4 ms·

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the

by manmal 8y ago

In the place where I live (Austria, town with 30k residents), the Fußgängerzone in the center is currently dying. Shops close left and right, and migrate to the three big shopping centers. This town is a strange mix because almost everybody needs to own a car (bus system is underdeveloped) to take kids to school or shop groceries, but the town itself is not that big (a lot of places are reachable by bike). Most people rather use the newly rebuilt, comfortable malls with free parking and major brand chains over the harder-to-reach-by-car town center with parking fees and mom-and-pop stores. The administration is taking desperate measures now, trying to keep shops from closing by promising funding etc, but it turns out the big malls made exclusive deals with brands and there’s not much anyone can do. I guess Fußgängerzonen only work with an intact public transport system that people can rely on and that won’t take you thrice as long to get there.

elliotec 8y ago
But in Vienna, it seems like the Fußgängerzonen are all over the middle of the city and have a mix of the fancy brands that would normally be in a shopping center, while also having smaller and more boutique shops.
- stewbrew 8y ago
  There are also Fußgängerzonen in other districts like Mariahilf, Meidling, Favoriten etc. You're right that they are mainly for shopping but the shops were already there before the streets were turned into Fußgängerzonen. The Fußgängerzonen helped to keep the shops and thus the city alive. There are also plenty of restaurants, cafés etc.
oska 8y ago
Why do parents feel the need to take children to school in a small town in a very safe country? Why can't they ride a bike or walk?
- manmal 8y ago
  With a dysfunctional public transit system and unsafe bike lanes (not separated from the road), that doesn’t always work. Our school is 10km away, so for us, bike is off the table for now.
- alexis_fr 8y ago
  People talk to each other. They know about migrants’ rapes. It triggers a question which is « Is it true », but countries, Europe and UN has a track record of lying and forbidding the publication if information about migrants, so it’s a bit like in DDR: choose whom you trust, but your child’s safety is on the line. The discredit in govt trust, information and islamisation of our countries is so wide that many people are not only talking about Europe-exit, but about UN exit. I guess it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.
  - sgift 8y ago
    > People talk to each other. They know about migrants’ rapes. 'Know' as in "I've heard that the Meyer has a brother who has a friend who has another friend and THEY have a sister who know someone that was once raped by a migrant". Or the same way anti-vaxxers know that vaccines lead to autism.
- rumcajz 8y ago
  In Switzerland (at least where we live) parents are actively discouraged to bring kids to school or pre-school. The kids are supposed to get there on their own.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    I think that’s all over the country. I’ve also asked Romands friends, same there.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy. We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter. Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk their kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of children or not.
  - williamdclt 8y ago
    That's the first time I hear that parents take their children to school because they're afraid of wolves
    - freedomben 8y ago
      In my town in Alaska a couple years ago we had a school child get mauled to death by a bear. In some parts of the world, man is still part of the natural eco-system and food chain.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    Then you know little of wolves: they would only hunt a moose in a large pack. And yes, they are very shy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YybY5sEeZUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YybY5sEeZUU
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      They're not as shy as some people argue it seems: They've gone into people's garden and killed the dog there. Also I recently saw recordings of one or two wolves attacking a moose with calf so the part about only attacking in packs seems to be proven wrong. Kids are often peoples biggest investment. I understand if they play it safe. (I also argue that we should keep the wolves. I just disagree with people who claim wolves aren't dangerous to people.)
      - Annatar 8y ago
- alistairSH 8y ago
  Paranoia. Good friends of mine live 1/4 mile from the elementary school. There is one semi-busy street crossing, BUT there is a pedestrian tunnel. So, no there are actually no streets to cross. Yet, the kids are bussed to school. They can't be allowed to walk 1/4 mile with ZERO street crossings! It's completely ridiculous.
GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago
Living in the Netherlands, the city center (practically no cars allowed) in 2 cities I've lived in over the past years, both have lots of shops going out of business. But I would identify this trend as people doing more online shopping, most of the major shopping centers are still in this city center, and it has parking garages near, but people are just doing less shopping in brick and mortar stores.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Madison, WI, USA has a section where cars are mostly not allowed. When I was a kid, it was a major retail destination, and people would make weekend trips from an hour or more away (by car) to go there. There was recently a huge wave of shops closing. They've since been replaced by restaurants and cafes, and they seem to be doing well, but nobody's going to go into ten restaurants in a single afternoon, so the area still feels less alive than it used to. To me, though, this particular phenomenon feels like an extension of the death of the American shopping mall, and not evidence that a city with an outdoor environment designed to accommodate its own residents (and not just their cars) wouldn't be nice. If it's just a business district that's designed for pedestrians, well, that's really nothing more than a public version of the outdoor shopping mall. I'm most definitely not looking for a shopping mall. I'm looking for my kids (and me) to be able to go outside and ride a bike or kick a ball or organize a neighborhood game of tag, without being dependent on me to drive them by car to the nearest city park in order to do it. And I'm looking for a culture where neighbors collectively spend time outside, together, as a community, rather than being cooped up indoors or walled up inside their own back yards because the neighborhood's public space is a fundamentally uncomfortable place to be.
stewbrew 8y ago
Complain to the local politics who made this (the shopping centers at the town's outskirts) happen although it was already known what effects this would have on the town's center. This is a pretty common development in, e.g., Lower Austria where politicians in the 1990s (and in some towns even in the 2000s) thought this were a good idea. Fußgängerzones work where politicians don't ruin town centers.
- manmal 8y ago
  Exactly. We are probably talking about the same town, in Lower Austria :)
- dmichulke 8y ago
  Same in Eastern Germany, there were no malls prior to '89 and after that they had to do something.
seer 8y ago
I’ve seen a similar thing happen in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, but with a twist. When there were no malls, all the high end shops were located at the center in the pedestrian friendly zone. Then they started building them like crazy, all the shops moved there, and the center started dying. But something interesting happened, since it was still valuable real estate, those people didn’t go down easy - all those former shops turned into restaurants, cafes and bars. And the center became much more inviting, and markedly more “alive” than when it was in effect an outdoor mall. So now people go to the malls to buy stuff, and go to the center to hangout, and I think everyone is happy. Though among those restaurants new shops have started opening as you know, they go where the people are at, but the malls are still going strong. Maybe once the online shopping thing hits Bulgaria properly the malls would close/transform, but people would still flock to the center for all the recreational places.
- flexie 8y ago
  I noticed the same. Other factors played in too. Around the time the malls came to Sofia, the municipality also started renovating the main streets in the city center turning Vitoshka into a real pedestrian street and building proper sidewalks on others (like Shisman). The renovations are still going on (Solunska, Graf Ignatiev) and this will only accelerate the process of turning the city center into a recreational area. It's really nice to see how new restaurants, bars, juice bars, soup places, sandwich places, and cafes pop up on streets just months after they have been renovated. Other factors accelerating the process has been the large expansion of the metro, which happened at the same time as the malls were being being built, the renovation of tram tracks, purchase of decent trams, and the almost complete replacement of the old city buses with modern ones, all of which has given people from the neighborhoods easier access to the city center (which has never been very accessible by car). Sofia is slowly becoming a modern metropolis.

by manmal 8y ago

elliotec 8y ago

But in Vienna, it seems like the Fußgängerzonen are all over the middle of the city and have a mix of the fancy brands that would normally be in a shopping center, while also having smaller and more boutique shops.

stewbrew 8y ago
There are also Fußgängerzonen in other districts like Mariahilf, Meidling, Favoriten etc. You're right that they are mainly for shopping but the shops were already there before the streets were turned into Fußgängerzonen. The Fußgängerzonen helped to keep the shops and thus the city alive. There are also plenty of restaurants, cafés etc.

oska 8y ago

Why do parents feel the need to take children to school in a small town in a very safe country? Why can't they ride a bike or walk?

manmal 8y ago
With a dysfunctional public transit system and unsafe bike lanes (not separated from the road), that doesn’t always work. Our school is 10km away, so for us, bike is off the table for now.
alexis_fr 8y ago
People talk to each other. They know about migrants’ rapes. It triggers a question which is « Is it true », but countries, Europe and UN has a track record of lying and forbidding the publication if information about migrants, so it’s a bit like in DDR: choose whom you trust, but your child’s safety is on the line. The discredit in govt trust, information and islamisation of our countries is so wide that many people are not only talking about Europe-exit, but about UN exit. I guess it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.
- sgift 8y ago
  > People talk to each other. They know about migrants’ rapes. 'Know' as in "I've heard that the Meyer has a brother who has a friend who has another friend and THEY have a sister who know someone that was once raped by a migrant". Or the same way anti-vaxxers know that vaccines lead to autism.
rumcajz 8y ago
In Switzerland (at least where we live) parents are actively discouraged to bring kids to school or pre-school. The kids are supposed to get there on their own.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  I think that’s all over the country. I’ve also asked Romands friends, same there.
reitanqild 8y ago
In the winter it is too slippery for bikes and it sometimes gets biting cold - or worse IMO: cold, wet and windy. We pay for bus for our 3 oldest kids in the winter. Also wolves are returningnin some parts of Europe and while people say wolves are so shy and afraid of humans I understand extremely well why parents don't risk their kids in an experiment to see if the predator that lives off moose actually is afraid of children or not.
- williamdclt 8y ago
  That's the first time I hear that parents take their children to school because they're afraid of wolves
  - freedomben 8y ago
    In my town in Alaska a couple years ago we had a school child get mauled to death by a bear. In some parts of the world, man is still part of the natural eco-system and food chain.
- Annatar 8y ago
  Then you know little of wolves: they would only hunt a moose in a large pack. And yes, they are very shy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YybY5sEeZUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YybY5sEeZUU
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    They're not as shy as some people argue it seems: They've gone into people's garden and killed the dog there. Also I recently saw recordings of one or two wolves attacking a moose with calf so the part about only attacking in packs seems to be proven wrong. Kids are often peoples biggest investment. I understand if they play it safe. (I also argue that we should keep the wolves. I just disagree with people who claim wolves aren't dangerous to people.)
    - Annatar 8y ago
alistairSH 8y ago
Paranoia. Good friends of mine live 1/4 mile from the elementary school. There is one semi-busy street crossing, BUT there is a pedestrian tunnel. So, no there are actually no streets to cross. Yet, the kids are bussed to school. They can't be allowed to walk 1/4 mile with ZERO street crossings! It's completely ridiculous.

GLjEI4YbnGD27LB 8y ago

Living in the Netherlands, the city center (practically no cars allowed) in 2 cities I've lived in over the past years, both have lots of shops going out of business. But I would identify this trend as people doing more online shopping, most of the major shopping centers are still in this city center, and it has parking garages near, but people are just doing less shopping in brick and mortar stores.

bunderbunder 8y ago
Madison, WI, USA has a section where cars are mostly not allowed. When I was a kid, it was a major retail destination, and people would make weekend trips from an hour or more away (by car) to go there. There was recently a huge wave of shops closing. They've since been replaced by restaurants and cafes, and they seem to be doing well, but nobody's going to go into ten restaurants in a single afternoon, so the area still feels less alive than it used to. To me, though, this particular phenomenon feels like an extension of the death of the American shopping mall, and not evidence that a city with an outdoor environment designed to accommodate its own residents (and not just their cars) wouldn't be nice. If it's just a business district that's designed for pedestrians, well, that's really nothing more than a public version of the outdoor shopping mall. I'm most definitely not looking for a shopping mall. I'm looking for my kids (and me) to be able to go outside and ride a bike or kick a ball or organize a neighborhood game of tag, without being dependent on me to drive them by car to the nearest city park in order to do it. And I'm looking for a culture where neighbors collectively spend time outside, together, as a community, rather than being cooped up indoors or walled up inside their own back yards because the neighborhood's public space is a fundamentally uncomfortable place to be.

stewbrew 8y ago

Complain to the local politics who made this (the shopping centers at the town's outskirts) happen although it was already known what effects this would have on the town's center. This is a pretty common development in, e.g., Lower Austria where politicians in the 1990s (and in some towns even in the 2000s) thought this were a good idea. Fußgängerzones work where politicians don't ruin town centers.

manmal 8y ago
Exactly. We are probably talking about the same town, in Lower Austria :)
dmichulke 8y ago
Same in Eastern Germany, there were no malls prior to '89 and after that they had to do something.

seer 8y ago

I’ve seen a similar thing happen in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, but with a twist. When there were no malls, all the high end shops were located at the center in the pedestrian friendly zone. Then they started building them like crazy, all the shops moved there, and the center started dying. But something interesting happened, since it was still valuable real estate, those people didn’t go down easy - all those former shops turned into restaurants, cafes and bars. And the center became much more inviting, and markedly more “alive” than when it was in effect an outdoor mall. So now people go to the malls to buy stuff, and go to the center to hangout, and I think everyone is happy. Though among those restaurants new shops have started opening as you know, they go where the people are at, but the malls are still going strong. Maybe once the online shopping thing hits Bulgaria properly the malls would close/transform, but people would still flock to the center for all the recreational places.

flexie 8y ago
I noticed the same. Other factors played in too. Around the time the malls came to Sofia, the municipality also started renovating the main streets in the city center turning Vitoshka into a real pedestrian street and building proper sidewalks on others (like Shisman). The renovations are still going on (Solunska, Graf Ignatiev) and this will only accelerate the process of turning the city center into a recreational area. It's really nice to see how new restaurants, bars, juice bars, soup places, sandwich places, and cafes pop up on streets just months after they have been renovated. Other factors accelerating the process has been the large expansion of the metro, which happened at the same time as the malls were being being built, the renovation of tram tracks, purchase of decent trams, and the almost complete replacement of the old city buses with modern ones, all of which has given people from the neighborhoods easier access to the city center (which has never been very accessible by car). Sofia is slowly becoming a modern metropolis.