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Originally Posted by Kukla65th
Naturally, one must mention that making any suggestions about an American city doing anything like a European city has to be thought about from one viewpoint above all else: the Europeans didn't spend the last 50 years developing political stances and policies that dissuaded those with lots of disposable income from shopping, living, and visiting major cities, or small cities.
This is perhaps the saddest difference, among many differences, between American and European culture.
This is also why it is so heartbreaking to visit Germany and see strip malls with pad site restaurants popping up, and to see indoor malls with massive parking lots dotting the British and Irish countryside. Of all the cultural contirbutions we've made to foreign countries (whether they wanted them or not) this is the worst. That anyone wants to emulate our planning mistakes is beyond my comprehension.
Well, maybe seeing Col. Sanders face in Piccadilly Circus is up there, too, among cultural nightmares.
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First, i wouldn't pin that stuff on us. I've spent a decent amount of time in europe and while it's true that a lot of their cities were built before the automobile and most of our cities were built after the auto it's not true that europeans generally love transit or their transit systems or that many of them don't aspire to have a house in the 'burbs (that being a relative expression). I've been to suburbs of Lyon and Paris and I can say that many of our suburban towns are far superior. It's a pastime in London to deride the tube and Londoners freaked out about congestion pricing much the same as New Yorkers and San Franciscans have.
As much as some europeans insist that they're culturaly superior, i don't buy it. They have nicer cities and they're generally wealthier/better educated than we are. Certainly, bigger cities there have more museums and better/more restaurants but in comparing other metros of 5-6 million people i think we can hold our head up.
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I say we close off Haverford Avenue through Overbrook for pedestrians only - that would be rather like the Oxford Street photo posted earlier. Yes...yes, indeed. The foot traffic generated by the furniture store, the barber shop, the bank, Rocky's, CVS. I'm trembling with anticipatory excitement now!
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well the comparison to Oxford St. is Walnut St. not Haverford Ave.
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Seriously, though, more power to London if this works for them. American planners and retailers dreamt of downtowns with ped-only downtown settings, and we've removed nearly all of them outside of college towns and trendy places. Even the very first American pedestrian mall, in Kalamazoo, MI, has been removed and replaced with a modified through street as it was pre-1958.
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closing off a street in a declining podunk town with little to now population within walking distance while new indoor malls were going up out in the suburbs was a terrible idea and a pretty bad example.
It's not the same thing as closing down a few blocks in Boston, SF, NYC, Chicago, or Philly that have 50,000-100,000 middle-upper-class people living within a 15-20 minute walk.