5 ms·

Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1

Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/ https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/ The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy: https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-from-raleigh-nc-fayetteville-street-renaissance https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-... I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.

hyperpape 8y ago
True, though I don’t know if it would have the same effect today. There’s 5000 people living downtown today, which is very new. When I go downtown, I usually don’t park on Fayetteville, I usually park a few blocks away and walk.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I don't know the history of the mall in Raleigh but I suspect at least part of the issue was that, at the time, downtown Raleigh probably wasn't a place a lot of people wanted to walk around. As you say, there are a lot more people (and companies) downtown today and more upscale restaurants, bars, etc. Though, even today, like a lot of smaller cities that have had something of a renaissance, most of the places the average upscale professional would want to walk to are in a fairly small area.
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    I wasn't alive in 1977, but in the 90s, the perception was that downtown was busy during the day, but a ghost town after 5:00 PM. I don't believe that particular area was particularly unsafe or unwelcoming, it's just that the only reason people were there was daytime business.
vbuwivbiu 8y ago
1977
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  The area was closed to vehicular traffic in 1977. The article about possibly replacing the pedestrian mall is 1997. Construction began in 2005. The area reopened to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in mid 2006. The article about the results and other cities considering the same is 2007. All of which is in TFA[1] the person you're replying to linked [1] https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-from-raleigh-nc-fayetteville-street-renaissance https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-... I'm not sure if it's what you intended but implying the whole thing is from 1977 is misleading.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
My city did this with bike lanes. Most of the housing isn't within easily walk able distance from downtown and the city is where a lot of people from surrounding towns go to buy things. All the downtown businesses that weathered the recession got rewarded with all their customers decided to spend their money at the businesses a mile away that had readily available parking. Grade A city planning right there. /s
simonsarris 8y ago
Church st in Burlington VT partially closed to cars starting in 1980 (based on Stroget in Copenhagen) and ongoing into 2005 with more and more blocks carved out for pedestrians only. It has been very successful. Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly? (The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?) https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/ https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/ https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history
- peller 8y ago
  I don't know anything about the Raleigh project but some other thoughts on maybe why Church St works: - Burlington is the biggest city in VT, and being on Lake Champlain and relatively close to the best ski areas in the state, it attracts a lot of tourists year round - A ton of local businesses downtown, urban/residential neighborhoods are also very close - A fair amount of parking (multiple parking garages, nearby on-street parking and parking lots) - There's City Hall Park, and the town promotes the 'culture', e.g. allowing street vendors and performers, and with the recentish ban on smoking, it's pushed most of the bums into the alleys/side streets
- munk-a 8y ago
  I'd attribute a large portion of church street's success to zoning policies, the city has kept that street focused on small business to avoid that common american experience of walking by a walmart for twenty minutes... the north end of the street was more sparse in terms of doorways and always was more empty, but the center and southern end were vibrant. So I think the key to trying to do this is to encourage small business to minimize the feet/door so that there is a reasonable variety of services available.
- gascan 8y ago
  Just speculating, but looking at the photos from Fayetteville, it was totally car-scale. Sure, it was pedestrian-only, but just look at the pictures of the locale. Huge buildings, long distances, wide street. This is not the best example but the first to pop to mind- compare to Pearl Street Mall, in Boulder, which seems to be doing well: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,74.44h,82.61t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D167.73972%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,... Which, just skimming, looks to be laid out similar to Church Street.
miketuritzin 8y ago
You could also make the argument that opening city centers to cars should be considered carefully, and that is also true. It just happens to be the current default almost everywhere.
- deleted 8y ago
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davidw 8y ago
The town I'm from, Eugene, Oregon, did this too. They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise. Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.
- andys627 8y ago
  Good compromise considering where we’re at in the us.
- kristjansson 8y ago
  There’s something to be said for joint car/pedestrian spaces as a permanent situation. Pike St outside of Pike Place market and Hanover St in the North End of Boston come to mind. Both are nominally streets, and cars attempt to drive them, but the speeds are slow enough, and there are enough pedestrians that both are on relatively equal footing. Cars are cautious of the pedestrians, and pedestrians weave around the cars, everyone has their choice of mode of transport.
randcraw 8y ago
Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978. The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying. This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  Heh, enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize exposure to the weather, thereby creating what we usually call a 'shopping mall.' Ah the irony that would be.
mlinksva 8y ago
Downtown pedestrian malls were tried in many US cities and mostly failed. They were an attempt to make downtown retail competitive with suburban mall retail, by the former emulating the latter, after the former was already failing. They only worked when other things were in place that made lots of people walking downtown utilitarian, like adjacent universities, tourist attractions, and dense connected residential. Few people wished to drive and park near downtown for a quasi-mall shopping experience, apparently. Lots has been written about this, but one overview: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmidt.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...
mschuetz 8y ago
As a counter example, Vienna largely converted its second major shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, to a mostly pedestrian + bike zone, with parts of it also shared space with cars, though they do not have priority over pedestrians. Gets very crowded during core shopping hours, so much that biking there is rather difficult. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe_Shopping_f.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_... First one was Kärntner Straße / Graben, which is pedestrians only. https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AMH_BBB-12.jpg https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AM... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2C_K%C3%A4rntner_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_panoramio_%28101%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2... I'm looking forward to more streets getting closed off to cars. Way too much space is reserved for cars already.
nedt 8y ago
Actually you need people in the city to not depend on cars. Public transport, cycle lanes and a reason to stay in the city centre like good restaurants, cafes, some festivals. Just closing a street to cars might just make everyone drive around and miss it. Also don‘t let big shopping malls be build at the outside of the city with huge parking areas. Create parks instead.
kevstev 8y ago
Contrary to that anecdote, Jersey City (across the Hudson river from Manhattan), created a no-car zone near one of its busier subway stops and what was once a dead-zone after 8pm is now an extremely vibrant place filled with bars, restaurants and shops. Proximity to mass transit and having density that already discourages driving helps.
- notyourday 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with car free streets and everything to do with the Jersey City being on the other side from Manhattan with rents being 50% or lower than the rents in Manhattan and Jersey city being accessible by PATH.
  - kevstev 8y ago
    I don't think you understand. The mayor closed off a stretch of Newark Avenue, which leads right into the Grove St Path Station in late 2014. Prior to this, Newark Avenue was a strip of fairly grimy stores, a few restaurants, and some new promising places like Word Bookstore had been moving in since 2010 or so. Still, this was a pretty dead place at night. In 2008, I would go to one of the two bars there and it would be a literal ghost town, with stores boarded up with metal gates and such- it looked almost post-apocalyptic. It was a little better from 2011-2014, but still it was a quiet area at night. After the pedestrian plaza was put in, the amount of foot traffic increased ten fold, particularly during the day when it was a heavily traffic-ed street. This brought in a new wave of bars and restaurants to the area, and its now a destination on its own, filled with people nearly 24/7. In fact it has gotten so popular and become such a destination, the city is now trying to introduce ordinances to reduce noise at night. The change was instantaneous after the pedestrian plaza was put in place. People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      > People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify. Bed-Stuy Bushwick Gowanus East New York Bronx Inwood

hyperpape 8y ago

True, though I don’t know if it would have the same effect today. There’s 5000 people living downtown today, which is very new. When I go downtown, I usually don’t park on Fayetteville, I usually park a few blocks away and walk.

ghaff 8y ago
I don't know the history of the mall in Raleigh but I suspect at least part of the issue was that, at the time, downtown Raleigh probably wasn't a place a lot of people wanted to walk around. As you say, there are a lot more people (and companies) downtown today and more upscale restaurants, bars, etc. Though, even today, like a lot of smaller cities that have had something of a renaissance, most of the places the average upscale professional would want to walk to are in a fairly small area.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  I wasn't alive in 1977, but in the 90s, the perception was that downtown was busy during the day, but a ghost town after 5:00 PM. I don't believe that particular area was particularly unsafe or unwelcoming, it's just that the only reason people were there was daytime business.

vbuwivbiu 8y ago

1977

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The area was closed to vehicular traffic in 1977. The article about possibly replacing the pedestrian mall is 1997. Construction began in 2005. The area reopened to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in mid 2006. The article about the results and other cities considering the same is 2007. All of which is in TFA[1] the person you're replying to linked [1] https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-from-raleigh-nc-fayetteville-street-renaissance https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-... I'm not sure if it's what you intended but implying the whole thing is from 1977 is misleading.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

My city did this with bike lanes. Most of the housing isn't within easily walk able distance from downtown and the city is where a lot of people from surrounding towns go to buy things. All the downtown businesses that weathered the recession got rewarded with all their customers decided to spend their money at the businesses a mile away that had readily available parking. Grade A city planning right there. /s

simonsarris 8y ago

Church st in Burlington VT partially closed to cars starting in 1980 (based on Stroget in Copenhagen) and ongoing into 2005 with more and more blocks carved out for pedestrians only. It has been very successful. Why did it work, when Raleigh failed? What needs to be "considered carefully", exactly? (The large college nearby definitely helps in VT's case. But what else?) https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/ https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/ https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history https://www.churchstmarketplace.com/about/history

peller 8y ago
I don't know anything about the Raleigh project but some other thoughts on maybe why Church St works: - Burlington is the biggest city in VT, and being on Lake Champlain and relatively close to the best ski areas in the state, it attracts a lot of tourists year round - A ton of local businesses downtown, urban/residential neighborhoods are also very close - A fair amount of parking (multiple parking garages, nearby on-street parking and parking lots) - There's City Hall Park, and the town promotes the 'culture', e.g. allowing street vendors and performers, and with the recentish ban on smoking, it's pushed most of the bums into the alleys/side streets
munk-a 8y ago
I'd attribute a large portion of church street's success to zoning policies, the city has kept that street focused on small business to avoid that common american experience of walking by a walmart for twenty minutes... the north end of the street was more sparse in terms of doorways and always was more empty, but the center and southern end were vibrant. So I think the key to trying to do this is to encourage small business to minimize the feet/door so that there is a reasonable variety of services available.
gascan 8y ago
Just speculating, but looking at the photos from Fayetteville, it was totally car-scale. Sure, it was pedestrian-only, but just look at the pictures of the locale. Huge buildings, long distances, wide street. This is not the best example but the first to pop to mind- compare to Pearl Street Mall, in Boulder, which seems to be doing well: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,74.44h,82.61t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DYTsjWcvQHaMkDss9oaC4cQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D167.73972%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,... Which, just skimming, looks to be laid out similar to Church Street.

miketuritzin 8y ago

You could also make the argument that opening city centers to cars should be considered carefully, and that is also true. It just happens to be the current default almost everywhere.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

davidw 8y ago

The town I'm from, Eugene, Oregon, did this too. They later reopened it, but put in roads that let cars through, but very slowly. Seems to be a good compromise. Closing a road entirely is probably something you should do once you're at such a level of pedestrian traffic that the car lanes are impeding pedestrians, which isn't terribly common in US cities. However, making areas where people don't drive fast is absolutely a win.

andys627 8y ago
Good compromise considering where we’re at in the us.
kristjansson 8y ago
There’s something to be said for joint car/pedestrian spaces as a permanent situation. Pike St outside of Pike Place market and Hanover St in the North End of Boston come to mind. Both are nominally streets, and cars attempt to drive them, but the speeds are slow enough, and there are enough pedestrians that both are on relatively equal footing. Cars are cautious of the pedestrians, and pedestrians weave around the cars, everyone has their choice of mode of transport.

randcraw 8y ago

Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978. The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying. This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.

rootusrootus 8y ago
Heh, enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize exposure to the weather, thereby creating what we usually call a 'shopping mall.' Ah the irony that would be.

mlinksva 8y ago

Downtown pedestrian malls were tried in many US cities and mostly failed. They were an attempt to make downtown retail competitive with suburban mall retail, by the former emulating the latter, after the former was already failing. They only worked when other things were in place that made lots of people walking downtown utilitarian, like adjacent universities, tourist attractions, and dense connected residential. Few people wished to drive and park near downtown for a quasi-mall shopping experience, apparently. Lots has been written about this, but one overview: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmidt.pdf https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/revisiting_pedestrian_malls_scmi...

mschuetz 8y ago

As a counter example, Vienna largely converted its second major shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, to a mostly pedestrian + bike zone, with parts of it also shared space with cars, though they do not have priority over pedestrians. Gets very crowded during core shopping hours, so much that biking there is rather difficult. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe_Shopping_f.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_... First one was Kärntner Straße / Graben, which is pedestrians only. https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AMH_BBB-12.jpg https://www.streifzugmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/AM... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2C_K%C3%A4rntner_Stra%C3%9Fe_-_panoramio_%28101%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Vienna%2... I'm looking forward to more streets getting closed off to cars. Way too much space is reserved for cars already.

nedt 8y ago

Actually you need people in the city to not depend on cars. Public transport, cycle lanes and a reason to stay in the city centre like good restaurants, cafes, some festivals. Just closing a street to cars might just make everyone drive around and miss it. Also don‘t let big shopping malls be build at the outside of the city with huge parking areas. Create parks instead.

kevstev 8y ago

Contrary to that anecdote, Jersey City (across the Hudson river from Manhattan), created a no-car zone near one of its busier subway stops and what was once a dead-zone after 8pm is now an extremely vibrant place filled with bars, restaurants and shops. Proximity to mass transit and having density that already discourages driving helps.

notyourday 8y ago
It has nothing to do with car free streets and everything to do with the Jersey City being on the other side from Manhattan with rents being 50% or lower than the rents in Manhattan and Jersey city being accessible by PATH.
- kevstev 8y ago
  I don't think you understand. The mayor closed off a stretch of Newark Avenue, which leads right into the Grove St Path Station in late 2014. Prior to this, Newark Avenue was a strip of fairly grimy stores, a few restaurants, and some new promising places like Word Bookstore had been moving in since 2010 or so. Still, this was a pretty dead place at night. In 2008, I would go to one of the two bars there and it would be a literal ghost town, with stores boarded up with metal gates and such- it looked almost post-apocalyptic. It was a little better from 2011-2014, but still it was a quiet area at night. After the pedestrian plaza was put in, the amount of foot traffic increased ten fold, particularly during the day when it was a heavily traffic-ed street. This brought in a new wave of bars and restaurants to the area, and its now a destination on its own, filled with people nearly 24/7. In fact it has gotten so popular and become such a destination, the city is now trying to introduce ordinances to reduce noise at night. The change was instantaneous after the pedestrian plaza was put in place. People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    > People seem to forget these days how much Jersey City was shit on up until 2011 or so. It was "jersey" and it was absolutely not a definite that it would gentrify. Bed-Stuy Bushwick Gowanus East New York Bronx Inwood