yea, i had NO desire to be in a car while in London either! you could walk down the street and always be next to the same bus traffic moved so slow.

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"i live my life in the city"

There is absolutely no NEED for a car in London. The public transport system is fabulous. (Though a tad expensive.)

ETA: PS During most hours Oxford Street in London is already limited to buses & taxis only. It is insane!

That's a funny picture. See, I'm pretty sure everyone in England is visiting New York City right now. I kid you not...been up there lately? Long live the killer Pound Sterling.

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.

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!

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.

Can you imagine if Kalamazoo instituted a penalty on driving into downtown, like London does?

Philly's shopping streets are going to have to get a lot more successful before we can pull something like that off.

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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.

well the comparison to Oxford St. is Walnut St. not Haverford Ave.

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.

Many small European cities have pedestrian shopping streets Glasgow, Ghent, Lille, Galway, and so on I don't think that density is the be all and end all. Also I don't think the retail sections doing better before become a pedestrian street is the idea it's the other way around.

It would do wonders for a small stretch of street with retail and restaurants and the capacity for more. The are lots of spots in philly that could be blocked off with minimal impact. The places I've visited had poles in the middle of the street that could retract back into the street for deliveries from like 3 AM to 7 AM or so ....

http://www.travelgatesweden.se/wp-co...Kullagatan.jpg
http://www.break-fresh-ground.com/ph...5/40/27643.jpg
http://www.radisson.com/rad/images/h...W/loc2_450.jpg

And screw the Europe sucks blah blah blah it won't work in Philly there isn't enough density we aren't New York for god's sake .... gloom gloom gloom

How about freaking Boulder, CO population around 100,000?

http://www.go-colorado.com/CO/images...treet-mall.jpg
http://360vr.com/pearl11/


And by the by do you know when I see the most density in various parts of the city ..... When they freaking close the streets down !!!!
And okay it won't be a festival every day and added attractions do add to these crowds, but you get the idea.

http://www.9thstreetitalianmarketfes...wd_home_01.jpg
http://picasaweb.google.com/atd342/B...88448515450562
http://www.gophila.com/assets/dmt/im...G.Widman_U.jpg

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There are more old drunkards than old doctors.

~Benjamin Franklin


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I know!!!!!!

I should be reimbursed for graduate credits after being pontificated to on PhillyBlog every third post by another blogger.

Quick, PhillyBlog administrators, invent an emoticon that clearly depicts sarcasm so people don't think I'm as stupid as a bag of rocks.

you guys do realize that if you just asked they may try it.


But I bet cold hard cash the businesses themselves would be the first to freak. (On Walnut)


You could do South...and the city would promote closing 2nd.

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Already working on it my man, but not for those streets won't pull it off successfully with those in my opinion .... maybe 2nd ....

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~Benjamin Franklin


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