sq) is at present undergoing extensive renovations and will be car free when re-opened.
I find this makes walking around Manchester city centre very pleasant so I go there often. I live five miles from the centre. I actually can't remember the last time I drove there. It's certainly years since I did. But there is a tram stop ten minutes walk from my house and the tram takes me directly to the centre in 15 minutes. There is a bus stop at the end of my road and the bus takes about 30 minutes. Both bus and tram cost about £4 for a return ticket, which is about $5. I always take the tram. It's direct, fast, easy, I don't have the hassle and expense of trying to find somewhere to park, I can read or even doze instead of having to negotiate urban traffic and when I'm in town if I want to pop into somewhere for a beer or a glass of wine I can do because I'm not driving!
And just for the people not understanding:
Even in pedestrianized areas usually delivery vans and cars can come for exceptional purposes. It is just not allowed unless essential.
So, in reality, delivery vehicles and worker vehicles have an easier time. Because they don't have to fight for parking spots and work around speedy traffic.
For what it's worth - from what I have seen I think the idea behind the small roads where cars are permitted is so vans/trucks can supply the businesses with goods and merchandise.
That's the case where I live, anyway!
Amazingly, American NIMBYs are capable of noticing commercial stroads are a blight on the earth. The weird thing is they assume the commercial part is the problem, not the stroad part, so they fight mixed-use zoning because they think the presence of shops will turn small streets into stroads. They lack the imagination to recognize you can separate the two.
Here in Spain we kinda take all these things for granted. Your point of view is very interesting.
God, Spain is awesome in so many ways. I consider myself pretty lucky living in the Netherlands, but Spain is a level up in terms of urbanism. If they get their cycling on our level, than we are doomed to not win any urbanism contests anymore. (Well, unless climate change transforms Spanish summers from hot to unbearable that is.)
We're never going to be heavy cyclists with how hilly most towns are 😅
There is a reason why in Spain cycling is not popular, unlike the netherlands, which is mostly a completely flat country, Spain is a very Hilly country, so the bycicle culture that the netherlands belgium or Germany have Will never develope too much in Spain.
Spain is the 2nd most mountainous country in Europe after Switzerland. I'm from Barcelona and the city is literally on a mountain. Biking is very hard unless you are going to the beach which means just going down. Even with the electric bikes the city has added it becomes tough work.
Meanwhile in Girona (one hour from Barcelona)....🚲🚲🚲, Bikes, bike tourism, bike's shops...a total invasion, like too much, really.
The way climate change is going, I think you are right in the last part. I definitely see Central Europe becoming more "Mediterranean" with temperatures rising, it will inevitably change the culture. And Spain will be left behind, and that makes me so sad. To think my country could suffer so much, could potentially lose our identity over time, it just sucks. Spain gets drier every single year and I see a lot of potential problems in the future for us. I hope I’m wrong.
I went to Seville at Christmas and it was so nice in the centre it was crazy. The uk isn’t as bad as America for the car stuff but we’re so far behind mainland Europe it’s depressing
I have been pondering the financial failure of Harborplace in Baltimore and Waterside in Norfolk. Both were popular destinations when they opened but have fallen out of favor as other destinations were developed. Perhaps a key factor that is missing for both is adjacent residential development. Perhaps the pedestrianized areas shouldn't be thought of as destinations but rather as serving neighborhood residents. Perhaps they should include residential development. Perhaps they should follow the traditional model of shops on the ground floor and residences above.
Bloody pedestrianized street, I went out to get some band-aids and I came back with that and a pizza from a next door pizza place.
(I'm visiting Madrid right now, it's awesome. Also it's metro).
I live in the US and grew up in South America. It is interesting to see how the concept of progress in both places is closely associated with the idea of bigger roads, bigger cars, more parking lots, etc. The pickup truck is a symbol of status in both continents. But this does not seem to be the case in Europe at all. I wonder why, culturally, the continents moved in opposite directions.
I mean, an expensive car is definitely a status symbol in Germany too, at least in more socially conservative circles. But nobody here would buy a delivery vehicle like a pickup truck as a status symbol. In fact pickup trucks basically don't exist here, delivery drivers use vans.
It is considered to be not classy in Europe to show too much that you have money. People appreciate a lot good education, knowledge about the world, savoir-vivre, in some countries aristocratic heritage (England). Of course someone who makes good money is admired as an enterprising person, but it is not the only thing which makes a difference. I think it is more about “to be”, not “to have”.
In Europe we had the aristocracy for a very long time. Everyone admired their lifestyle: they were not only wealthy, but also well-mannered, well educated, had some knowledge about the world, knew foreign languages and played instruments. If someone only had money, it was usually a peasant, so someone lower in the hierarchy, without other aristocratic features. I think it is the pattern which still exists here, although in most countries the aristocracy is over.
9:28 haha, the Ale-Hop cow is probably one of the top tourist destinations in Spain at this point, each city has at least one such shop with a mandatory cow in a central tourist location.
As someone who moved directly from Barcelona to Charlottesville, VA, this video was hyper relevant to me.
Crazy how civilized, joyful and inspiring Spain looks as compared to the US.
And I couldnt help but notice the different in people size: The US has an obesity rate of 42% while Spains is 24%.
I wonder how, I wonder why...
In Córdoba, Argentina a large swath of downtown area has been pedestrianized for many decades (1969 to be exact). The worst traffic I've seen there is on weekends and holidays when it gets a bit crowded. Other than that it's wonderful. Also, to the point of "lack of motor vehicle traffic will hurt businesses": the most prized real estate, SOLELY DEDICATED TO SHOPS at ground level is in that area. No shop keeper complains about the lack of cars, just the rent. 😎
Excellent work as always!
I live in Rome, not so far from the colosseum.
This morning I heard two American guys complaining about this "so called hop on and off tour where you have to walk 70 miles to go to the bus".
The bus was literally 100 meters (or 100 yards, it's more or less the same) from the colosseum. Or 200 if they walked the long way around.
I mean, what the fuck, do they want the bus INSIDE the arena ? 😂
I recognised my hometown, Málaga, then Sevilla, Granada and Madrid. Thanks for the interesting video. Makes me see things I am used to see in a different way.
USA is more about urban sprawl than actually providing good urban planning.
I live in Pasadena, California and I think the old town Pasadena area would benefit from pedestrianizing. It’s really difficult to drive through the area anyway due to the massive number of pedestrians drawn to the restaurants and shops there throughout the day. There are alleys which are pedestrian only and they are full of people, and I don’t see the benefit of having cars driving through the main drag (Colorado Blvd) clogging the street when most end up parking in a nearby parking structure or side street anyway.
We had one in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The business owners lobbied to have it turned back into a street, which is what happened.
Home of the first outdoor mall, actually. The street is a single lane one way with parking on either side. It could be worse, but it’s not what it used to be…
Same here in Raleigh, but it's much better. People feel safer with the "slow traffic" feel instead of an empty plaza, and the street sreet is closed off for 5 blocks for events. Wide sidewalks too.
In Pontevedra, a small city in the northwest of Spain, a process of pedestrianization began 30 years ago, there were many protests from merchants because they said that if cars did not pass in front of their stores, people would not buy... today the The city is almost completely pedestrianized and the merchants are the ones who are happiest. There are no shopping centers on the outskirts and people from the small surrounding towns come to do their shopping in Pontevedra and drink a few beers and eat tapas on the terraces. while the children play in the street
I'd be interested in your view on how to reverse the decline in use of pedestrianised high streets in smaller towns. In the UK many cities are becoming less and less car centric, however smaller towns, which are surrounded by small villages that aren't super accessible by public transport, are dying and the high street shops are disappearing and moving to 'malls' or retail parks. It's a huge problem here! Love the videos!!
You partly answer your own question when you say "smaller towns, which are surrounded by small villages that aren't super accessible by public transport, are dying " - in England (outside central London) public transport is appalling and expensive whereas is most of Europe its very good and subsidised to keep costs low.
Secondly weather plays a role in that much of the time even in summer in England its wet and overcast and open pedestrian streets are unpleasant to walk and sit in.
Thirdly the rise and rise of e-commerce and home delivery means that a lot of shopping in physical shops has died off.
Business rates, and high commercial rents.
Something that I think makes it (perhaps psychologically) easier to pedestrianize streets is having paving that's not asphalt. When you have bricks, cobblestones, or some other kind of non-asphalt paving, you can just close the street and it looks like a perfect pedestrian space. But, when there's nasty black asphalt with a yellow line down the middle, it's harder to imagine a pedestrian-only future for the street.
Also shade, trees lining city streets come with their own maintenance problems but the shade they provide for pedestrians is invaluable.
I think a major difference between European and American cities is the distinction between the business area and the touristic area. The touristic area is really well located in the centre of the city or the older part of it while the business heavy district is more in the outer parts of the city
London has its main business district ‘the city’ right in the centre and it’s almost traffic free, there is virtually no parking but fantastic public transport . Less than 10,000 people live there but over half a million work in its offices and businesses. It’s also a major tourist area with St. Paul’s Cathedral, the museum of London, the Roman walls and top class restaurants but the tourists use public transport and walk as well. Good public transport is the key to European cities liveability and without it they wouldn’t work.
There’s aren’t that many tourists in city. Most of them are in Westminster/Kensington and across the thames in lambeth/southwark. And London is not really your typical European city compared to Paris, Madrid or Lisbon
I live in and love Montreal. I walk everywhere and, sometimes, meet my wife in a cafe or bar on the way back home in the evening.
My suburban friends always complain about the traffic, but always come back from Europe in love with cities like Rome or Paris. I tell them that they love those cities because they went without their cars… and Montreal would be the same if only they’d visit on foot. I dont have a problem with the traffic 😅
In Chicago recently. Landing for 30min watching suburbia is depressing. Needing a Ford Navigator to get milk in a giant shopping mall. One train built in 1910 to go in the city center. Great city center, but 6 car lanes in every streets ruining it… could work with 2-3, replacing those car lanes by larger sidewalks snd terrasses.
My pedestrian only street is my college campus. I graduate in about a yr and ive been living car lite! The idea of having to go back to driving everywhere is giving me hives
Regarding that black cat at 6:20, I noticed "El gato negro" on the name of the establishment too ("the black cat" if I'm not mistaken). Oh and followed by what is probably "administration number 13", this seems like the most lucky gambling establishment I'm aware of.
We had a pedestrian only street in Vancouver and it didn’t take off. I think that’s because the street lacked mixed use buildings in the surrounding blocks. One end of the street is in the financial district and was pretty vacant after office hours the other end is in an entertainment district that was active late into the night but desolate during the day.
It’s currently a transit street and the street is still crappy.
Outdoor dining is the secret to success for any pedestrian street. If that’s not prioritized and supported, then overall failure for the pedestrianized area is pretty much inevitable.
And what's left of Granville Mall now is a short length of street with basically zero-street facing storefronts. It's been bleak as long as I've been going (since Skytrain opened, essentially).
I think Robson between Granville and Bute would be a great place to pedestrianize, and eventually all the way to Denman.
Commercial between Broadway and 1st would be another great location, eventually all the way to Venables.
@@dreimer2112 yeah. Pacific centre for better or worse put the retail inside and off the street.
I agree with your suggestions that commercial and robson would make great ped streets.
In 4:58 they are training for a holly week procession. The "costaleros" have to be very coordinated, height and strength-wise. For the actual event the structure is covered and on top of it will sit the statues instead of rods of concrete.
I’d love to see a video on North American plazas / town squares. I feel there are a few leaning in the right direction - full of gathering spaces, food vendors, performance spaces, public art - and maybe a pop up ice rink around the holidays.
I live in Pittsburgh and they have a downtown "square" that has such potential but never does the right thing with it. Instead of offering unique, cozy restaurants with sidewalk eating, it's mostly chain restaurants and also you can still drive around the perimeter of the square. It only comes alive for occasional crafts shows and such. It was used in a movie once but even THEY had to spruce it up and make it look better than it actually is. Pittsburgh has such potential for charm but just never lives up to it. No forward thinking or ability to think outside the box. Sad since downtown Pittsburgh is very walkable. If you try to put a bike lane in here drivers will of course bitch that you took their precious parking spots away.
San Francisco and San Jose (nearest) have giant roads running right through the most obvious public gathering places. Seattle is similar. I dont remeber anything pedestrian plaza like in Boston or New York. Do you have any examples?
For greater North America, Mexico City and Montreal fare better.
In europe it was like, many in every town. Nurnberg, Fuerth, Muenhen, Liepzig, Amsterdam Utrecht, Helsinki, Oulo, Den Haag, even tiny towns i bikes through and don't remember the names.
In Cincinnati where I live we have Fountain Square, which won’t be mistaken for an Italian Piazza, but it’s a nice respite in the heart of downtown - and a central gathering place to meet people, anchor events/festivals/races, sip coffee from a vendor while sitting under trees at a cafe table, etc. it’s usually a pretty bustling place every day.
What's funny to me is that the US ended up with old spanish cities that were actually planned with central plazas and other walkability features in mind, guess they just completely ignored those.
@@maximipe I'm only aware of one surviving Spanish city in the USA and that is St. Augustine, Florida. Just googling it for plazas and it mentions the Plaza de la Constitución in the heart of the old historic district. I don't know if that is all that is left from Spanish colonialization here.
Recently they closed off another street for cars in my closest city. It's so much more safe now and I think it's brought a lot more people to that part of the city.
Portugal is going in the opposite direction, unfortunately. Cities like Aveiro should be super cyclable, but the parking is still seen as a right here. Hope you enjoy the trip though!
You should visit the Balkans. In countries like Albania or Bulgaria many towns completely close a main road or an area in the town center from around 6 or 7 pm to 10 or 11 pm for all traffic. Bars, restaurants, ice cream shops etc. then expand out onto the pavement, while the locals saunter along in style, stop for a drink or a snack and meet friends, neighbours and acquaintances. This is one of the most important times of the day for many and is real fun (and good for business, too).
good comment, Martin :)
@8:25 we have hard data for this here in Vienna. Surprisingly, our local businesses (and politics) still often believe in the "cars bring business" fairy tale, so there is still a lot of backlash whenever streets are pedestrianized (despite the usually overwhelming success!). But more and more often those conversions are now accompanied by scientific evaluations, to compare the before and after.
A prominent example is the (half) pedestrianization of Mariahilfer street in Vienna. It has been one of the most busy shopping streets here in Vienna for centuries, so you'd think it should have been a no-brainer. Even more: the local 'economic chamber' (which represents business interests) _knew_ before that only 8% (!) of customers came by car (that's already drivers and passengers, i.e. includes taxis - which can still access parts of the street!). And getting a parking spot was a nightmare anyways, nevermind one in the vicinity of the shop you wanted to visit. Also, there are some parking garages directly beside the street (accessible from the other sides of the blocks), so those who insist on driving can still very much do so. Yet despite this very mild change there was (and still is!) a lot of arguing against it...
Now, 8 years after the central section has become pedestrian only, and the rest is a calmed mixed-traffic area with pedestrian precedence, the shops are of course still thriving. There are a lot more people on the street, and customer frequency has almost doubled in some shops. Only a few have had to close - mainly because of the increased rents, _because_ of the high demand (and most of those shops had already been struggling before; e.g. a high-end tableware shop, which just isn't 'en mode' anymore nowadays).
K Street in Sacramento, California, with light rail on it, has vacillated between car accessible and ped only over the decades, most recently switching back to car accessible for some reason. Dunno why ped only doesn’t stick there.
Cities never were "pedestrianzed", pedestrians have been there first, long before cars existed. In some places there is not even space for cars. And you took samples of eternal summer here. In Spain and France this is much more popular of course. But you find those pedestrian zones also in colder climate like in Copenhagen or Stockholm. US cities have their walkability only inside buildings, either vertical in skyscrapers or horizontally in Malls. But this is the concept of the owner of the building, it's not the concept of the city.
Us cities biggest issue is zoning which makes no one lives near businesses. North America used to get this but it changed in the 1920's. If you get rid of cars but no one lives in the area businesses do die. Which is why zoning for more mixed use should be the first step to better cities.
11:11 this is true for practically EVERYTHING in society, conditions are legislated. It's amazing how difficult it can be to get that through to a North American conservative, its like they think big box stores and highway living is an inevitability of freedom or something
I live in Whistler, BC. Definitely not a city, but the town's main feature is a pedestrian-only street so it can be done in Canada. But the next two towns on highway 99 (Pemberton to the north, Squamish to the south) both have car-friendly roads running through them and Vancouver is mostly pedestrian-hostile.
Can you make a video explaining how European cities handle logistics of goods in general? In America, it seems like everything is delivered in a semi/box truck whether it's in a dense city or suburb. What's the difference?
I've seen very small box trucks, think Nissan NV/200/250, as well as bicycle UPS/FEDEX deliveries. A common practice in Europe is to allow motorized deliveries from 1 a.m. to six a.m. Europeans have NO problems bringing supplies to their storefronts. I never saw a large delivery truck unless it was transporting goods from one city to another and used a major highway.
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Generally they will have a distribution hub at the edge of the city near the motorway. There the goods will be transferred from the large lorries to small Ford Transit or similar vans and taken to the store.
@@Urbanhandyman Those exist, but in reality it's mostly by vans or small trucks. You can use those in norrow streets.
as a brit delivery driver, i can say that in the UK you either have loading/unloading times - 6am to 9am for example or as has been said already, you use vehicles up to a weight limit (5 to 7 tons) at a 5mph speed limit and pedestrians have right of way. it generally works well.
not a "in general"-case at all (seems like a huge exception even for Europe) but I've read that Swiss coop gets their dairy and meat into the city (Geneva) by train in order to avoid traffic on motorways. Then has trucks roll over to the siding to pick up their container using this containermover-3000 apparatus that lifts the container from the train onto the car in about 10 minutes. Followed by deliveries to supermarkets by trucks, which have loading docks anyway.
In Spain I've seen drivers use a cart to get their delivery to small businesses while parking their truck where appropriate or not appropriate (but never on the sidewalk).
In smaller towns in the UK, pedestrianised sections of town centres sometimes seem to be the bits with more empty shops.
after see video about uk recent event
it's politician fault isn't it
These videos remind me I haven't lived much at all. I've only ever known cars as I haven't gone by plane or train in my life. I need to make a change.
You were commenting on narrow streets not being pedestrianised -- a lot of that is so that deliveries can be made - access is usually limited to certain times of the day.
"What are we even doing"
That's a question I ask myself everyday living in the suburban hellscapes of Canada
Something else that has a pretty big impact on things; open-container laws. In Europe, or at least Portugal where I now live, there are no open container laws, and I'm assuming licensing laws in general are a LOT more relaxed than in the US. It seems like any place can be a bar. You stop at an ice cream shop for the kids, you can get yourself a mojito while you're at it. As a result, there is pretty much zero need to design in controlled access to alcohol serving areas in these cities. That makes things a lot more "organic" in the plazas, streets, and squares and squares of these cities. A cafe can set up a bunch of tables in the street or plaza and let things expand a bit, without having to worry about the puritans pitching a fit over me drinking a beer within eye sight of some kids. If you want to see the true meaning of "family friendly" spend some time relaxing at a cafe on a square or plaza in pretty much any European city.
Growing up, I never knew the real definition of a plaza because all the strip malls in town were named "Something Plaza". The irony is poignant.
That is because one of the definitions of "plaza" is marketplace. Malls are places of mercantile shopping, so they fit the definition.
A good one to look at is Timisoara Romania. Most of the historic center was closed to vehicle traffic and is now the largest pedestrian zone in Romania. You can see how it was around 2011 on Google maps compared to today. There was a lot of backlash about parking but it seems that died down as people experienced how enjoyable it is.