@@jimtaylor294 I used to work in a concrete building from the 70s. I believe it has the Finnish equivalent of a Grade II listing, presumably to ensure that it survives as a warning to future generations. Even the psychedelic paint colours and giant floor/zone numbers are protected. On my first morning, I stepped into a bright orange concrete stairwell with a five-foot-tall green number on the wall, and I swear I smelled stale urine. It just felt so much like a multi-storey car park that my brain just filled in the smell.
@@6yjjk Sounds about right. Apartment blocks over here have been associated with the corridors reeking of wee, the lifts not working, and some even when new had rampent rot & mould problems. All the ones I've ever visited certainly lived upto the reputation. I'd agree that only one of the eyesores needs preserving... as a Warning from History.
Major problem here in Edmonton too. They are often used as defacto shelters and bathrooms for people sleeping rough.. Also doesn't help that we don't have public toilets even as part of most of the subway stations downtown... Hence why even over here I can practically smell the whiffs!
@@stickynorth Now, Bank station has City Corporation Toilets, and the City of London generally is a higher level of class of resident and indeed visitor. Beggars are few as no - one carries cash and the patrols of the Corporation Police Force are very frequent in removing the loiterers. This does not apply to the West End.
They works well here in Hong Kong as they go from subway station to malls and connecting multiple malls together, making easy to travel around also great to go around when its raining.
Yeah, I was thinking exactly this. Without any attraction like shops, cultural events, transportation and whatnot I don't see why anyone would use these pedways. Pedestrians are absurdly different from cars, the idea of an devoid of character expressway doesn't make sense and the new alternative seems to be the same thing.
Precisely. Though here, there's a very strong "push" factor in the summer as the sun barrels down and people boil in the humidity for most of the year. Any shaded area, elevated or not, will be preferred. Also, unlike in the UK, pedestrians here very much do not have the right of way.
I live in Hong Kong and use a pedestrian walkway quite frequently too. It links public housing estates to the town centre with all kinds of transport links, so it's always filled with commuters in rush hour. It's actually a straight line for half a kilometre. Goes on to show how important planning is.
I was just about to comment that lmao, but the places that need it most can't really have them. For example, literally everywhere west of sheng wan is just pure chaos, with random guys pushing carts on tramways, but pedways won't work there because it's a different vibe if you know what I mean.
@@willy_gooseling69 Sheung Wan is still many old buildings and would need a major overhaul, most of the new territories have it build very well, tsuen wan is probably the longest one there is connecting many malls
I worked in a building on London Wall that incorporated these walkways. It was a faff to walk two storeys up. When you got there, you had no idea where anything led, and there was always a wind blowing litter in high-speed vortices. Painful if you got hit in the eye by a polystyrene cup. On one side, through the windows, were surprised office workers, staring at you, wondering why a window cleaner was wearing a suit & not carrying his bucket & dirty rag. On the other was the balcony, where you could look down on the intelligent people, who knew better than to venture up from street level where common sense dictated that they should be.
Hmmmm.... One can have fun with that. How about dressing up as the grimm reaper next time. Then stop when they stare, and point at one. Or dress up as a dino.... Options are wast here my friend. 😁😁😁
I helped to install both of the bridges from 1 London Wall and know the engineer who recently erected the “rusty” one. Nice jobs but unless you need to get directly from one end to the other rather useless.
Planners of these projects never seem to factor in maintenance. Unless you wash the stairwells after the weekend, repair the broken lights, clean off graffiti promptly and generally keep things pleasant these areas can quickly become threatening and unused.
I was really suprised to see how well kept the pedways in the video looked. Would have imagined that such underused spaces would quickly fill up with garbage and graffiti
Good video, but perhaps you missed one of the most important reasons why they failed (not just in London, but in Manchester, Newcastle etc.) - they became a mugger's paradise by the 1980's and 1990's. The way the architects planned them (segregated corridors) meant that there was little or no interaction with the routes they were taking - and no-one in the buildings could see the pedestrians being mugged/raped/murdered etc. People felt safer taking their chances on narrow pavements with speeding cars, so used these instead.
Ironically the people of Newcastle were soundly mugged by the council before they had the opportunity to be hassled on elevated walkways. Still at least there was less Georgian architecture to admire and you got to see concrete spalling more often.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the USA has a similar concept called "skyways" that connected downtown buildings. You would actually walk through the buildings and then on a bridge, you can access the adjacent buildings. The key difference was that these skyways were enclosed which made them handy during the winter months and they went inside of buildings instead along side of them. Years ago, I walked St. Paul's skyways and was very impressed.
The skyway system is great. A lot of people use it even during the warmer seasons. It has a lot of restaurants and convenience stores connected to it. It’s also really busy during games. People use to get to their parking spots and ramps. Also feels safer than walking out on the streets.
Yeah the skyways are very nice. You can get to most of downtown Minneapolis without ever going out into the cold. Much better than st paul's IMO. They are hard to navigate for a newcomer but they serve such a handy purpose in winter that they are still used
Oh my god I just commented this 🤣 the skyway system is so vast too you can get pretty much anywhere downtown without going outside. Growing up around there I was shocked all cities weren't like that 😂
I was going to mention Minneapolis-St. Paul as well. We visited the cities in the summer and I was pretty impressed by all the connecting bridges. Montreal took a different approach and has an immense walkable underground city which seems to be highly successful.
HK uses raised walkways on the island and they are rather successful, however they are rather wide, contain lifts at strategic locations, as well as small shops selling food and other odds and sods and all link subway stations or ferry wharfs. Tokyo has some as well, however these are normally created by the folks who build large buildings and you will find a lot of shops leading off them. Minneapolis has a network similar to what was proposed for London, but that was so people did not have to walk in sub-arctic weather when they left their office for lunch.
Minneapolis, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary... The four cities that have extensive elevated pedway networks and for a good reason. Just being connected to the system elevates a buildings value much like being on a mass transit line. Also a selling point for The Ice District here in Edmonton. Skyscraper penthouses connected to the +15 network as its called here. That's why the Stanley Cup is being hosted here this year... Trying to help Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz move condo's in the tallest building in Canada outside Toronto he had built as part of its ego trip... Not saying it's a bad thing, but I digress... ;-)
Fairly sure an early version of this was build in Italy for a nobleman in the late middle ages (or later), so it's an idea that's been rumbling around for a while.
@@Blaqjaqshellaq I was planning to be in Chongqing this November but obviously not happening now. May be there next year at some point hopefully though once things ease so will see if I can find them.
The pedways in London aren't just disorienting and physically exerting, I think (from I've seen) pedestrians feel really unsafe navigating them. Think about it: the lighting is subpar, there are no shops or restaurants lining them (causing them to be deserted at certain times of day) and because of the cramped space and constant turns you can't see what's ahead of you. If I had lived there during their construction I would have constantly been worried about potential muggers and the like waiting around the corner. The Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands has two or three pedways elevated above the main courtyard. These work because they're straightforward, and because they're actually necessary - the whole complex is enormous! I think they're reserved for medical personnel but I'm not sure.
Most, if not all, shown in this video is in the City which usually feels safe. But I take your point about it feeling less safe in less salubrious areas.
This is exactly what I was thinking. Every single shot of the pedways in the video shows a deserted, claustrophobic space with a blind corner every few seconds of walking. Total mugger's paradise.
This video showed the pedway as being sort of aimless and pedestrians have to go out of their way. I understand it rains a lot in London. In Minneapolis, we have a skyway system that runs through office buildings and over roadways. There are lots of restaurants, fast food, shops and stores on this level. It is well-loved because we can get some exercise in as well as get to meetings, do errands/shopping/food without being exposed to snow, rain, heat, and subzero cold.
Schemes like this do work well in cold climates. The underground pathways in Toronto and Montreal offer great benefits. The problem is that large parts are within private buildings, which manage them as they see fit. I damn near froze to death in Minneapolis when I worked late and three blocks were unheated. And I got kicked out on the street in Toronto when the department store basement I was transiting on the way back to my hotel suddenly closed, and they locked the doors to the tunnels in front of me. Visitors beware.
@@qtrfull Yeah, there are unheated sections but enclosed, and you should always have a coat with you in Minneapolis in the winter. If you know where you're going and its during the workday, though, it's the best way to get around in the winter. Summers are nice up here so I recommend the streets then.
The pedways would surely have been better if there had been shops and restaurants on them. Instead, they were only intended as ways to get from A to B. Every shot of them in the video is of a deserted, claustrophobic place where you're constantly worrying about what might be around the next corner and there's nobody to help if it's something bad.
@ Airports are not open air inner city concrete drains with no security. Walk through any underpass in the middle of a British city and all it is missing is a line of urinal cakes along the gutters.
Reminds me that my family was also asking why it was so hard to find free public toilets when holidaying in Europe. I heard it's due to concerns of vandalism, which is significantly less common where I'm from (some of my countrymen would attribute that to corporal punishment for vandalism here)
It was the mid 20th century; planners never really accommodated people with mobility problems or sensory impairments. Why would this walkway / shop / road / office need to accommodate them? There aren't any here *now*. Admittedly local government tried to build sheltered housing for elderly people, but took care to put most of them in second-floor apartments with steep external staircases. The same thinking led to the Invacar scheme - designed by people who had absolutely no idea that a person with mobility problems might need to take the kids to school or do a week's shopping or even have some kind of hobby. Somebody sat in a committee room and said "They just need to drive to the clinic or wherever it is that they go, apparently some of them can't get on buses, let's make a special little buggy for that", and all the other able-bodied men in suits nodded in agreement.
@@bobrayner7349 ah yes I remember the Invacars, any colour you want, provided it was light blue, an elderly man at the same lodgings as I had one, drove it like a nutter.
The Calgary +15 walkway system works really well. The climate gives everyone a huge incentive to stay inside in the winter, so the walkway system is a coordinated network that links hotel lobbies, shopping centers, and enclosed bridges across the street. You can walk around the whole city center in shirt sleeves even when it's blowing a blizzard outside. It's got little businesses running all through it, so there are plenty of destinations to walk to.
Thanks for mentioning this! It probably works well because of people using it. Even if London would copy the exact same system, locals would probably make it "less enjoyable" over time 😄
Was thinking about Calgary as well. It works well there, I think because they avoid lots of the previous mistakes: Visibility is mostly good, so is signage, and it also helps that downtown Calgary is already all clean-cut right angles.
I always go on a spree of watching these failed urban project videos when I'm terribly hungover and it's the only thing I can manage. They fit perfectly with my mood.
I like the ones around the Barbican. They always feel like a bit of a secret route and they don't smell of wee or feel like places to get mugged in. I also think the brutalist architecture has weathered in to become just another layer in the fabric of the city.
When I was exploring during an empty Sunday, those pedways shown at start near the Museum of London were so hard to navigate and so eerie. I lost many times going up and down not knowing what and why they exist there. It did remind me of the Yugoslavian Architecture. Some of them were so small and cramped it was pretty scary to walk trough but it was a fun adventure!
@John Getting mugged, killed, human trafficked? God, I don't think I could ever feel safe walking in one of these without atleast four or five other people with me. Feels like I can see the horrible fate awaiting me before I enter.
Toronto has successfully implemented a similar type of scheme: it now has the world's largest underground pedestrian network. There are several key differences: - it's climate controlled, which is attractive with Toronto's scorching summers and slushy winters - it's full of shops and restaurants, making it less dreary than the pedways - it has direct access to subway stations, so walking in it often doesn't require any more up and down than walking along the streets - it's huge so there's a very good chance that your destination is connected to it - it's underground so it doesn't block any sightlines However it shares the problem that it was not centrally planned so it is very easy to get disoriented. Montréal also has succesful underground pedestrian network and Calgary has an elevated one. In those cities they provided an escape from the frigid winters.
Yup. Britain may have invented it but Canada perfected it. Wherever they are built they tend to be TOO successful in that they draw street traffic onto the +15 level above... Or below depending on the city... Montreal for example is below...
Many Canadian cities have severely cold winters. London generally does not have winters as cold as most Canadian cities. Our winters have more rain, rather than snow. It also rarely gets below -5 c.
@@OntarioTrafficMan No........we Brits are used to dealing with lots of rain! ....umbrellas are big business in the UK!! In all seriousness though yea you'd think that they would have done so, but I guess they didn't think of that. Maybe they ran out of money.......or more likely they didn't care about pedestrians getting wet as they were too preoccupied with cars, and filling cities with them.
Toronto has a underground pedestrian network of 30 km, but Montréal has a network of 32 km in downtown montreal. So, Montreal has de largest network. But, Toronto has the most shopping underground area in the world. Also, the underground city in Montreal is de main network (32 km) but eight other smaller network exist in the city, all connected via the metro lines.
“They had a vision but no plan” Subscribed just for that succinct and eminently quotable turn of phrase. I’ve been enjoying these tours of history and architecture, looking forward to seeing more.
This is so interesting! I lived in London for five years and never even noticed the Pedway system. I think the only time I'd use it (unknowingly) was walking from Barbican station to the Barbican Centre (route pictured at 2:26) some evenings to see a play... I always thought it was odd how the route there was via a raised walkway cutting straight through apartment complexes, with signs pleading with pedestrians to keep the noise down at night!
Chicago (where I'm from) has a large underground pedway system below its downtown. It's a great way to avoid both the car and pedestrian traffic and stay warm in the winter. You can go from multiple train stations to several buildings downtown without going outside, or at the very least walk a short distance from a pedway entrance to whatever building you're going to. It's really convenient and I feel like it's something not even that many people in Chicago know about. Edit: accidentally put some words in past tense, fixed it because the pedway system in Chicago is very much still around
The nearest I can think of in London is the shopping precincts around Canary Wharf. When I worked in a building connected to it, I could go out at lunch time in winter with no jacket and be nearly home before going out into the weather.
@@tw25rw I immediately thought of Canary Wharf as well, with the two shopping malls both being connected to each other and the Jubilee Line and DLR stations by walkways below street level. I believe that the Crossrail station will also be accessible in the same way if/when it opens. I've heard that Montreal, and probably other Canadian cities, have similar but more extensive systems and as the original developers of Canary Wharf were Canadian that must be where the idea came from.
I'd imagine people wouldn't feel to safe on them either, being hard to escape from and having bottlenecks would be highly intimidating for some people. But, did Dr. Beeching have any involvement with this if it was to promote road ways?
@@JagoHazzard How Much (and it has been sat on my shelf unread for 40 years) did Colin Buchanan's Report on Traffic In Towns have to do with this too? (I also have a pair of sociology books Problems Of Urban Society') In part with the embankments of the Thames the overhead walkways would not be so daft, but why did the Corporation NOT plan as a cohesive whole. For the Barbican the difficulty of moving around was deliberate - to break up the flow of possible anti-social 'Steaming' of swift foot-pads - remember in the City it is illegal to steal a fiver, but to launder the odd £10million is fine (not fined).
My granddad used to always tell us about how many railways closed because of Beeching, it wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized that he was saying Dr. Beeching and not Beecham. I thought as a kid the railways had been closed by a company making cold and flu aid. But hello you.
@@JagoHazzard This is how it should have been done. 2 minutes to view this. The whole system in time lapse. Calgary is similar in population to greater Leeds. ruclips.net/video/maZKzfUCTPg/видео.html
I agree I would not go away near these with the amount of crime rising in London in 2020. No surprise the guy mention who helped push it through has a huge stake in motorway investment. Same old same old. Corrupt ministers, backhanders and optional shares............ Veri interesting video. Thank you.
I’m Australian. My wife and I just spent three weeks in London. We stayed with our daughters in their apartment near In Barbican. I found the area around Barbican and the Museum of London a bit odd and confusing, because of those raised walkways that didn’t seem to go anywhere and staircases that were blocked off. Now, I understand what the back story behind it is.
TGW, You have a lot of style! Your vid’s are always excellent on content, but your narration really makes them. & I’m sure my co-commenters agree. Keep up the crisp dry humour, sir!
Entertained by watching someone walk these rarely experienced streets of London. Very eloquent and interesting commentary - overall, well done! The pedways? A good idea, poorly executed. I've enjoyed exploring the Barbican though which feels like a small, elevated city (without all the shops!). And millions use the shortish one from Waterloo through the Shell buildings towards Westminster. This video reminded me of the elevated walkway in NYC which converted an old railway line, which has been done very well. Making them a living space with greenery helps hugely to change the experience of being on them.
An extreme example of pedways was extruded at Killingworth Township, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There, the common folk were houses in concrete mock-castles, festooned with elevated concrete walkways. The only way to reach the Township centre, on foot, was via these long, unroofed human conduits, while the slightly better-off zoomed about in their Ford Escorts, far below. People hated it.
I love the Pedway! I personally discovered it by accident 10 years ago when I first visited London, and had gone to the Barbican. I explored the area extensively where you walk at the beginning; around the City Museum and over to the newer buildings; I remember having lunch there and it was so peaceful and quiet. It's so underused, but that makes it a nice place to be because you can explore it in peace and take all kinds of photography and video privately; it provides a nice above ground view of some parts of the city, most especially the Barbican. I wish they had one of these in my city.
"Streets in the sky" - as a native of Birmingham, I'm only too aware of separating vehicles & pedestrians. Unfortunately most of ours were underground, breeding grounds for muggings, & are now memories of my childhood, all removed by the 90s to 2000s. Sadly they were a victim of 60s Brutalist architecture, which I have a strange fondness for. In NYC the former Highline railway has been turned into a lovely winding elevated walkway, almost like a park, going through & around old factories & new skyscrapers, showing that these ideas can flourish.
many of our rail stations in my city were built along with much of the rest of the city during the 50s and so they went think big, subways and all, but the subways in small suburban stations are dangerous, so they gradually got closed and bridges installed instead. A couple were modified to remove the switchbacks in the stairs and ramps so people on the street could see down into them.
This was my thought. They took an existing rail line (instead of building something new that would ruin the existing view) and made it beautiful. Unlike many places in NYC, it tends to be a place that's for New Yorkers rather than for tourists.
@@boomshabanga1988 “it tends to be for nyers not tourists” are you joking? Lol most nyers have never been to the high line especially those that don’t live in Manhattan or in a neighborhood near the high line if you do live in Manhattan, it’s full of tourists not that that’s wrong
@@jayeff15 I can see that. I discovered the High Line a few Summers after it opened while staying with a friend who lived nearby. He’d never been and neither have any of the New Yorkers I know.
I experienced these in Japan and it made it possible to cross large complex intersections without waiting for traffic lights. They also went at helpful diagonals or enabled passing over areas with no shops below.
For some reason I have a strong desire to walk around the pedways with a bunch of mates in white cricket gear, black boots, cricket groin protectors on the outside, wearing black bowler hats.
I lived in the Barbican for a while, used all sorts of pedways, thought they made a nice and interesting view and added a sort of pleasentness to the walks I used to have, not to mention cutting across to areas where alternate routes would be awkward.
Yeah, but the Barbican has been well-maintained. It's still horrifically ugly of course, but it doesn't have the crumbling concrete, grime, water stains and background smell of piss that a lot of these 60s concrete hellholes do.
Minneapolis has a pedway system that is useable because it covers most of the downtown and has retail shops and restaurants on all the areas that travel through buildings, even ones that aren't expressly built for retail commerce (such as office buildings). The walkways in between the buildings are also enclosed with heat and a/c, mainly because the city has pretty cold winters and hot summers, being in the midwest. When I visited Minneapolis, it was one of the first things I noticed about the city. I've been to London quite a few times and this is the first time I've ever heard of such a system there, which shows the point Jago was making.
A great video Jago I think you summed up the pros and cons of pedways really well. Here in Bristol, we had a similar scheme which was to cover most of the central city. similarly, it failed and it's gradually been demolished in recent years. Bits still remain, but don't really go anywhere. I think the new route in London is possibly an attempt to emulate the High Line in New York which has reused a derelict high level rail line to make a linear urban park. We'll have to see if it works...
I'm a big fan of your videos about London. They're well researched, well argued and presented. There's hardly a dull sentence. To coin an old fashioned compliment, they're very sound, and they treat the viewer as a grown up. Thanks - they brighten up my day.
So good to see videos with interesting, clear spoken content and _original footage_, not the stock crap that so many edutainment channels reach straight for these days! Masterfully done.
Not being a Londoner, I once got 'lost' on the pedway in London Wall trying to find the entrance to the Museum of London. Now I finally know what these things were. Thx as always Jago. Nothing like watching yr vids first thing, 'Easy like a Sunday morning'...
Thanks! Yeah, that kind of illustrates one of the big problems with the pedway system - it’s not very intuitive to navigate. I’ve been to the Barbican Estate loads of times and I still need signs.
@@JagoHazzard I was walking through the Barbican hell once on a very windy day - suddenly a gust tore through and knocked everyone off their feet. Complete wind-trap.
Add two other cities that have working pedways,Toronto and Minneapolis,and also a few Canadian cities! All have extremely heavy duty winters! Keeping people warm,and under cover,works well! As an addendum,New York had overhead walkways,during the (ready),the 1870's,and onward! There were actually people jams on the streets(like Tokyo,now).History again!
@@JagoHazzard For the Barbican you will see some painted routeways , these were actually old Londoners routes which were indicated by chalked markings on the ground and low walls, indeed you may see some original ones on the roman wall fragments,, in early days Chalk pencils were spherical to assist holding, chiselled from the Kent coast at the White Cliffs of Dover (and Ebbsfleet Quarry). hence the Cockney Pedestrian Comment of 'Going For a Ball Of Chalk' when using the Shank's Pony travel method.
@@JagoHazzard @whyyoulidl The quickest Way from Moorgate to Museum Of London (and Nicer) is to Walk to Bank, then up Cheapside to St Pauls, then right toward the podium, but to a little right then left past the church (ex its tower is now offices and aisle now a roadway) up the stairs and you have arrived. Jago - you did a bit on London Wall, how about all 24 ? historic plaque markers
The walkway near the Museum of London is the best example of why this never works. You can be mere metres away from the museum but have to walk across a street or two to ascend to the next level then walk around in a semi cicle to get to the museum. It’s completely counter intuitive to have to walk partially away from your destination.
The pedway between Basinghall Street and Golden Lane was my favourite part of my morning commute. It was so peaceful up there. You could amble along interrupted by crossings and combustion engine units, without constantly having to look over your shoulder for incoming cycles and scooters. When they closed the section over London Wall a few years ago I feared it had gone for good but the new sections, past the Schroeder’s’ building, are beautiful and sensitively executed.
They didn't really consider the disabled either did they, ramps are marginally better but most of them are quite steep, the stairs everywhere though are a nightmare.
@@aclark903 I sometimes think the art centre itself suffers from not really having a permanent collection, and the galleries themselves hosting such a wide variety of artists that tourists can’t really know what they’re signing up to. But yeah, that sort of brutalist concrete all around there is just amazing.
I lived in Thamesmead as a kid in the '70s and saw the advantage of separating pedestrians from traffic. Though that was never the estates specific intention, trying to keep pedestrians separate from flood waters was the original plan, its city on stilts design made it a pedway paradise by default. Its biggest advantage was that it was very safe, I could ride my bicycle for many miles and never have to negotiate a major road or traffic junction.
It is a good idea, but the city as a whole needs to be planned and built for it. decree #1: every building downtown needs to have at least one terrace on the first floor, which connects by above-ground bridges across motorways to terrace(s) of other building(s) or any other pedway part. ...and... that's basically it. but it needs to be followed from the start of the city.
if you follow the idea all the way through, what you get is a duplication of existing streets, which makes no sense when you already have sidewalks on all of them
@@sashkad9246 Not really, as a walkway does not need to follow the street pattern. It can go between or even through buildings. It doesn't need to fill all the space either, that'd be daft. It just creates space for people to walk, shop and rest.
Also "Pedway" to an American conjures up nightmare images of scumbags just waiting for an innocent victim. Yeah no thanks! Keep that one in the dustbin of history!
I was in New York City back in 2016, I walked along part of the Highline, which was a disused elevated rail line converted into pedestrian paths and gardens, it’s honestly a lovely and pleasant place to spend an afternoon, it appears to be quite a popular space. So I can totally see a place for these raised pedestrian spaces, if done correctly, hopefully London’s new ones will deliver the same as the Highline.
In the 1980s I used to take groups of little boys up to the Royal Festival Hall by tube about once a month. I didn't at that time even realise that the pedway was a thing. But I was highly delighted to find that the signpost at the station led us up a flight of stairs to a walkway that meant I could get my young kids safely from door to door without having to cross a single road and without having to make any choices about the route. I was devastated when they closed it and began to demolish it. This was a brilliant idea that has worked well in other countries. In the eighties, we were used to many parts of London being shabby and dirty; and under those standards, the pedways have to be the worst as no effort was made to make them appealling. Great idea, absolutely abysmally designed. I hope the new walkways catch on. What you showed here was so much more attractive.
La Defense in Paris went the exact opposite way. Instead of separating the pesky pedestrians from the almighty car, they made the entire ground level a pedestrian area and moved the car traffic under ground. No doubt with its own problems but those were not so visible to the casual tourist like me ;)
What one in Tokyo doesn't have pollution? What one isn't packed with people. And being 30cm taller it was no treat having every umbrella at poke your eye out level.
I’ve seen pedways work in 2 cities, Houston and Minneapolis. I lived in Houston and worked downtown, the pedways are tunnels that connect most of downtown buildings, allow Houstonians to avoid the searing heat of summer and include food courts & retail space which is why they are successful. I’ve visited Minneapolis in the winter. The pedways are elevated and allow downtown workers to get between their parking garage and office space without braving the tough winters. Again at lunch, they are able to get to lunch and retail spaces without wrapping up.
I used to love walking round these! The one that caught my attention the most was on the Aylesbury estate in Elephant and Castle! My fave is the Barbican! Would love a place there!
I'm a fan of them in the City. Moving around the Barbican on the walkways is much nicer up there than down at street level. The great pity is, like Jago say, in the 1990s the scheme was dropped. Buildings were built by London Wall, Wormwood Street/Moorgate that could and should have linked up Liverpool Street station and the walkways around the Nat West tower to the walkways of the Barbican. Then there would have been a REAL functionality to them - being able to get onto the them at Broadgate/Liverpool Street and walk above the streets all the way to Smithfield/Barbican station One of Londons lost opportunitys ;-(
Yep, I used to regularly walk to Barbican library from my office on King William Street and enjoyed the 'highwalk' (that was what I knew them as instead of 'pedways') section from Basinghall St onwards. A nice little retreat from the noise and traffic at steret level
I’m a fan too. It is a lost opportunity. I always wonder why when you go to a ‘modern’ development like Canary Wharf or the Olympic Park you have to cross roads to get to places when an older place like the Barbican is so much more pedestrian friendly!
@@BertieFett oh i sooo agree ...and the dumbest one of all is the new development to the north of kings cross station - granary square. Lets build flats and offices for 40,000 people and connect them to the ONLY nearby public transport, kings cross station, with a single zebra crossing on Goodsway!
Yeah, I like them too - they're a great place to get lunch. If everything built since then had been connected up, I would have little reason to walk at street level.
@@buddyclem7328 Same here, honestly would be super down with those things being built all over the place, and also having roads raised above ground level sounds weirdly interesting...
@@void6215 around the time the first skyscrapers where built in New York, such ideas popped up, and got really popular. Plans where made for skyscraper - clusters with trams and pedestrian lanes through the sky. The plans turned out to be to much management for corporates who just build their own buildings. The drawings are amazing though. You can read about it in Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas.
You should make another video contrasting this with the Canary Wharf interconnected Mall approach of recent years - a maze of mostly underground walks, shops everywhere but linked with bridges, lifts, elevators. From South Quay footbridge to Churchill Place to the rooftop garden on the island above the new Elizabeth line station.
As others have pointed out they did try this in Liverpool (UK). One surviving relic of this scheme is that Moorfields railway station, an underground stop on the Merseyrail network, has it's main entrance above street level! In order to reach the underground platforms you have to climb stairs, use an escalator or a ramp and then descend down another escalator to the trains!
I can think of two, one from Waterloo station to The London Eye, and the other was on an estate off Walworth Road in Elephant. The ministers who let this go through, never had to use it!
They had the same crazy idea here in Liverpool. Thankfully little was built apart from a couple of large footbridges (dismantled after less than 50 years). Frustratingly a new underground station was built (Moorefields) with the entrance about 20 feet above street level. You have to use steps or an escalator to enter or exit. You go up to then go down to the platforms.
I think it's not wellbeing the pedways lack, but variation. The typical street is full of shifting details, even at ground level. If meandering architectural forms, murals, shops, varied facades were implemented, it would be a lot more stimulating - and fun - to walk down
Yes, one on 4:50 has at least something to look at outside. On the inside it's pretty nothing. These walkways lack greenery, they are too narrow and they have no entertainment. I worked in a company I could get two ways: shorter one through an industrial borough, and another one that was longer by ten minutes or so, but it lead through a couple of parks. Needless to say I always used the latter one and used the former only in bad weather or when I was running pretty late. That new one on 5:56 is much better, but it's still a bit too narrow, imho.
There is something similar in the city nord in hamburg. It was planned in the 1950s. The plan also was to completely seperate the pedestrians from the roads. The bridges and walkways are still there today, even though they are not used very much because the houses it connects are mostly offices so there are not many people in the area actually using them. I'm amazed how similar they are to the ones in London. But they are really fun to walk around on and explore every corner. And its especially fun driving a bicycle on them. Thanks for this video!
If you were starting a city from the beginning, this would make a lot of sense. Keep ground level for traffic, parking and delivery access. Make the first floor contain public entrances and cover it all from the weather. The current design just looks like somewhere people go if they want mugging, like subways.
if you're starting a city from the beginning you exclude cars completely, or limit their access, and give pedestrians priority. has been tried in many cities and is generally hugely successful.
Great video, very interesting. I've walked a few over the years, but unless you're around London Wall they're pretty much forgotten now. I see you got the back entrance stairs into Blackfriars north, that's a handy one if you're in Puddle Dock. Is there a published map of where they all are ??
@@JagoHazzardCool, thank you. I'd forgotten about the ones across Upper and Lower Thames Street. They're quite handy still with that busy road. I never realised that Peter's Hill was regarded as one. That's a lovely walk down from St Pauls to the 'wobbly' bridge :-)
I find them difficult to navigate. It's not clear where they lead because they'll often switch back on themselves confusingly, or have dead ends as mentioned in the video. Perhaps adding maps of the pedways would make them more intuitive and make them feel more enjoyable to wander along.
If they made them easier to navigate and converted them for cyclists it could reduce road congestion and make the surface streets safer for pedestrians, the reduction in traffic could then allow certain streets to have segregated cycle roads added or be turned over to pedestrians and/or bikes entirely (maybe with exceptions for delivery where no alternative exists), driving in the city is a pain anyway, there needs to be more alternatives and if it reduces pollution and traffic it would make the city more pleasant for everyone, including those who need to drive.
I worked in the City of London in the mid to late 60’s for the L.E.B. and the high level walkways around London Wall were always referred to as The Buchanan Report experiment. Keep up the the excellent videos, luv em, especially the narration style.👍😄
All the potential ammonia smelling and lack of security aside, the now (seems like) desolated pedways give strong vibes of liminality / backrooms (tho it's outdoors) imo
We had the same problem with this idea in Newcastle upon Tyne, anything that’s left is a poor state of disrepair and unsafe that may be a reflection on poor quality of materials used in the original builds
Keep the videos coming! I wasn't able to come to the motherland this summer due to the horrid plague but it's fun to learn more about London and hopefully next year I can come back and check out some of the pedways. I went to the Museum of London in 2018 I think but didn't see the new pedway, probingly not built yet.
i think the idea could work, however, you would have to bring "street-level" up along with it. you don't need a car for a shop, but you do need a person there. bring all shops to the first or second floor. leave everything below for warehouse space and we are all good, right?
I don't particularly like walking past shops. If I want a particular shop I walk straight to it.. In fact these pedways are great places if you want to be alone in London, because no-one else uses them. Outside prestigeous areas like the City of London they would be crowded with mugggers though.
@@dukenukem5768 yes, but humans are attracted to lights, colours and things that draw their attention. That's also why people like living in a nice home and having a nice car and displaying nice objects in their home, and living in a nice neighbourhood where they drive past other nice homes. Maybe not all people, but the majority do.
Spokane, WA, USA has a "skywalk" system in the downtown area based off of a similar concept - however, it was successful and is frequently used, mainly because the designers had people in mind rather than cars. All the pedestrian bridges between buildings are fully enclosed hallways with windows, and they connect via hallways within buildings (rooms off of these hallways have been converted in many buildings to cafes, offices, retail, a hair salon, etc) and the main purpose is to enable a person to go from one end of downtown to the other without having to wait to cross a street or deal with inclement weather, which is very useful in a place where blizzards are common in winter.
I have to admit I do love Pedways, they're so fun to navigate and one of my favourite things when going to the Barbican (which is my favourite spot in London)
One of the most interesting thing about a lot of European cities is that almost every Road is a pedestrian Road with buildings all around it because of how old these cities are. Here in America you only see that in a couple of cities on the coasts. Particularly you see that here in America in the cities of New England. These old old cities in Europe have a very distinct look that isn't replicated in the rest of the western world, nothing I said he was particularly important I just think that's a neat thought. And whoever took the time to read this comment I hope you have a wonderful day.
Thanks for your interesting perspective. When I was in Florida, i was amazed how it was almost impossible to walk from A to B, on foot; no pavements! It's as if no-one had considered people might actually want to walk a short distance between buildings if they didn't happen to have a car for the afternoon.
I hate the new cities, they feel really depressing to me. Even the newly constructed (this decade) city arias in my old European city feel depressing some how
I suppose we take it for granted in Europe that we can walk or cycle almost anywhere and unless you live out in the sticks there is often a shop nearby. It was the same in South Africa when I was little (albeit greater distances) but last time I went I noticed new housing complexes without amenities along highways that are only really accessible by car.
Good idea, badly executed. I would really love the system if: - had great design, benches, shrubbery, trees, etc. - consistent cover from wind, rain, noise and blaring sunshine. - great access to street level, with as few stairs as possible, provide escalators and lifts and whole system fully accessible. - great access to shops, bus/tube stops along the way - great access to parking space - leave a car, use the pedway to get around the city - bike friendly - easy to navigate with clear routes, maps and landmarks. - regularly cleaned, maintained and patrolled.
These are supposed to be "Pedways" ie. "pedestrian ways" riding of bikes should not be permitted , you know what chaos those maniacs cause on the pavements meant for pedestrians (persons that WALK) on the streets below already.
@@Hanzo.Azmodan We have pavements and all the shops are on the ground, frankly turning them into "pedalways" instead would be a great idea to get people out of their cars, probably be quicker for people to commute by bike if there were dedicated bike highways!
We have one in our town built in the early 00s. The spiral staircase South entrance always smells of wee but the pedway bridge towards the railway station is fine.
It's always a pleasure to watch well thought content! As an architect and an admirer of the Barbican Estate, this concept resonates with me as I believe it can be rich and diverse in its approach, especially if it is intertwined with ample public spaces. You can also find a great example of those elevated pathways in The High Line in Manhattan, which is a converted old elevated train railway into a beautiful set of different connected spaces.
We call them Skyways where I live, and they're enclosed, heated and cooled, and accessible via elevator (you call them lifts) and escalators (no idea what you call moving staircases). They connect absolutely every single building to every other one so you never have to walk outside. It's helpful because it's extremely cold here in winter (as low as -40°F/-40°C) and snowy, and winter can last as long as 7 months, while our summers can be very hot and humid. They get jam-packed. Ours are connected to shops and restaurants, not to mention parking ramps and office buildings, making it convenient for workers going to lunch. I dunno, Londoners. You're doing it wrong.
The High Line here in NYC is pretty successful because it presents itself as a park. It's pretty nice. Theyre thinking of doing something similar in The Bronx too.
Similar to what they did in Montreal, except the amazing thing about Montreal is that all the "pedways" are underground, and connect directly to the metro stations at mezzanine level, and there are a bunch of underground shops connected directly to them; there is even a full on underground shopping center underneath an office building downtown!
The failure of pedways to take off in their original incarnation is linked with the failings in high-rise flats and “villages in the sky” from the same era. Decent concepts executed with staggering arrogance and complete ignorance of the social factors. Pedways deserve a second chance, but also need innovative building design to make more of the upper floor the pedways connect to.
Wasn't there the reverse idea once of roads in the sky and pedestrians at ground level? For example I think there was the inner motorway ring around the centre of London. Just bits got built with flyovers ending in mid-air. Similarly in Salisbury there is (was) a flyover ending in mid-air. The problem is to build it in one go requires too much demolition and money and it gives rise to too much opposition and it's a big risk that it doesn't work in practice. If done piece meal it is subject to changing ideas, changing political make-up and changing financial well-being of councils. Evolution has merits.
That Barbican area walk you showed in the beginning was my walk to and from secondary school! It was nice to not be right on the street but only worked because our school was connected to the walkway and otherwise wouldn’t have made sense to use. It was also plagued by creeps flashing schoolchildren and often smelled of pee...
U mak gud content. I subs. (Translates to: That's nice content, i like your voice and also the engaging tone in which you explain things, you won another subscriber)
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for some reason the first thing that came to mind was "I bet it smells like pee!"
Usually if it's concrete & dates from the 1960's or '70's, that's a given XD.
@@jimtaylor294 I used to work in a concrete building from the 70s. I believe it has the Finnish equivalent of a Grade II listing, presumably to ensure that it survives as a warning to future generations. Even the psychedelic paint colours and giant floor/zone numbers are protected.
On my first morning, I stepped into a bright orange concrete stairwell with a five-foot-tall green number on the wall, and I swear I smelled stale urine. It just felt so much like a multi-storey car park that my brain just filled in the smell.
@@6yjjk Sounds about right. Apartment blocks over here have been associated with the corridors reeking of wee, the lifts not working, and some even when new had rampent rot & mould problems. All the ones I've ever visited certainly lived upto the reputation.
I'd agree that only one of the eyesores needs preserving... as a Warning from History.
Major problem here in Edmonton too. They are often used as defacto shelters and bathrooms for people sleeping rough.. Also doesn't help that we don't have public toilets even as part of most of the subway stations downtown... Hence why even over here I can practically smell the whiffs!
@@stickynorth Now, Bank station has City Corporation Toilets, and the City of London generally is a higher level of class of resident and indeed visitor. Beggars are few as no - one carries cash and the patrols of the Corporation Police Force are very frequent in removing the loiterers. This does not apply to the West End.
They works well here in Hong Kong as they go from subway station to malls and connecting multiple malls together, making easy to travel around also great to go around when its raining.
Yeah, I was thinking exactly this. Without any attraction like shops, cultural events, transportation and whatnot I don't see why anyone would use these pedways.
Pedestrians are absurdly different from cars, the idea of an devoid of character expressway doesn't make sense and the new alternative seems to be the same thing.
Precisely. Though here, there's a very strong "push" factor in the summer as the sun barrels down and people boil in the humidity for most of the year. Any shaded area, elevated or not, will be preferred. Also, unlike in the UK, pedestrians here very much do not have the right of way.
I live in Hong Kong and use a pedestrian walkway quite frequently too. It links public housing estates to the town centre with all kinds of transport links, so it's always filled with commuters in rush hour. It's actually a straight line for half a kilometre. Goes on to show how important planning is.
I was just about to comment that lmao, but the places that need it most can't really have them. For example, literally everywhere west of sheng wan is just pure chaos, with random guys pushing carts on tramways, but pedways won't work there because it's a different vibe if you know what I mean.
@@willy_gooseling69 Sheung Wan is still many old buildings and would need a major overhaul, most of the new territories have it build very well, tsuen wan is probably the longest one there is connecting many malls
I worked in a building on London Wall that incorporated these walkways. It was a faff to walk two storeys up. When you got there, you had no idea where anything led, and there was always a wind blowing litter in high-speed vortices. Painful if you got hit in the eye by a polystyrene cup.
On one side, through the windows, were surprised office workers, staring at you, wondering why a window cleaner was wearing a suit & not carrying his bucket & dirty rag.
On the other was the balcony, where you could look down on the intelligent people, who knew better than to venture up from street level where common sense dictated that they should be.
The project feels like a money spinner for some apart from ruining the city and becoming a shelter for creeps.
Hmmmm.... One can have fun with that. How about dressing up as the grimm reaper next time. Then stop when they stare, and point at one. Or dress up as a dino.... Options are wast here my friend. 😁😁😁
Pahaha
I helped to install both of the bridges from 1 London Wall and know the engineer who recently erected the “rusty” one. Nice jobs but unless you need to get directly from one end to the other rather useless.
Tell me more! This reads like the beginning of a great novel.
Planners of these projects never seem to factor in maintenance. Unless you wash the stairwells after the weekend, repair the broken lights, clean off graffiti promptly and generally keep things pleasant these areas can quickly become threatening and unused.
Planners lose interest after thier thing is built.
I was really suprised to see how well kept the pedways in the video looked. Would have imagined that such underused spaces would quickly fill up with garbage and graffiti
@@jonatanwestholmbut they still look dark and forbidding. A good place to get mugged, not to go window shopping.
Put lots of neon and led screens on those walkways and you get cyberpunk
Good video, but perhaps you missed one of the most important reasons why they failed (not just in London, but in Manchester, Newcastle etc.) - they became a mugger's paradise by the 1980's and 1990's. The way the architects planned them (segregated corridors) meant that there was little or no interaction with the routes they were taking - and no-one in the buildings could see the pedestrians being mugged/raped/murdered etc.
People felt safer taking their chances on narrow pavements with speeding cars, so used these instead.
@Jack Black Who shit in your coffee?
You're absolutely right.
@Jack Black You look like one.
Ironically the people of Newcastle were soundly mugged by the council before they had the opportunity to be hassled on elevated walkways.
Still at least there was less Georgian architecture to admire and you got to see concrete spalling more often.
Planners renders in which everyone is smiling and lovely. Problem is they start believing their own propaganda.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul area in the USA has a similar concept called "skyways" that connected downtown buildings. You would actually walk through the buildings and then on a bridge, you can access the adjacent buildings. The key difference was that these skyways were enclosed which made them handy during the winter months and they went inside of buildings instead along side of them. Years ago, I walked St. Paul's skyways and was very impressed.
The skyway system is great. A lot of people use it even during the warmer seasons. It has a lot of restaurants and convenience stores connected to it.
It’s also really busy during games. People use to get to their parking spots and ramps.
Also feels safer than walking out on the streets.
Yeah the skyways are very nice. You can get to most of downtown Minneapolis without ever going out into the cold. Much better than st paul's IMO. They are hard to navigate for a newcomer but they serve such a handy purpose in winter that they are still used
Oh my god I just commented this 🤣 the skyway system is so vast too you can get pretty much anywhere downtown without going outside. Growing up around there I was shocked all cities weren't like that 😂
I was going to mention Minneapolis-St. Paul as well. We visited the cities in the summer and I was pretty impressed by all the connecting bridges.
Montreal took a different approach and has an immense walkable underground city which seems to be highly successful.
Calgary Alberta also has this and it's called the +15 system
HK uses raised walkways on the island and they are rather successful, however they are rather wide, contain lifts at strategic locations, as well as small shops selling food and other odds and sods and all link subway stations or ferry wharfs. Tokyo has some as well, however these are normally created by the folks who build large buildings and you will find a lot of shops leading off them. Minneapolis has a network similar to what was proposed for London, but that was so people did not have to walk in sub-arctic weather when they left their office for lunch.
Minneapolis, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary... The four cities that have extensive elevated pedway networks and for a good reason. Just being connected to the system elevates a buildings value much like being on a mass transit line. Also a selling point for The Ice District here in Edmonton. Skyscraper penthouses connected to the +15 network as its called here. That's why the Stanley Cup is being hosted here this year... Trying to help Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz move condo's in the tallest building in Canada outside Toronto he had built as part of its ego trip... Not saying it's a bad thing, but I digress... ;-)
There is at least one lift on the Barbican routeways, must be one of the few in the UK that links the public realm externally.
The Chinese city of Chongqing has a lot of them.
Fairly sure an early version of this was build in Italy for a nobleman in the late middle ages (or later), so it's an idea that's been rumbling around for a while.
@@Blaqjaqshellaq I was planning to be in Chongqing this November but obviously not happening now. May be there next year at some point hopefully though once things ease so will see if I can find them.
The pedways in London aren't just disorienting and physically exerting, I think (from I've seen) pedestrians feel really unsafe navigating them. Think about it: the lighting is subpar, there are no shops or restaurants lining them (causing them to be deserted at certain times of day) and because of the cramped space and constant turns you can't see what's ahead of you. If I had lived there during their construction I would have constantly been worried about potential muggers and the like waiting around the corner.
The Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands has two or three pedways elevated above the main courtyard. These work because they're straightforward, and because they're actually necessary - the whole complex is enormous! I think they're reserved for medical personnel but I'm not sure.
"Here let me put in some squiggly turns and a few benches that should make it better" -british ppl
Most, if not all, shown in this video is in the City which usually feels safe. But I take your point about it feeling less safe in less salubrious areas.
My thoughts exactly. More effort to feel less safe.
This is exactly what I was thinking. Every single shot of the pedways in the video shows a deserted, claustrophobic space with a blind corner every few seconds of walking. Total mugger's paradise.
This exact thought popped into my head as I watched this. I wouldn't want to be walking these things alone at night.
This video showed the pedway as being sort of aimless and pedestrians have to go out of their way. I understand it rains a lot in London. In Minneapolis, we have a skyway system that runs through office buildings and over roadways. There are lots of restaurants, fast food, shops and stores on this level. It is well-loved because we can get some exercise in as well as get to meetings, do errands/shopping/food without being exposed to snow, rain, heat, and subzero cold.
Schemes like this do work well in cold climates. The underground pathways in Toronto and Montreal offer great benefits. The problem is that large parts are within private buildings, which manage them as they see fit. I damn near froze to death in Minneapolis when I worked late and three blocks were unheated. And I got kicked out on the street in Toronto when the department store basement I was transiting on the way back to my hotel suddenly closed, and they locked the doors to the tunnels in front of me. Visitors beware.
@@qtrfull Yeah, there are unheated sections but enclosed, and you should always have a coat with you in Minneapolis in the winter. If you know where you're going and its during the workday, though, it's the best way to get around in the winter. Summers are nice up here so I recommend the streets then.
@@qtrfull At Canary Wharf in London Docklands there is a long underground walkway (shopping mall) that is particularly welcome in bad weather.
The pedways would surely have been better if there had been shops and restaurants on them. Instead, they were only intended as ways to get from A to B. Every shot of them in the video is of a deserted, claustrophobic place where you're constantly worrying about what might be around the next corner and there's nobody to help if it's something bad.
The Minneapolis skyway system is spectacular, so much nicer than the concrete misery. It’s also enclosed.
Because nobody wants to walk around in a giant urinal.
Almost no one 😏
@@holyassbutts I have questions.
@ Airports are not open air inner city concrete drains with no security. Walk through any underpass in the middle of a British city and all it is missing is a line of urinal cakes along the gutters.
You mean like San Francisco and Seattle in the USA?
Reminds me that my family was also asking why it was so hard to find free public toilets when holidaying in Europe. I heard it's due to concerns of vandalism, which is significantly less common where I'm from (some of my countrymen would attribute that to corporal punishment for vandalism here)
And zero consideration of anyone who has even minor forms of mobility issues.
It was the mid 20th century; planners never really accommodated people with mobility problems or sensory impairments. Why would this walkway / shop / road / office need to accommodate them? There aren't any here *now*. Admittedly local government tried to build sheltered housing for elderly people, but took care to put most of them in second-floor apartments with steep external staircases. The same thinking led to the Invacar scheme - designed by people who had absolutely no idea that a person with mobility problems might need to take the kids to school or do a week's shopping or even have some kind of hobby. Somebody sat in a committee room and said "They just need to drive to the clinic or wherever it is that they go, apparently some of them can't get on buses, let's make a special little buggy for that", and all the other able-bodied men in suits nodded in agreement.
@@bobrayner7349 ah yes I remember the Invacars, any colour you want, provided it was light blue, an elderly man at the same lodgings as I had one, drove it like a nutter.
Just grow a pair... of legs
It was the 60s, those people didn't exist and ones that did are shoved to the corner of society for nobody to see.
It would be a nice ride on a skateboard 👳
Place to place 🇮🇳
The Calgary +15 walkway system works really well. The climate gives everyone a huge incentive to stay inside in the winter, so the walkway system is a coordinated network that links hotel lobbies, shopping centers, and enclosed bridges across the street. You can walk around the whole city center in shirt sleeves even when it's blowing a blizzard outside. It's got little businesses running all through it, so there are plenty of destinations to walk to.
Thanks for mentioning this! It probably works well because of people using it. Even if London would copy the exact same system, locals would probably make it "less enjoyable" over time 😄
Normies: "The weather hurts my face"
Me: "If you complain about the canadian weather, perhaps you are too weak to be in Canada."
Was thinking about Calgary as well. It works well there, I think because they avoid lots of the previous mistakes: Visibility is mostly good, so is signage, and it also helps that downtown Calgary is already all clean-cut right angles.
Same thing in Edmonton. We have a underground pedway too, used to be old bomb shelters.
That sounds really warm.... well cool but in a warm way.
I always go on a spree of watching these failed urban project videos when I'm terribly hungover and it's the only thing I can manage. They fit perfectly with my mood.
I like the ones around the Barbican. They always feel like a bit of a secret route and they don't smell of wee or feel like places to get mugged in. I also think the brutalist architecture has weathered in to become just another layer in the fabric of the city.
When I was exploring during an empty Sunday, those pedways shown at start near the Museum of London were so hard to navigate and so eerie. I lost many times going up and down not knowing what and why they exist there. It did remind me of the Yugoslavian Architecture. Some of them were so small and cramped it was pretty scary to walk trough but it was a fun adventure!
Were you thinking of Belgrade? In the late 80s it reminded me of Stockwell park estate in South London!(the countryside was Nirvana though!)
That was such a ghetto estate back in the day, it’s still there but been heavily refurbished now
They should have made the storefronts accessible. It would be like a gigantic city sized mall.
So like how they did it in parts of Japan...
@@zeroibis I dont know about Japan. I just learned about this London walkway.
@@zeroibis Tell me more!
I think they have potencial. Could have loads of ads as well. It would be a mall for sure. Could even ad some small open parks on some corners
@John Getting mugged, killed, human trafficked? God, I don't think I could ever feel safe walking in one of these without atleast four or five other people with me. Feels like I can see the horrible fate awaiting me before I enter.
Toronto has successfully implemented a similar type of scheme: it now has the world's largest underground pedestrian network. There are several key differences:
- it's climate controlled, which is attractive with Toronto's scorching summers and slushy winters
- it's full of shops and restaurants, making it less dreary than the pedways
- it has direct access to subway stations, so walking in it often doesn't require any more up and down than walking along the streets
- it's huge so there's a very good chance that your destination is connected to it
- it's underground so it doesn't block any sightlines
However it shares the problem that it was not centrally planned so it is very easy to get disoriented.
Montréal also has succesful underground pedestrian network and Calgary has an elevated one. In those cities they provided an escape from the frigid winters.
Yup. Britain may have invented it but Canada perfected it. Wherever they are built they tend to be TOO successful in that they draw street traffic onto the +15 level above... Or below depending on the city... Montreal for example is below...
Many Canadian cities have severely cold winters. London generally does not have winters as cold as most Canadian cities. Our winters have more rain, rather than snow. It also rarely gets below -5 c.
@@robtyman4281 With such rain you'd think they'd at least put a roof over the pedways...
@@OntarioTrafficMan No........we Brits are used to dealing with lots of rain! ....umbrellas are big business in the UK!!
In all seriousness though yea you'd think that they would have done so, but I guess they didn't think of that. Maybe they ran out of money.......or more likely they didn't care about pedestrians getting wet as they were too preoccupied with cars, and filling cities with them.
Toronto has a underground pedestrian network of 30 km, but Montréal has a network of 32 km in downtown montreal. So, Montreal has de largest network. But, Toronto has the most shopping underground area in the world. Also, the underground city in Montreal is de main network (32 km) but eight other smaller network exist in the city, all connected via the metro lines.
“They had a vision but no plan”
Subscribed just for that succinct and eminently quotable turn of phrase. I’ve been enjoying these tours of history and architecture, looking forward to seeing more.
This is so interesting! I lived in London for five years and never even noticed the Pedway system. I think the only time I'd use it (unknowingly) was walking from Barbican station to the Barbican Centre (route pictured at 2:26) some evenings to see a play... I always thought it was odd how the route there was via a raised walkway cutting straight through apartment complexes, with signs pleading with pedestrians to keep the noise down at night!
Chicago (where I'm from) has a large underground pedway system below its downtown. It's a great way to avoid both the car and pedestrian traffic and stay warm in the winter. You can go from multiple train stations to several buildings downtown without going outside, or at the very least walk a short distance from a pedway entrance to whatever building you're going to. It's really convenient and I feel like it's something not even that many people in Chicago know about.
Edit: accidentally put some words in past tense, fixed it because the pedway system in Chicago is very much still around
And its safe from robbers? I heard Chicago is the murder capital
@Stephen Anthony Sydney, Australia has something similar with shops along the way.
The nearest I can think of in London is the shopping precincts around Canary Wharf. When I worked in a building connected to it, I could go out at lunch time in winter with no jacket and be nearly home before going out into the weather.
@@tw25rw I immediately thought of Canary Wharf as well, with the two shopping malls both being connected to each other and the Jubilee Line and DLR stations by walkways below street level. I believe that the Crossrail station will also be accessible in the same way if/when it opens.
I've heard that Montreal, and probably other Canadian cities, have similar but more extensive systems and as the original developers of Canary Wharf were Canadian that must be where the idea came from.
@@tw25rw Aye, but they are maze unto themselves.
Love this style of video where you just walk around and share interesting info
I'd imagine people wouldn't feel to safe on them either, being hard to escape from and having bottlenecks would be highly intimidating for some people.
But, did Dr. Beeching have any involvement with this if it was to promote road ways?
He didn’t directly, but both his cuts and the emphasis on roads over pedestrians were born of Ernest Marples’ transport policies.
@@JagoHazzard How Much (and it has been sat on my shelf unread for 40 years) did Colin Buchanan's Report on Traffic In Towns have to do with this too? (I also have a pair of sociology books Problems Of Urban Society') In part with the embankments of the Thames the overhead walkways would not be so daft, but why did the Corporation NOT plan as a cohesive whole. For the Barbican the difficulty of moving around was deliberate - to break up the flow of possible anti-social 'Steaming' of swift foot-pads - remember in the City it is illegal to steal a fiver, but to launder the odd £10million is fine (not fined).
My granddad used to always tell us about how many railways closed because of Beeching, it wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized that he was saying Dr. Beeching and not Beecham. I thought as a kid the railways had been closed by a company making cold and flu aid.
But hello you.
@@JagoHazzard This is how it should have been done. 2 minutes to view this. The whole system in time lapse. Calgary is similar in population to greater Leeds. ruclips.net/video/maZKzfUCTPg/видео.html
I agree I would not go away near these with the amount of crime rising in London in 2020. No surprise the guy mention who helped push it through has a huge stake in motorway investment. Same old same old. Corrupt ministers, backhanders and optional shares............ Veri interesting video. Thank you.
"It just appeared someday in a council document."
And so, the ancient demon of pedways was summoned.
Crowley?
I’m Australian. My wife and I just spent three weeks in London. We stayed with our daughters in their apartment near In Barbican. I found the area around Barbican and the Museum of London a bit odd and confusing, because of those raised walkways that didn’t seem to go anywhere and staircases that were blocked off. Now, I understand what the back story behind it is.
TGW, You have a lot of style! Your vid’s are always excellent on content, but your narration really makes them. & I’m sure my co-commenters agree. Keep up the crisp dry humour, sir!
Entertained by watching someone walk these rarely experienced streets of London. Very eloquent and interesting commentary - overall, well done! The pedways? A good idea, poorly executed. I've enjoyed exploring the Barbican though which feels like a small, elevated city (without all the shops!). And millions use the shortish one from Waterloo through the Shell buildings towards Westminster. This video reminded me of the elevated walkway in NYC which converted an old railway line, which has been done very well. Making them a living space with greenery helps hugely to change the experience of being on them.
An extreme example of pedways was extruded at Killingworth Township, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There, the common folk were houses in concrete mock-castles, festooned with elevated concrete walkways. The only way to reach the Township centre, on foot, was via these long, unroofed human conduits, while the slightly better-off zoomed about in their Ford Escorts, far below. People hated it.
I love the Pedway! I personally discovered it by accident 10 years ago when I first visited London, and had gone to the Barbican. I explored the area extensively where you walk at the beginning; around the City Museum and over to the newer buildings; I remember having lunch there and it was so peaceful and quiet. It's so underused, but that makes it a nice place to be because you can explore it in peace and take all kinds of photography and video privately; it provides a nice above ground view of some parts of the city, most especially the Barbican. I wish they had one of these in my city.
You somehow make London’s pedestrian history extremely interesting!
The swan lane stairway used to connect to the opposite building -- the walkway was demolished just few years ago!
To function, pedways should have stores and other establishments that would encourage their use.
Exactly. Building them as a place where you literally only went because you wanted to be somewhere else was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Streets in the sky" - as a native of Birmingham, I'm only too aware of separating vehicles & pedestrians. Unfortunately most of ours were underground, breeding grounds for muggings, & are now memories of my childhood, all removed by the 90s to 2000s. Sadly they were a victim of 60s Brutalist architecture, which I have a strange fondness for. In NYC the former Highline railway has been turned into a lovely winding elevated walkway, almost like a park, going through & around old factories & new skyscrapers, showing that these ideas can flourish.
many of our rail stations in my city were built along with much of the rest of the city during the 50s and so they went think big, subways and all, but the subways in small suburban stations are dangerous, so they gradually got closed and bridges installed instead. A couple were modified to remove the switchbacks in the stairs and ramps so people on the street could see down into them.
They need to be reimagined more like New York's High Line elevated urban park, which has proven to be very popular.
This was my thought. They took an existing rail line (instead of building something new that would ruin the existing view) and made it beautiful. Unlike many places in NYC, it tends to be a place that's for New Yorkers rather than for tourists.
@@boomshabanga1988 “it tends to be for nyers not tourists” are you joking? Lol most nyers have never been to the high line especially those that don’t live in Manhattan or in a neighborhood near the high line if you do live in Manhattan, it’s full of tourists not that that’s wrong
@@jayeff15 I can see that. I discovered the High Line a few Summers after it opened while staying with a friend who lived nearby. He’d never been and neither have any of the New Yorkers I know.
I experienced these in Japan and it made it possible to cross large complex intersections without waiting for traffic lights. They also went at helpful diagonals or enabled passing over areas with no shops below.
For some reason I have a strong desire to walk around the pedways with a bunch of mates in white cricket gear, black boots, cricket groin protectors on the outside, wearing black bowler hats.
That's a very strange outfit, don't you know old chap?
Inciting a little ultra-violence, my droog?
Until you happen upon some dirty little devotchka 🤣🤣
Well thanks for activating my mental jukebox.
The subways under the Wandsworth Roundabout are the place to do that. One of them was used in the film.
I lived in the Barbican for a while, used all sorts of pedways, thought they made a nice and interesting view and added a sort of pleasentness to the walks I used to have, not to mention cutting across to areas where alternate routes would be awkward.
Yeah, but the Barbican has been well-maintained. It's still horrifically ugly of course, but it doesn't have the crumbling concrete, grime, water stains and background smell of piss that a lot of these 60s concrete hellholes do.
Barbican rents are too high for low life muggers to live around there. But I can think of other areas of cities where they would be a crime paradise.
Minneapolis has a pedway system that is useable because it covers most of the downtown and has retail shops and restaurants on all the areas that travel through buildings, even ones that aren't expressly built for retail commerce (such as office buildings). The walkways in between the buildings are also enclosed with heat and a/c, mainly because the city has pretty cold winters and hot summers, being in the midwest. When I visited Minneapolis, it was one of the first things I noticed about the city. I've been to London quite a few times and this is the first time I've ever heard of such a system there, which shows the point Jago was making.
well the US roads are hostile anyways so ye ofc its gonna be used alot often
A great video Jago I think you summed up the pros and cons of pedways really well. Here in Bristol, we had a similar scheme which was to cover most of the central city. similarly, it failed and it's gradually been demolished in recent years. Bits still remain, but don't really go anywhere. I think the new route in London is possibly an attempt to emulate the High Line in New York which has reused a derelict high level rail line to make a linear urban park. We'll have to see if it works...
I'm a big fan of your videos about London. They're well researched, well argued and presented. There's hardly a dull sentence. To coin an old fashioned compliment, they're very sound, and they treat the viewer as a grown up. Thanks - they brighten up my day.
So good to see videos with interesting, clear spoken content and _original footage_, not the stock crap that so many edutainment channels reach straight for these days! Masterfully done.
Not being a Londoner, I once got 'lost' on the pedway in London Wall trying to find the entrance to the Museum of London. Now I finally know what these things were. Thx as always Jago. Nothing like watching yr vids first thing, 'Easy like a Sunday morning'...
Thanks! Yeah, that kind of illustrates one of the big problems with the pedway system - it’s not very intuitive to navigate. I’ve been to the Barbican Estate loads of times and I still need signs.
@@JagoHazzard I was walking through the Barbican hell once on a very windy day - suddenly a gust tore through and knocked everyone off their feet. Complete wind-trap.
Add two other cities that have working pedways,Toronto and Minneapolis,and also a few Canadian cities! All have extremely heavy duty winters! Keeping people warm,and under cover,works well! As an addendum,New York had overhead walkways,during the (ready),the 1870's,and onward! There were actually people jams on the streets(like Tokyo,now).History again!
@@JagoHazzard For the Barbican you will see some painted routeways , these were actually old Londoners routes which were indicated by chalked markings on the ground and low walls, indeed you may see some original ones on the roman wall fragments,, in early days Chalk pencils were spherical to assist holding, chiselled from the Kent coast at the White Cliffs of Dover (and Ebbsfleet Quarry). hence the Cockney Pedestrian Comment of 'Going For a Ball Of Chalk' when using the Shank's Pony travel method.
@@JagoHazzard @whyyoulidl The quickest Way from Moorgate to Museum Of London (and Nicer) is to Walk to Bank, then up Cheapside to St Pauls, then right toward the podium, but to a little right then left past the church (ex its tower is now offices and aisle now a roadway) up the stairs and you have arrived. Jago - you did a bit on London Wall, how about all 24 ? historic plaque markers
That was a surprisingly interesting subject explored in an intelligent way by a competent and articulate person. Thank you.
The walkway near the Museum of London is the best example of why this never works. You can be mere metres away from the museum but have to walk across a street or two to ascend to the next level then walk around in a semi cicle to get to the museum. It’s completely counter intuitive to have to walk partially away from your destination.
The pedway between Basinghall Street and Golden Lane was my favourite part of my morning commute. It was so peaceful up there. You could amble along interrupted by crossings and combustion engine units, without constantly having to look over your shoulder for incoming cycles and scooters. When they closed the section over London Wall a few years ago I feared it had gone for good but the new sections, past the Schroeder’s’ building, are beautiful and sensitively executed.
They didn't really consider the disabled either did they, ramps are marginally better but most of them are quite steep, the stairs everywhere though are a nightmare.
Not to mention people who are afraid of heights.
Fuck that
Was in one part of London once and the only way to cross the road was via a staired pedway. Awful stuff.
I think that they are just optional... Sidewalks are for everybody else... and those go everywhere.
Or fatties
Is it normal for them to be almost completely deserted? That looks unsafe.
Nobody uses them so yes.
@@aminboumerdassi2334 vicious cycle: empty > creepy feeling > even emptier > even creepier.
@K Gray scamdemic is over trump lost election job done.
Yes, they are scary places nowadays. I would avoid them and also avoid pedestrian underpasses.
@@chatteyj lost in a rigged election, that is. An elaborate scheme of revenge for 2016. God help us all, the new world order is coming.
IMHO, it looks great and whole Barbican Centre is beautiful. I like that old type of futurism.
I agree, the #Barbican is a unique area of London well worth a visit if you've never been but off most tourists itineraries I think.
@@aclark903 I sometimes think the art centre itself suffers from not really having a permanent collection, and the galleries themselves hosting such a wide variety of artists that tourists can’t really know what they’re signing up to. But yeah, that sort of brutalist concrete all around there is just amazing.
I went to school in the Barbican, it was fun just how many of the clips in this video I could pinpoint the exact location of!
I lived in Thamesmead as a kid in the '70s and saw the advantage of separating pedestrians from traffic. Though that was never the estates specific intention, trying to keep pedestrians separate from flood waters was the original plan, its city on stilts design made it a pedway paradise by default. Its biggest advantage was that it was very safe, I could ride my bicycle for many miles and never have to negotiate a major road or traffic junction.
It is a good idea, but the city as a whole needs to be planned and built for it.
decree #1: every building downtown needs to have at least one terrace on the first floor, which connects by above-ground bridges across motorways to terrace(s) of other building(s) or any other pedway part.
...and... that's basically it. but it needs to be followed from the start of the city.
if you follow the idea all the way through, what you get is a duplication of existing streets, which makes no sense when you already have sidewalks on all of them
@@sashkad9246 Not really, as a walkway does not need to follow the street pattern. It can go between or even through buildings. It doesn't need to fill all the space either, that'd be daft. It just creates space for people to walk, shop and rest.
A good example of a modern "pedway" of a sort is The High Line in New York. A fantastic use of old infrastructure and a really nice place to walk.
as the 606 in Chicago... same. Unless you get mugged. Then not so great. But during bright hours with lots of people better.....
These pedways look like a children's maze book; full of dead ends and impractical design. Can you help Jimmy get to the end of the pedways?
Also "Pedway" to an American conjures up nightmare images of scumbags just waiting for an innocent victim. Yeah no thanks! Keep that one in the dustbin of history!
I was in New York City back in 2016, I walked along part of the Highline, which was a disused elevated rail line converted into pedestrian paths and gardens, it’s honestly a lovely and pleasant place to spend an afternoon, it appears to be quite a popular space. So I can totally see a place for these raised pedestrian spaces, if done correctly, hopefully London’s new ones will deliver the same as the Highline.
In the 1980s I used to take groups of little boys up to the Royal Festival Hall by tube about once a month. I didn't at that time even realise that the pedway was a thing. But I was highly delighted to find that the signpost at the station led us up a flight of stairs to a walkway that meant I could get my young kids safely from door to door without having to cross a single road and without having to make any choices about the route. I was devastated when they closed it and began to demolish it.
This was a brilliant idea that has worked well in other countries. In the eighties, we were used to many parts of London being shabby and dirty; and under those standards, the pedways have to be the worst as no effort was made to make them appealling. Great idea, absolutely abysmally designed. I hope the new walkways catch on. What you showed here was so much more attractive.
5:01 "Beautiful only to J. G. Ballard's publisher" Absolutely brilliant!
Thanks! I just thought the notion of an unused network of streets hiding in plain sight was very Ballardian.
La Defense in Paris went the exact opposite way. Instead of separating the pesky pedestrians from the almighty car, they made the entire ground level a pedestrian area and moved the car traffic under ground. No doubt with its own problems but those were not so visible to the casual tourist like me ;)
Meanwhile in Tokyo: pedways everywhere, full of restaurants and shops, metro stops, plenty of people, no cars, no pollution.
Population isn't that bad in the London area where something like this would become necessary yet
@@eb1247 London is one of the cities with worst pollution in Europe
@@Golftime123 probably because it's one of the most populous duh..?? Lol
It's as productive as Tokyo with a third of the population...
What one in Tokyo doesn't have pollution? What one isn't packed with people. And being 30cm taller it was no treat having every umbrella at poke your eye out level.
@@BoyceBailey so you blame on people cause they use umbrella?
I’ve seen pedways work in 2 cities, Houston and Minneapolis. I lived in Houston and worked downtown, the pedways are tunnels that connect most of downtown buildings, allow Houstonians to avoid the searing heat of summer and include food courts & retail space which is why they are successful. I’ve visited Minneapolis in the winter. The pedways are elevated and allow downtown workers to get between their parking garage and office space without braving the tough winters. Again at lunch, they are able to get to lunch and retail spaces without wrapping up.
I used to love walking round these! The one that caught my attention the most was on the Aylesbury estate in Elephant and Castle! My fave is the Barbican! Would love a place there!
I'm a fan of them in the City. Moving around the Barbican on the walkways is much nicer up there than down at street level.
The great pity is, like Jago say, in the 1990s the scheme was dropped. Buildings were built by London Wall, Wormwood Street/Moorgate that could and should have linked up Liverpool Street station and the walkways around the Nat West tower to the walkways of the Barbican. Then there would have been a REAL functionality to them - being able to get onto the them at Broadgate/Liverpool Street and walk above the streets all the way to Smithfield/Barbican station
One of Londons lost opportunitys ;-(
They're fine once you know them but it took me at least a month not to get lost on the way home
Yep, I used to regularly walk to Barbican library from my office on King William Street and enjoyed the 'highwalk' (that was what I knew them as instead of 'pedways') section from Basinghall St onwards. A nice little retreat from the noise and traffic at steret level
I’m a fan too. It is a lost opportunity. I always wonder why when you go to a ‘modern’ development like Canary Wharf or the Olympic Park you have to cross roads to get to places when an older place like the Barbican is so much more pedestrian friendly!
@@BertieFett oh i sooo agree ...and the dumbest one of all is the new development to the north of kings cross station - granary square.
Lets build flats and offices for 40,000 people and connect them to the ONLY nearby public transport, kings cross station, with a single zebra crossing on Goodsway!
Yeah, I like them too - they're a great place to get lunch. If everything built since then had been connected up, I would have little reason to walk at street level.
"Functional but not cosmetic"
Hey, as someone who likes everything cyberpunk I must say that they do have their charm, looks wise.
I find them appealing too - both the late modern aesthetics and the idea of making higher levels than ground available to the public.
i 100% agree, im a massive sci-fi and dystopian fan and they just make me feel dystopian vibes
I like the Brutalist architecture too, for the same reasons. It looks like a good place for some alone time.
@@buddyclem7328 Same here, honestly would be super down with those things being built all over the place, and also having roads raised above ground level sounds weirdly interesting...
@@void6215 around the time the first skyscrapers where built in New York, such ideas popped up, and got really popular. Plans where made for skyscraper - clusters with trams and pedestrian lanes through the sky. The plans turned out to be to much management for corporates who just build their own buildings. The drawings are amazing though. You can read about it in Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas.
You should make another video contrasting this with the Canary Wharf interconnected Mall approach of recent years - a maze of mostly underground walks, shops everywhere but linked with bridges, lifts, elevators. From South Quay footbridge to Churchill Place to the rooftop garden on the island above the new Elizabeth line station.
As others have pointed out they did try this in Liverpool (UK). One surviving relic of this scheme is that Moorfields railway station, an underground stop on the Merseyrail network, has it's main entrance above street level!
In order to reach the underground platforms you have to climb stairs, use an escalator or a ramp and then descend down another escalator to the trains!
This was an excellent, well made, well narrated documentary. WELL DONE!
Thanks!
I can think of two, one from Waterloo station to The London Eye, and the other was on an estate off Walworth Road in Elephant. The ministers who let this go through, never had to use it!
They had the same crazy idea here in Liverpool. Thankfully little was built apart from a couple of large footbridges (dismantled after less than 50 years). Frustratingly a new underground station was built (Moorefields) with the entrance about 20 feet above street level. You have to use steps or an escalator to enter or exit. You go up to then go down to the platforms.
Yes, there was one in town that connected to Tumbles toys and another one around Belle Vale shopping centre. Both thankfully demolished.
I think it's not wellbeing the pedways lack, but variation. The typical street is full of shifting details, even at ground level. If meandering architectural forms, murals, shops, varied facades were implemented, it would be a lot more stimulating - and fun - to walk down
Absolutely, I kept thinking that say in Spain, there would be a variety of different tiles on every stretch.
Yes, one on 4:50 has at least something to look at outside. On the inside it's pretty nothing.
These walkways lack greenery, they are too narrow and they have no entertainment. I worked in a company I could get two ways: shorter one through an industrial borough, and another one that was longer by ten minutes or so, but it lead through a couple of parks. Needless to say I always used the latter one and used the former only in bad weather or when I was running pretty late.
That new one on 5:56 is much better, but it's still a bit too narrow, imho.
@@xobotun_ The greenery!:-) 🖖
There is something similar in the city nord in hamburg. It was planned in the 1950s. The plan also was to completely seperate the pedestrians from the roads. The bridges and walkways are still there today, even though they are not used very much because the houses it connects are mostly offices so there are not many people in the area actually using them. I'm amazed how similar they are to the ones in London. But they are really fun to walk around on and explore every corner. And its especially fun driving a bicycle on them. Thanks for this video!
What a brilliant idea! Being able to walk from one place to another and stay dry is an amazing concept!
If you were starting a city from the beginning, this would make a lot of sense. Keep ground level for traffic, parking and delivery access. Make the first floor contain public entrances and cover it all from the weather.
The current design just looks like somewhere people go if they want mugging, like subways.
if you're starting a city from the beginning you exclude cars completely, or limit their access, and give pedestrians priority. has been tried in many cities and is generally hugely successful.
@@daos3300 Yes or just ban cars completely. People can just take the train or bus
pedways are basically a non starter as they often require the walker to go a convoluted route from a to b with no advantage to walking on the surface
"starting a city from the beginning" --- but that's an unusual situation, such as designing Milton Keynes or Stevenage.
Great video, very interesting. I've walked a few over the years, but unless you're around London Wall they're pretty much forgotten now. I see you got the back entrance stairs into Blackfriars north, that's a handy one if you're in Puddle Dock. Is there a published map of where they all are ??
The Wikipedia entry, of all places, has links to maps of the survivors.
@@JagoHazzardCool, thank you. I'd forgotten about the ones across Upper and Lower Thames Street. They're quite handy still with that busy road. I never realised that Peter's Hill was regarded as one. That's a lovely walk down from St Pauls to the 'wobbly' bridge :-)
Here is the Wiki page on the London Pedway scheme: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Pedway_Scheme
I find them difficult to navigate. It's not clear where they lead because they'll often switch back on themselves confusingly, or have dead ends as mentioned in the video. Perhaps adding maps of the pedways would make them more intuitive and make them feel more enjoyable to wander along.
If they made them easier to navigate and converted them for cyclists it could reduce road congestion and make the surface streets safer for pedestrians, the reduction in traffic could then allow certain streets to have segregated cycle roads added or be turned over to pedestrians and/or bikes entirely (maybe with exceptions for delivery where no alternative exists), driving in the city is a pain anyway, there needs to be more alternatives and if it reduces pollution and traffic it would make the city more pleasant for everyone, including those who need to drive.
I worked in the City of London in the mid to late 60’s for the L.E.B. and the high level walkways around London Wall were always referred to as The Buchanan Report experiment. Keep up the the excellent videos, luv em, especially the narration style.👍😄
In central Kuala Lumpur, we have these too. Its very useful because it helps you to go to various buildings while avoiding the streets
All the potential ammonia smelling and lack of security aside, the now (seems like) desolated pedways give strong vibes of liminality / backrooms (tho it's outdoors) imo
I might be overreacting but when I see this I think, “a series of connected murder tunnels.”
We had the same problem with this idea in Newcastle upon Tyne, anything that’s left is a poor state of disrepair and unsafe that may be a reflection on poor quality of materials used in the original builds
Keep the videos coming! I wasn't able to come to the motherland this summer due to the horrid plague but it's fun to learn more about London and hopefully next year I can come back and check out some of the pedways. I went to the Museum of London in 2018 I think but didn't see the new pedway, probingly not built yet.
You learn something new every day. Thanks!!
i think the idea could work, however, you would have to bring "street-level" up along with it. you don't need a car for a shop, but you do need a person there. bring all shops to the first or second floor. leave everything below for warehouse space and we are all good, right?
Don't bank on it, sounds like a new town close to where I live
Both the way these look and the name pedway alone makes it feel like something you'd 100% expect to find in Judge Dredd.
or rollercoaster tycoon whenever you had to save some extra space and squeeze out walkways over your rides
It directs pedestrian traffic away from shop fronts. People like walking past shops and interacting more with the city.
I don't particularly like walking past shops. If I want a particular shop I walk straight to it.. In fact these pedways are great places if you want to be alone in London, because no-one else uses them. Outside prestigeous areas like the City of London they would be crowded with mugggers though.
@@dukenukem5768 yes, but humans are attracted to lights, colours and things that draw their attention. That's also why people like living in a nice home and having a nice car and displaying nice objects in their home, and living in a nice neighbourhood where they drive past other nice homes. Maybe not all people, but the majority do.
Spokane, WA, USA has a "skywalk" system in the downtown area based off of a similar concept - however, it was successful and is frequently used, mainly because the designers had people in mind rather than cars. All the pedestrian bridges between buildings are fully enclosed hallways with windows, and they connect via hallways within buildings (rooms off of these hallways have been converted in many buildings to cafes, offices, retail, a hair salon, etc) and the main purpose is to enable a person to go from one end of downtown to the other without having to wait to cross a street or deal with inclement weather, which is very useful in a place where blizzards are common in winter.
I have to admit I do love Pedways, they're so fun to navigate and one of my favourite things when going to the Barbican (which is my favourite spot in London)
One of the most interesting thing about a lot of European cities is that almost every Road is a pedestrian Road with buildings all around it because of how old these cities are. Here in America you only see that in a couple of cities on the coasts. Particularly you see that here in America in the cities of New England. These old old cities in Europe have a very distinct look that isn't replicated in the rest of the western world, nothing I said he was particularly important I just think that's a neat thought. And whoever took the time to read this comment I hope you have a wonderful day.
Thanks for your interesting perspective. When I was in Florida, i was amazed how it was almost impossible to walk from A to B, on foot; no pavements! It's as if no-one had considered people might actually want to walk a short distance between buildings if they didn't happen to have a car for the afternoon.
And, Good day from the UK 😀
I hate the new cities, they feel really depressing to me. Even the newly constructed (this decade) city arias in my old European city feel depressing some how
I suppose we take it for granted in Europe that we can walk or cycle almost anywhere and unless you live out in the sticks there is often a shop nearby. It was the same in South Africa when I was little (albeit greater distances) but last time I went I noticed new housing complexes without amenities along highways that are only really accessible by car.
How dare you be cheerful and positive on the internet!!
This makes me think of when I get mad at all the traffic in cities:skyline and put snaking pedestrian paths pretty much anywhere
Good idea, badly executed. I would really love the system if:
- had great design, benches, shrubbery, trees, etc.
- consistent cover from wind, rain, noise and blaring sunshine.
- great access to street level, with as few stairs as possible, provide escalators and lifts and whole system fully accessible.
- great access to shops, bus/tube stops along the way
- great access to parking space - leave a car, use the pedway to get around the city
- bike friendly
- easy to navigate with clear routes, maps and landmarks.
- regularly cleaned, maintained and patrolled.
These are supposed to be "Pedways" ie. "pedestrian ways" riding of bikes should not be permitted , you know what chaos those maniacs cause on the pavements meant for pedestrians (persons that WALK) on the streets below already.
@@Hanzo.Azmodan We have pavements and all the shops are on the ground, frankly turning them into "pedalways" instead would be a great idea to get people out of their cars, probably be quicker for people to commute by bike if there were dedicated bike highways!
We have one in our town built in the early 00s. The spiral staircase South entrance always smells of wee but the pedway bridge towards the railway station is fine.
It's always a pleasure to watch well thought content! As an architect and an admirer of the Barbican Estate, this concept resonates with me as I believe it can be rich and diverse in its approach, especially if it is intertwined with ample public spaces. You can also find a great example of those elevated pathways in The High Line in Manhattan, which is a converted old elevated train railway into a beautiful set of different connected spaces.
We call them Skyways where I live, and they're enclosed, heated and cooled, and accessible via elevator (you call them lifts) and escalators (no idea what you call moving staircases). They connect absolutely every single building to every other one so you never have to walk outside. It's helpful because it's extremely cold here in winter (as low as -40°F/-40°C) and snowy, and winter can last as long as 7 months, while our summers can be very hot and humid. They get jam-packed. Ours are connected to shops and restaurants, not to mention parking ramps and office buildings, making it convenient for workers going to lunch. I dunno, Londoners. You're doing it wrong.
where u from bruh that sounds literally cool
@@Crosshill sounds like Canada 🇨🇦
Minneapolis I'm assuming?
Difference is the skyways in Minneapolis grew organically and solved a real problem in the weather in our town.
Why does the start feel like an episode of Peep Show 😂
Can we please get this guy to narrate some audio books?
The High Line here in NYC is pretty successful because it presents itself as a park. It's pretty nice. Theyre thinking of doing something similar in The Bronx too.
Similar to what they did in Montreal, except the amazing thing about Montreal is that all the "pedways" are underground, and connect directly to the metro stations at mezzanine level, and there are a bunch of underground shops connected directly to them; there is even a full on underground shopping center underneath an office building downtown!
The failure of pedways to take off in their original incarnation is linked with the failings in high-rise flats and “villages in the sky” from the same era. Decent concepts executed with staggering arrogance and complete ignorance of the social factors. Pedways deserve a second chance, but also need innovative building design to make more of the upper floor the pedways connect to.
Some say that some people who walk there get lost forever
Years just aimlessly walking around barbican
Yes, they are littered with the skeletons of past users.
Wasn't there the reverse idea once of roads in the sky and pedestrians at ground level? For example I think there was the inner motorway ring around the centre of London. Just bits got built with flyovers ending in mid-air. Similarly in Salisbury there is (was) a flyover ending in mid-air. The problem is to build it in one go requires too much demolition and money and it gives rise to too much opposition and it's a big risk that it doesn't work in practice. If done piece meal it is subject to changing ideas, changing political make-up and changing financial well-being of councils. Evolution has merits.
That Barbican area walk you showed in the beginning was my walk to and from secondary school! It was nice to not be right on the street but only worked because our school was connected to the walkway and otherwise wouldn’t have made sense to use. It was also plagued by creeps flashing schoolchildren and often smelled of pee...
U mak gud content. I subs.
(Translates to: That's nice content, i like your voice and also the engaging tone in which you explain things, you won another subscriber)