A few of us had a really great discussion on Twitter recently about pedestrian-only streets. It was kicked-off by a tweet about Spark Street Mall in Ottawa, which many argue needs a rethink.
One of the comments was that a lot of people tend to overvalue their worth. And I will admit that I am probably one of those people. If you’ve ever visited places like Grafton Street in Dublin, Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, or Kensington Market in Toronto on a pedestrian Sunday, you can’t help but think to yourself: why don’t we do more of this? They’re such great places to be.
But the research suggests that these success stories are few and far between.
Below are the key findings from a report that was shared on Twitter during our discussion. It’s by Cole E. Judge and it’s called, The Experiment of American Pedestrian Malls: Trends Analysis, Necessary Indicators for Success and Recommendations for Fresno’s Fulton Mall.
- Pedestrian malls in the United States have an 89% rate of failure. Most have been removed or repurposed. Only 11% have been successful.
- Of the 11% successful pedestrian malls, 80% are in areas with populations under 100,000.
- Certain indicators need to be present for a pedestrian mall to be successful in the United States: near or attached to a major anchor such as a university, situated in close proximity to a beach, designed to be a short length in terms of blocks, in a town/city with a population under 100,000, and/or located in a major tourist location such as Las Vegas or New Orleans.
- Cities that have embraced the Main Street and Complete Streets models have experienced turn-arounds in their downtowns with more investment, higher occupancy rates and more pedestrian traffic.
Though the report lists proximity to a beach as helping pedestrian malls, this is more about having a strong anchor than it is about climate – which is a commonly held excuse for why they don’t work. The report cites lots of failed pedestrian malls in California.
Furthermore, if you look at the list of successful pedestrian malls, about half of them are in colder climates. And if you search the report for the word “weather” it only comes up once. The word “climate” doesn’t come up at all.
So I don’t believe that they’re not possible in colder climates. Ski resorts, for example, usually have great pedestrian-only spaces because they have a strong anchor – the mountain.
But I do agree that pedestrian-only streets aren’t possible everywhere. And the more I think about this topic, the more I agree that we are overvaluing pedestrian-only. I guess that’s why our focus today is more on complete streets.
Thanks to this blog, it’s pretty easy for me to go back and look at what I was doing and thinking throughout the year. That’s one of the benefits of writing a daily blog/journal. And as is usually the case, 2015 was a year of ups and downs.
For my annual ski and snowboard trip with the guys, we went to Banff (Alberta) and Revelstoke (BC). But we got stuck with unseasonably warm weather in the west (the opposite of what’s happening this winter) and I got injured on day 3. That put me in the emergency room and knocked me out of snowboarding for the rest of the season – as well as from the gym for a number of months.
Shortly after that I also got struck with some family health issues. That was pretty scary for a good solid month, but in the end, everything seems to have worked out. What a relief.
Towards the end of March, I did a brand partnership between Architect This City and Porter Escapes, which brought me to Quebec City for a weekend. That was a lot of fun and gave me the opportunity to be a real flâneur in one of the most interesting cities in Canada.
In April, I left my real estate development job at TAS and shortly after I joined CAPREIT (TSE: CAR.UN) to help build out their (real estate) development platform. Previously their/our focus had just been on acquiring existing rental assets. But now it is time to build.
Later this month I also participated in the Toronto filming of a documentary called Waterfront Cities of the World. That was a lot of fun. But come to think of it, I don’t think I ever watched the final video.
In May, I started lobbying hard for the removal/replacement of the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway East here in Toronto. If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, I am sure you remember this period. With the help of a colleague of mine, I even started a petition that ended up getting presented at City Council.
But in June, Toronto City Council voted to demolish and then rebuild the elevated expressway along our waterfront. I am still surprised by that. What a shame.
In July, we (CAPREIT) announced our first joint venture development project. A mixed-use project – 506 rental apartments on top of about 160,000 square feet of retail – in Toronto’s Liberty Village.
In August, I went back to Philly to relive my Penn days. I do that every couple of years just to make sure that Bob and Barbara’s is still offering up “The Special.” The Special is a can of PBR and a shot of Jim Bean for $3. It’s famous in Philly, but it always sounds like a far better idea the night before, as opposed to the morning after.
In this same month I also hit the 2 year mark here on Architect This City. That’s 2 years of getting up every single day and staring at a blank blog post screen and thinking of something insightful to say.
The following month on September 11 (I’ll never forget this date), I got laser eye surgery. More specifically, I got custom wavefront LASIK. And today it’s pretty hard to imagine that I used to have to reach for my coke bottle glasses as soon as I woke up every morning.
Later in September, I also gave a talk at my alma mater, the Rotman School of Management, to a delegation of about 70 urbanists from Portland. It was an honor to be invited alongside rockstars such as Richard Florida and Jennifer Keesmaat.
In October, I featured a guest post from the former mayor of Toronto, John Sewell. I don’t often do guest posts on my blog, but John had just published a new book and I thought it would be a good way to change things up here. John and I aren’t necessarily on the same page with many urban issues, but we did agree on the Gardiner East.
For the remainder of October, it was basically just the Jays.
In November, I spoke at a Product Hunt event focused on real estate + tech. It was incredibly encouraging to see so many entrepreneurs here in Toronto focused on the intersection of real estate and tech. There are lots of opportunities in this space and I am sure that there are many success stories in the making right now. Toronto is the perfect place for real estate + tech innovation.
And finally, in December, I crossed something off my bucket list and attended Art Basel Miami Beach. I have wanted to go for well over a decade; pretty much since I started studying art history in undergrad. I don’t know what took me so long.
Oh, I also announced that I was writing a book on becoming a real estate developer.
What a year. I can’t wait for 2016.
What do you have on your to-do list for next year?
The title of this post is a line from one of the works of Jenny Holzer. It feels appropriate right now.
On Wednesday, Toronto saw a large scale anti-Uber protest involving as many as 2,000 taxis. It involved a bunch of taxis driving real slow around downtown, some altercations, and lots of people who want to see Uber completely shut down.
This, of course, isn’t a new thing for cities.
Many cities around the world have seen similar kinds of protests. But many of you will probably also agree that this is not the most effective response from the taxi industry. It casts a negative light on them at a time when people are already switching to Uber for better service. It also ignores the fact that – in my view – Uber ain’t going anywhere.
I’ve been a vocal supporter of Uber on this blog and I continue to believe that it will continue to prove to be a good thing for both consumers and for cities. In fact, famed startup investor Paul Graham once tweeted that because Uber is so clearly a good thing, you can tell how corrupt a city is by how hard it fights against it. This has become the truism among today’s urbanites.
At the same time though, I am trying to take a balanced view on this issue, which is what got me thinking about the work of Jenny Holzer. Protect me from what I want. Today, I want Uber. But I am trying to think of where that want might lead me.
Like a lot of private companies, the goal of Uber is monopoly profits. They would love to control the market. And that’s not a knock against them. It is just business. But I am imagining a market where only Uber exists.
When I was in Miami last week I switched back and forth between UberX and regular taxis. Because Art Basel was going on, Uber was frequently in surge pricing. Sometimes as high as 4x. So in those cases, I just hailed a regular cab. Thankfully the cabs there are pretty reasonably priced and easily to hail. The driver didn’t ask me if I liked the electronic music playing on the satellite radio, but that’s not a big deal.
But what if I didn’t have the option of hailing a regular cab? What if Uber was my only option and I had to put up or shut up when prices were 4x? That would be suboptimal in my books.
So what does this all mean?
I am an Uber customer. I do not want and I do not believe it will go away. But I also believe that our public policy should encourage competition in the taxi marketplace. Competition holds people and companies accountable. It means that if you stop creating value, you will go out of business.
It’s for that reason that I think the taxi lobby is wrong in trying to force Uber to shut down. And it’s for that reason that cities are going to have to work very hard at crafting the right kind of public policy. I am optimistic that Toronto will make that happen. But as we’ve seen today, there will be bumps along the way.