IN EUROPE, pedestrianised streets seem to work. This is not the case in the US, for a number of reasons. South Africa can take a leaf out of Bogota's book, however, and build urban spaces around the needs of the poor.
Neil Fraser
June 13, 2005
LAST week's Citichat was completed at Heathrow while I was waiting for a flight to Newcastle. I had flown in from Gothenburg, Sweden where I had been invited to make a presentation at a conference, "Life in the Urban Landscape", and had a couple of hours spare between flights.
During my few days in Sweden I had managed to get to Stockholm, just for a day, so let me tell you what I learned at the conference and then found in those two cities, and later in Newcastle, in relation to pedestrian streets.
Places and spaces 3
Gothenburg, with a population of 500 000, is the second largest city in Sweden and is situated on the west coast of the country. While it is a Scandinavian country, it is very European in character.
It has wide boulevards, low-rise buildings, great public transport and lots of bicycles. It is very clean and very green at this time of the year and very, very ordered - as the whole of Swedish society appears to be.
The main streets generally have two lanes for trams in the centre (buses augment the trams and drive on the same path) flanked either side by lanes for cars and then by pavements that are themselves wide and clearly demarcated for both pedestrians and bicycles. The effect of these wide roadways, footways and cycle paths edged with the low-rise, six-storey, buildings that flank them, is one of superb human scale.
The city is very green - it is well treed but, more than that, every available open space is like a mini-park. There are also some large parks in the heart of the city that are all immaculately maintained and dotted with couples and families enjoying the sunshine while they can.
Running parallel to one of the main thoroughfares through the downtown, I found a narrow pedestrianised street right through the middle of a retail area. It widened out at its one end into a paved square, ringed with pavement cafés. The street and square were very active. In the time that I had available I wasn't able to explore the whole downtown so this was the only pedestrian space I was aware of.
Stockholm
I played truant from the conference for a day and took the high-speed train to Stockholm, which lies on the east coast of Sweden, 450 kilometres from Gothenburg, a trip precisely achieved, each way, in two hours and 55 minutes!
Stockholm, the biggest city in Sweden, is different from Gothenburg in both looks and feel. While Gothenburg feels like a placid, self-contented yet rather provincial matron, Stockholm is the bold, loud and rather beautiful big sister. Beautiful in that it is spread over more than a dozen islands, providing many kilometers of water edge while the city is the showcase for some absolutely magnificent historic buildings.
There is lots of graffiti, and while it is clean in comparison to ourselves, it is not nearly as pristine as Gothenburg.
In my one day I saw no police and no street cleaners, but I did see a few hawkers and quite a few grungy teenagers. The historic "Old City" was founded on the islands known as Gamlastan. The beautifully maintained historic buildings line mainly very narrow pedestrian passageways, again providing that wonderful sense of scale, while the absence of vehicles, except for deliveries at certain times, adds to the overall sense of place.
I was in Newcastle for just an afternoon and caught the underground from the airport to the stop nearest the civic centre, where I had an appointment. I emerged from the underground directly into Northumberland Street, the main pedestrianised street. It is flanked by retail and is markedly crowded.
Newcastle
Later I walked through the centre city - Newcastle is relatively small, with a population of 300 000 - and saw the extensive pedestrianisation that has been in place for some years. This, of course, is the case in many British cities. I particularly remember Birmingham for its high-quality pedestrian environment.
In Newcastle, apart from the retail area around Northumberland Street, a contiguous area known as Grainger Town contains an excellent example of vehicle-free streets. Grainger Town covers about 90 acres and has some fine examples of 19th century buildings and structures that line the edges of three pedestrian streets that converge at a focal point or circus.
Built in the 1830s by Richard Grainger, the buildings are of elegant neo-classical proportions and include offices, shops and major public buildings all clad in a warm, yellowish-coloured polished stone. The overall effect caused Prime Minister William Gladstone to call one of the streets, Grey Street, "Britain's best modern street" way back in 1837.
By 1997, however, the area was in major decline, with massive vacancies and a number of buildings declared at risk. Only the dedicated efforts of the Grainger Town Partnership, established in 1997, dramatically reversed the area's fortunes. Office rental values doubled between 1997 and 2003 and retail increased by 60 percent between 1997 and 2001 against the British average of 24.3 percent.
Background
So, with all that background, why is the European and British experience so different from that of American cities? I think there are a variety of reasons. Firstly, the car is not nearly as dominant as it is in the States. Secondly, there are excellent public transport facilities in place and a culture of using them. Many families, from lower to upper income groups, prefer the convenience of public transport. Usually the bus and underground train stations are well situated in relation to the heart of the city, making purchasing convenient as well.
Thirdly, there doesn't appear to be the retail competition offered by suburban shopping centres - though they do exist courtesy of Maggie Thatcher's relaxation of traditional planning norms (now largely reversed). The main streets thus have been able to retain major departmental and even town centre shopping centres.
Finally, there are large numbers of inner city residents who provide additional support for the retail. It is all very different from our situation and reason to still view pedestrianisation with something of a jaundiced eye.
Bogota
But here's the twist. The keynote speaker at the conference in Gothenburg was Dr Enrique Penalosa, the president and founder of an organisation by the interesting name of The Foundation for the Country We Wish and Want. He is also a former mayor of Bogota, the capital city of Colombia.
In his address, entitled "Social and Environmental Sustainability in Cities", he stressed the great need in developing countries and cities for democratisation of the public realm. Bogota suffers from a surfeit of motor vehicles on its streets and the council sought various solutions for the resultant grid lock and pollution.
The solution favoured by most of the council was a Japanese proposal to build a massive, multi-layered, multi-lane concrete highway slashing through the centre city at an astronomical cost. Penalosa, mayor at the time, decided that the money would be far better spent on providing amenities for the urban poor, amenities that would move the city to greater urbanity.
How can you justify spending billions on providing better roads for a minority of wealthy car owners when the vast majority of citizens are handicapped because of a lack of access to most forms of transport? So the money was used to provide a network of pedestrian and bicycle paths, a bus system based on the highly successful Curitiba model, primary schools, libraries and parks.
In addition, cars were banned entirely on one day a week, forcing rich and poor alike to travel on the new bus system. His approach resulted in an enormous empowerment of the urban poor - while few had owned bicycles previously, now even the poorest family has at least one bike and an ability to get wherever they need to go, cheaply.
Penalosa didn't altogether neglect cars. A vehicle lane was also provided next to the bicycle and pedestrian path - even if it wasn't tarred.
Regards, Neil
