Lincoln Road is one of my favorite parts of Miami Beach. Supposedly the pedestrian-only street attracts some 11 million visitors a year. But I have noticed that the street has lost some of its mainstays to areas such as Wynwood. This is probably why the city and local property/business owners struck a deal this past summer to makeover the street based on a design by Field Operations.

The deal works like this: The City of Miami Beach is going to pay for the entire US$67 million makeover. This money will come from city and county taxes, as well from bonds. In return, property owners in the Lincoln Road Business Improvement District (BID) have agreed to tax themselves an additional 25% in order to pay for promoting and programming the street.

Obviously everyone believes that they will come out ahead as a result of this makeover. An improved Lincoln Road means more foot traffic, more sales, and more tax revenue. There's also talk of expanding the boundaries of the BID, which would generate additional funds. Right now the district is bounded by Alton Road on the west and by Washington Avenue on the east.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Business Improvement Districts, they are essentially defined areas where additional taxes are levied in order to fund projects and improvements that help overall economic development within the district. It is a structure that is used all around the world and it is one that was actually pioneered here in Toronto.

Here we call them Business Improvement Areas, and the first ever was the Bloor West Village BIA, which was established in 1970. There are now 83 BIAs in the City of Toronto. The first BID in the United States was the Downtown Development District in New Orleans. It was established in 1974. There are now over 1,200 across the U.S.

If you'd like to learn more about the improvements planned for Lincoln Road, here's a copy of the master plan that was submitted to the City of Miami Beach's Historic Preservation Board. The link is from The Next Miami.

Rendering: Field Operations

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.

Earlier this week my good friend Gabriel Fain emailed me a bunch of photos from his recent trip to Melbourne. Gabriel and I went to architecture school together here in Toronto and we often go back and forth on city building issues.

Here are the photos he sent me of Bourke Street in Melbourne:

The comparison he drew in his email was to that of Bloor Street in Toronto, except with a few major differences: Bourke Street is pedestrian only (except for a tram running down the middle of it). It has no curbs. There’s lots of inviting seating. And the connecting cross street laneways are fully activated. He then ended by saying that "Toronto is light years behind Melbourne and Sydney in the terms of the quality of the public space.“ 

I replied and asked if I could turn his email into an ATC post. He responded by saying that he was hoping I would, and then sent me another photo – this time of one of the laneways:

Melbourne’s laneways and arcades are celebrated around the world. What was once just residual space, became a catalyst for the revitalization of the city’s central business district in the 1990s and a major tourist destination. But all it really took was a change in thinking. It took somebody to believe that the space used for garbage collection, could also be used for a thriving culture of intimate al fresco dining.

In Toronto, I think we’re headed in the right direction in terms of our thinking, but that we’re not yet being bold enough. The recent revitalization of Market Street in my neighborhood (St. Lawrence) is a wonderful example of putting pedestrians first and a wonderful street overall. Like Bourke Street, it also doesn’t have curbs (this is how you know pedestrians matter). But it was also a prime candidate for a pedestrian-only street. Especially given that Market Lane to the north is already one (though in desperate need of renewal). 

For a number of reasons though, pedestrian-only streets are difficult to accept here in Toronto. I’ve been shot down many times in real estate meetings for arguing that we should have them in our city. Oftentimes people say it’s because of our harsh climate. But in my view, that’s all the more reason to have them. When the weather is nice, we should be enjoying our public spaces to the fullest. Why only build to the worst case scenario? Plus, they work in Scandinavia.

We’ve also done it before. In the early 1970s (when I wasn’t around), a portion of Yonge Street was piloted as a pedestrian-only mall – a remarkably forward-thinking achievement for that era of city building. So I’m confident that it can be done and that we’ll one day do it again.