We aim at a city vibrant with life—a city which, above all, belongs to us. It belongs to the people who are walking and driving there. We feel our ownership, and because we feel our ownership, all the human beings are able to participate…
Downtown Areas
…enjoy, live life. One of the ways in which we do this is focus on the interactions of pedestrians and cars. In the ideal interaction, cars are vibrant, pedestrians are vibrant, the two zones are separate, but touch everywhere.
These are the steps you will follow in beginning to shape your downtown:
THE KEY ROLE OF CITY STREETS
We aim at a city vibrant with life—a city which, above all, belongs to us. It belongs to the people who are walking and driving there. We feel our ownership, and because we feel our ownership, all the human beings are able to participate, enjoy, live life.
Streets are the living rooms of society. The space of the street belongs to people. It does not belong to cars; it is does not belong to the Transportation Department, or to Public Works. It BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE, to congregate, enjoy, lie down, sit, wait, run, jump. It is ours, and theirs.
It seems hard, but we can achieve all this in a city, in practice, today. That must be our aim.
CARS AND PEDESTRIANS TOGETHER
It used to be thought that one could make a city livable, by separating cars from pedestrians. And, indeed, many places—the center of Vienna, Stroget in Copenhagen, the centers of Florence and Chichester—benefit because they have been given back to pedestrians. The benefit of that kind of life is covered in the sequence on Pedestrian Streets. Instructions on how to make a pedestrian street so that it works well for pedestrians, are given there.
But the vibrancy of cities comes, in still LARGER part, too, from the interaction of cars and people. Who could imagine Manhattan with the life it has, if there were no cars there, or if the cars were removed? All its life would drain away. That is also true of London, Paris, Thessaloniki, New Delhi, Tokyo.
How then is the relation of cars and pedestrians to be managed so that the access by car is there, the safety and tranquility of pedestrian life is there, the dynamo of cars and pedestrians meeting is also there. All of it works. But the robbery of the public space, from us the people, is somehow prevented.
THE IDEAL INTERACTIONS
In the ideal interactions of pedestrians and cars, cars are vibrant, pedestrians are
vibrant, the two zones are separate, but touch everywhere.
There are at least five ways this can happen.
Cars moving slowly—people and cars mixed up
Quiet place, good space for pedestrians, narrow slow space for cars
Wide pedestrian streets crossing densely traveled roads with cars and buses
Pedestrian lanes, internal to the block
Cars dominate, with access to beautiful and pure pedestrian space
In what follows, everything you do, has to do with gradually establishing one of these main
patterns, in some form, on each block in the city, and slowly joining them together to make the whole coherent.
MAKE A BLOCK-BY-BLOCK DIAGNOSIS OF THE CITY ZONE
Choose a zone or neighborhood of the city, which has your attention and special concern. It should be at least five by six blocks in area.
Visit each block. Mark each block on a map, to show in broad terms, whether the block is alive or dead as a whole. How urgent it is that this block should be improved to bring it more life?
Start with a map of the streets.
The diagnosis shows which blocks should receive attention. It is to be hoped that the city will allocate resources, even if modest, to encourage the inhabitants and property owners on those blocks to take action.
