Pedestrian zone

Pedestrian zones have a great variety of approaches to human-powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and kick scooters.

A number of architects and city planners, including Joseph Paxton, Ebenezer Howard, and Clarence Stein, in the 19th and early 20th centuries proposed plans to separate pedestrians from traffic in various new developments.

[4] At this time pedestrianisation was not seen as a traffic restraint policy, but rather as a complement[clarification needed] to customers who would arrive by car in a city centre.

[11] During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, some cities had made the pedestrianization of additional streets to encourage social distancing and in many cases to provide extra rooms for restaurants to serve food on patios extended into the newly available spaces.

[12] In Madrid, Spain, the city pedestrianized 19 kilometres (12 miles) of streets and 235,000 square metres (58 acres) of spaces in total.

[citation needed] Within this definition, three types are identified: The more common form of carfree development involves some sort of physical barrier, which prevents motor vehicles from penetrating into a car-free interior.

[25] Many cities close certain streets to automobiles, typically on weekends and especially in warm weather, to provide more urban space for recreation, and to increase foot traffic to nearby businesses.

[citation needed] There were calls for traffic to be reinstated in Trafalgar Square, London, after pedestrianization caused noise nuisance for visitors to the National Gallery.

[31] In Belgium, Brussels implemented Europe's largest pedestrian zone (French: Le Piétonnier), in phases starting in 2015 and will cover 50 hectares (120 acres).

Most of these zones allow delivery trucks to service the businesses there during the early morning, and street-cleaning vehicles will usually go through these streets after most shops have closed for the night.

[35] In the early 1980s, the Alternative Liste für Demokratie und Umweltschutz (which later became part of Alliance 90/The Greens) unsuccessfully campaigned to make West Berlin a car-free zone.

[citation needed] In the Netherlands, the inner city of Arnhem has a pedestrian zone (Dutch: voetgangersgebied) within the boundaries of the following streets and squares: Nieuwe Plein, Willemsplein, Gele Rijdersplein, Looierstraat, Velperbinnensingel, Koningsplein, St. Catharinaplaats, Beekstraat, Walburgstraat, Turfstraat, Kleine Oord, and Nieuwe Oeverstraat.

[37] The Lijnbaan served as a model for many other such streets in the early post-World War II era, such as Warsaw, Prague, Hamburg, and the UK's first pedestrianised shopping precinct in Stevenage in 1959.

[39] In Istanbul, İstiklal Caddesi is a pedestrian street (except for a historic streetcar that runs along it) and a major tourist draw.

[9] These pedestrian zones were more closely tied to the success of retail than in Europe, and by the 1980s, most did not succeed competing with ever more elaborate enclosed malls.

[citation needed] Supai, Arizona, located within the Havasupai Indian Reservation is entirely car-free, the only community in the United States where mail is still carried out by mule.

[46][47] Argentina's big cities, Córdoba, Mendoza and Rosario, have lively pedestrianised street centers (Spanish: peatonales) combined with town squares and parks which are crowded with people walking at every hour of the day and night.

[citation needed] In Buenos Aires, some stretches of Calle Florida have been pedestrianised since 1913,[48] which makes it one of the oldest car-free thoroughfares in the world today.

[citation needed] Downtown Rio de Janeiro, Ouvidor Street, over almost its entire length, has been continually a pedestrian space since the mid-nineteenth century when not even carts or carriages were allowed.

And the Saara District, also downtown, consists of some dozen or more blocks of colonial streets, off-limits to cars, and crowded with daytime shoppers.

[citation needed] Eixo Rodoviário, in Brasília, which is 13 kilometers long and 30 meters wide and is an arterial road connecting the center of that city from both southward and northward wings of Brasília, perpendicular to the well known Eixo Monumental (Monumental Axis in English), is auto-free on Sundays and holidays.

[citation needed] During his 1998–2001 term, the former Bogotá mayor, U.S.-born Enrique Peñalosa, created several pedestrian streets, plazas and bike paths integrated with a new bus rapid transit system.

[50] Playa del Carmen has a pedestrian mall, Quinta Avenida, ("Fifth Avenue") that stretches 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) and receives 4 million visitors annually with hundreds of shops and restaurants.

[citation needed] In Hong Kong, since 2000, the government has been implementing full-time or part-time pedestrian streets in a number of areas, including Causeway Bay, Central, Wan Chai, Mong Kok, and Tsim Sha Tsui.

From December 2008 to May 2009, there were three acid attacks during which corrosive liquids were placed in plastic bottles and thrown from the roof of apartments down onto the street.

[54] In India, a citizens' initiative in Goa state, has made 18 June Road, Panjim's main shopping boulevard a Non-Motorised Zone[55](NoMoZo).

[56] In May 2019, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) made the busy Ajmal Khan Road in Karol Bagh pedestrian-only.

[citation needed] Also in South Korea, in 2013, in the Haenggun-dong neighbourhood of Suwon, streets were closed to cars as a month-long car-free experiment while the city hosted the EcoMobility World Festival.

Of 58 pedestrian streets created in Australia in the last quarter of the 20th century, 48 remain today, ten having re-introduced car access between 1990 and 2004.

[citation needed] In Melbourne's north-eastern suburbs, there have been many proposals to make the Doncaster Hill development area a pedestrian zone.