Pedestrian zone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones) are areas of a city or town in which automobile traffic is prohibited. They are instituted by communities who feel that it is desirable to have areas not dominated by the automobile. Converting a street or an area to car-free use is called pedestrianisation.
Auto-free zones have a great variety of attitudes or rules towards human powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and kick scooters. Some have a total ban on anything with wheels, others ban certain categories, others segregate the human-powered wheels from foot traffic, and others still have no rules at all. Many of the Middle Eastern examples have no wheeled traffic, but use donkeys for freight transport.
Towns in many low-income countries are effectively largely carfree simply because cars are uncommon in those countries. As cars become more common, however, many of these towns are suffering from the ill effects that accompany motorization.
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[edit] Europe
A large number of European towns and cities have made part of their centres car-free since the early 1960s. These are often accompanied by car parks on the edge of the pedestrianised zone, and, in the larger cases, park and ride schemes. Central Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest examples: the auto-free zone is centered on Strøget, a pedestrian shopping street, which is in fact not a single street but a series of interconnected avenues which create a very large auto-free zone, although it is crossed in places by streets with vehicular traffic. Most of these zones allow delivery trucks to service the businesses located there during the early morning, and street-cleaning vehicles will usually go through these streets after most shops have closed for the night.
The term "pedestrianised zone" is used in British English, and most other European countries use a similar term (French: zone piétonne, German: Fußgängerzone, Spanish: zona peatonal).
The first purpose-built pedestrianized shopping centre in the United Kingdom was (and is) in Stevenage.
There are also many towns and cities which have never allowed motor vehicles. The archetypal example is Venice, which occupies a myriad of islands in a lagoon, divided by and accessed from canals. Motor traffic stops at the car park at the head of the viaduct from the mainland, and water transport or walking takes over from there. However, motor vehicles are allowed on the Lido.
Other examples are Cinque Terre in Italy, Ghent in Belgium, which is one of the largest car-free areas in Europe and the Old Town of Rhodes, since many, if not most of the streets are too steep and/or narrow for automobile circulation.
Sark, one of the Channel Islands just out from the northern coast of France, is also a car-free zone. Transport there is mainly by horse-drawn cart and freight is pulled by tractors.
The medieval city of Mdina in Malta does not allow automobiles past the city walls. It is known as the "Silent City" because of the absence of motor traffic in the city.
Freetown Christiana has banned cars within its borders. However, parking space for 14 cars has been established within its borders.
Mount Athos, an Autonomous Monastic State within the sovereignty of Greece, does not permit automobiles on its territory. Trucks and work-related vehicles only are in use there. Hydra, Saronic Islands in Greece is also auto-free.
The islands of Istanbul including Büyükada, Kinaliada and Heybeli ada are auto-free.
Borkum, Germany an island in the North Sea is auto-free.
[edit] North America
In North America, where a more commonly used term is pedestrian mall, such areas are still in their infancy. Few cities have pedestrian zones, but some have pedestrianized single streets. Many pedestrian streets are surfaced with cobblestones, or pavement bricks, thus discouraging any kind of wheeled traffic, including wheelchairs. They are rarely completely free of motor vehicles. Often, all of the cross streets are open to motorized traffic, which thus intrudes on the pedestrian flow at every street corner. In a few pedestrian streets with no cross street cars or trucks deliveries are made by trucks by night.
[edit] Canada
Some Canadian examples are the Sparks Street Mall area of Ottawa, the Distillery District in Toronto, Scarth Street Mall in Regina, Stephen Avenue Mall in Calgary (with certain areas open to parking for permit holders) and part of Prince Arthur street in Montreal. Algonquin and Ward's Islands, parts of the Toronto Islands group, are also car-free zones for all 700 residents. Since the summer of 2004, Toronto has also been experimenting with "Pedestrian Sundays"[1] in its busy Kensington Market. Granville Mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia was a run-down section of buildings on Granville Street built in the 1840s that was restored in the late 1970s. The area was then closed off to vehicles.
[edit] United States
In the United States, these zones as commonly called pedestrian malls or pedestrian streets.
Auto-free zones are less common in North America. One example is the residential area of the Toronto Islands. A number of cities have created single pedestrian streets. Mackinac Island, between the upper and lower peninsula of Michigan, banned horseless carriages in 1896,[citation needed] making it auto free. The original ban still stands.[citation needed], except for emergency vehicles. Travel on the island is largely by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriage. An 8.5 mi (13.7 km) road, M-185 rings the island, and numerous roads cover the interior. M-185 is one of the few highways in the United States without motorized vehicles.
Downtown Crossing in Boston is a shopping district which prohibits automobiles during daytime hours. Both the main thoroughfare of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and Memorial Drive, a busy road in Cambridge, MA are closed to car traffic each Sunday during the summer to allow pedestrians, bikers, skateboarders and roller/inlineskaters an opportunity to use the road.
Fire Island in Suffolk County, New York is auto free east of the Fire Island Lighthouse and west of Smith Point County Park (with the exception of emergency vehicles).
Supai, Arizona, located within the Havasupai Indian Reservation is entirely car-free, the only community in the United States where mail is still carried out by mule. Supai is 8 miles to the nearest road, accessible only by foot, horse/mule, or helicopter.
[edit] South America
[edit] Argentina
Argentina's big cities; Córdoba, Mendoza and Rosario have lively pedestrianised street centers (Spanish: peatonales) combined with town squares and parks which are crowded with people walking at every hour of the day and night. Most (if not all) of Argentina's cities are human-scale and pedestrian-friendly, although vehicle traffic may be hectic in some areas.
In Buenos Aires some stretches of Calle Florida Street have been pedestrianised since 1913.[1] which makes it one of the oldest car-free thoroughfares in the world today. Car-free Calle Florida, Lavalle and other streets contribute to a vibrant shopping and restaurant scene where street performers and tango dancers abound, streets are crossed with vehicular traffic at corners.
[edit] Brazil
Paquetá Island in Rio de Janeiro is auto-free.
[edit] Asia
Pedestrian zones in Japan are called hokosha tengoku (歩行者天国, literally "pedestrian heaven"). Clis Road, in Sendai, Japan, is a covered pedestrian mall. Several major streets in Tokyo are closed to vehicles during weekends. One particular temporary hokosha tengoku in Akihabara was cancelled after the Akihabara massacre in which a man rammed a truck into the pedestrian traffic and subsequently stabbed more than 12 people.
[edit] Africa
North Africa contains some of the largest auto-free areas in the world. Fes-al-Bali, a medina of Fes, Morocco, with its population of 156,000, may be the world's largest contiguous completely carfree area, and the medinas of Cairo, Casablanca, Meknes, Essaouira, and Tangier are quite extensive.
[edit] Neighborhoods
Several dozen new carfree neighborhoods have been built in recent decades, mostly in Europe. An example is Vauban, a neighborhood of 5,000 in Freiburg, Germany.
[edit] See also
- Car Free Days
- List of car-free places
- Carfree city
- Living street
- Jan Gehl
- Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
- Bicycle City
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pedestrian zones |
- World Carfree Network
- Carfree.com
- Community Cycles - Working towards creating car-free lifestyles
- Carfree areas worldwide, from Autofrei Wohnen (in German with a few English pages or English subtitles)
[edit] References
- ^ (Spanish) Calle Florida History: www.buenosaires.com
