Revisiting Pedestrian Malls: Why do many fail, why do some work? | NACTO

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This article provides an overview of American downtown pedestrian malls of the mid-twentieth century and today by looking at the country’s urban planning policy,
economic history and social trends.

A pedestrian mall is characterized as a number of blocks of public downtown streets designated for pedestrian-only use and closed to
vehicular traffic. The article examines why most pedestrian malls have been unsuccessful and narrates the history of Santa Monica’s Third Street pedestrian mall.

The Third Street Promenade is an interesting example because despite careful planning and investment, initially it was a complete failure, and then after a massive redesign,
became a major tourist attraction. Its story is a lesson to other cities, especially as pedestrian malls have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years.

A look back at past efforts to convert downtown streets to pedestrian walkways will illuminate best practices and conditions of successful pedestrian malls.

Why do pedestrian malls fail? They sound like such a good idea:
getting people out of their cars and interacting with the environment and their community. Yet in practice, with a few exceptions, people have shunned them.

Between 1959 and the early 1980s, more than 200 American cities closed part of their downtown street networks to vehicles. Hoping to compete with suburban shopping
malls and reverse the decline of American downtowns, civic leaders and urban planners believed that by recreating suburban conditions in urban areas, shoppers and tax
dollars could be lured back.

Pedestrian malls appeared in every region and climate of the country with great fanfare. They varied in terms of length and amenities provided, but all followed the same premise: closing a main downtown street to automobile traffic so that pedestrians could walk from store to store in a leisurely manner.

However, by the end of the 1980s, many pedestrian malls were being converted back to vehicular streets and the trend was dismissed by urban planners as a failure. Most
cities had discovered that a pedestrian-only street could not singlehandedly revitalize a
community and perhaps had accelerated the downtown’s decline.

By 2005, fewer than two dozen of the original 200 pedestrian malls remained, and in almost all cases, these malls are in university towns, adjacent to large institutions or near tourist centers.

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Revisiting Pedestrian Malls: Why do many fail, why do some work? | NACTO