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Traffic and the economy are complex enough that the answer is "it depends" most of the time. Generally when you close a street to cars pedestrian traffic increa

Traffic and the economy are complex enough that the answer is "it depends" most of the time. Generally when you close a street to cars pedestrian traffic increases. Pedestrians tend to spend a lot more money on a street that cars driving by. Cafes tend to flourish.

londons_explore 6y ago
I guess the way to model that is to model the traffic and economic effects of a closed road, and separately model the economic benefits of a pedestrian street. Add the two together, and you have your result.
goodpoint 6y ago
On top of that, low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime and mental illness (depression, social isolation). In various countries sprawls, shopping districts and office-only areas are prohibited by building regulations in order to create mixed areas where people can live/shop/work and build local communities.
- greggman3 6y ago
  > low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime Do you have any links? that goes entirely against my intuition. SF is generally considered walkable and has high street crime. I'm pretty sure the same is true for NYC, Paris, Berlin, other highly walkable cities where as say Irvine, Brea, (E.T. like neighborhoods that require a car to do anything) have low-street crime. Update: The first 2 hits I found on google found higher walkability correlated with more crime https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916520921843?journalCode=eaba https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391652092184... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-00161-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-00161-7
  - karpierz 6y ago
    Those are measuring crime within a city, not comparing cities. Though I think you're going to have a hard time separating 'walkability', and other features of old European cities.
  - goodpoint 6y ago
    It's a well known fact in traffic engineering. You can start from the links at the bottom of the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkability#Socioeconomic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkability#Socioeconomic As the sibling poster wrote, by comparing the only walkable area in the downtown of a car-centered city you are [involuntarily] cherry-picking the populace that cannot afford a car. You have to compare whole countries.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It's also much more fun working in those areas. Going for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant at lunchtime, catching some sun in the park.. industrial estates are horrible places to work.

londons_explore 6y ago

I guess the way to model that is to model the traffic and economic effects of a closed road, and separately model the economic benefits of a pedestrian street. Add the two together, and you have your result.

goodpoint 6y ago

On top of that, low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime and mental illness (depression, social isolation). In various countries sprawls, shopping districts and office-only areas are prohibited by building regulations in order to create mixed areas where people can live/shop/work and build local communities.

greggman3 6y ago
> low-walkability car-intensive cities strongly correlate with increased street crime Do you have any links? that goes entirely against my intuition. SF is generally considered walkable and has high street crime. I'm pretty sure the same is true for NYC, Paris, Berlin, other highly walkable cities where as say Irvine, Brea, (E.T. like neighborhoods that require a car to do anything) have low-street crime. Update: The first 2 hits I found on google found higher walkability correlated with more crime https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916520921843?journalCode=eaba https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001391652092184... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-00161-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-018-00161-7
- karpierz 6y ago
  Those are measuring crime within a city, not comparing cities. Though I think you're going to have a hard time separating 'walkability', and other features of old European cities.
- goodpoint 6y ago
  It's a well known fact in traffic engineering. You can start from the links at the bottom of the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkability#Socioeconomic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkability#Socioeconomic As the sibling poster wrote, by comparing the only walkable area in the downtown of a car-centered city you are [involuntarily] cherry-picking the populace that cannot afford a car. You have to compare whole countries.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
It's also much more fun working in those areas. Going for a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant at lunchtime, catching some sun in the park.. industrial estates are horrible places to work.