Pedestrian street - Definition and Overview

A pedestrian street is a street where pedestrian traffic is given partial or total priority over all other kinds of traffic. Usually, motorised vehicles are excluded. In some cases wheeled vehicles or transportation systems such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and push scooters are tolerated or given special lanes. Many pedestrian streets are surfaced with cobblestones, or pavement bricks, thus discouraging any kind of wheeled traffic, including wheelchairs.

Except for special towns or zones where cars and trucks are totally excluded (such as Venice or the Toronto Islands) a pedestrian street is rarely completely free of motor vehicles. Often, all of the cross streets are open to motorized traffic, which thus intrudes on the pedestrian flow at every street corner. In a few pedestrian streets with no cross street cars or trucks deliveries are made by trucks by night.

In the last decades of the 20th century many urbanists have listed and explained what they see as the virtues of pedestrian streets. Urban renewal activists have often pushed for the creation of auto-free zones in parts or in all of the sectors of a metropolitan area.

References

• Breines, Simon. William J. Dean. The pedestrian revolution;: Streets without cars.Vintage Books, 1974.
• Jacobs, Allan B.. Great streets.Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1993
• Robertson, Kent A. Pedestrian malls and skywalks : traffic separation strategies in American downtowns. Aldershot, Hants, England ; Brookfield, Vermont : Avebury, 1994.