The pedestrian mall was a fixture of North American cities from the 1960s to 1980s, typically installed to save ailing retail districts from the onslaught of indoor shopping malls. But as car-crazed North Americans began to migrate from city centres to the suburbs, closing a few blocks to automobile traffic was an insufficient bandage to staunch generational shifts in shopping habits. Few pedestrian malls survived into the 21st century, even as pedestrian zones wove their way into the fabric of cities around the globe. Next month, a 1km stretch of London’s Oxford Street will be pedestrianised, finally resolving a longstanding debate about the love-it-or-hate-it high street.
Today, cars once again get caught in the gridlock on downtown Vancouver’s Granville Street. But over the summer, a five-block stretch of this once-bustling, now-struggling road was closed to traffic and opened to people. Originally planned as a short-term intervention to create an outdoor gathering space during the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the plein-air party proved so popular that the city council voted to extend the experiment until 7 September.
Just as the barricades, picnic tables, café seating, outdoor games and public art have been stowed away for winter, there are now calls to bring it back – perhaps for good. “We envision ourselves potentially doing this year-round and longer term,” Councillor Lisa Dominato told the CBC. “Hopefully next summer.”
As the enthusiasm in Vancouver attests, North America has a newfound interest in opening streets where people can stroll and linger. After years of dithering, Seattle has finally banned private cars from the street fronting its famed Pike Place Market for much of the year, while Madison, Wisconsin turned State Street into a pedestrian zone last year. Philadelphia also pedestrianised a stretch of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway earlier this year.
The sometimes-tired, 20th-century pedestrian malls that have persisted are now being rethought. Calgary’s Stephen Avenue completed the first phase of its revitalisation project in late June this year. Civic leaders in Minneapolis are debating how to revive Nicollet Mall, a signature Lawrence Halprin design which James Corner Field Operations previously spruced up. These refreshed versions can be called “the pedestrian mall 2.0” and are part of what the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning professor Kelly Gregg describes as “a new moment of questioning the prioritisation of automobiles”.
Beginning with two blocks of Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Burdick Street in 1959, more than 200 cities across North America converted their streets into pedestrian malls in the mid-20th century. Out went the asphalt and lane markings, and in came trees, benches, water fountains and artful pavers.
Austrian-American architect Victor Gruen – who aimed to recreate the pedestrian experience of his native Vienna – was the mastermind behind the revamp in Kalamazoo, as well as revitalisation plans in Fresno, California; Fort Worth, Texas; Rochester, New York; and Honolulu, Hawaii. Cities flush with federal urban renewal money eagerly hired him and his peers to keep shoppers coming downtown instead of heading to the shiny new malls on the urban fringe – many of which Gruen also designed.
In the end, however, the shopping malls prevailed. “It was a losing strategy economically,” says Gregg, adding that the design of pedestrian malls was “unable to counter the massive economic restructuring that cities were facing”.
The response was sometimes swift. Toronto’s summertime Yonge Street Mall, for example, only lasted four years from 1971 to 1974. And sometimes, it was agonising: Chicago’s State Street Mall limped along for nearly two decades until city leaders put the strip out of its misery in 1996, with a redesign that allowed car traffic and reduced the width of pavements. The city’s downfall was banning cars and bikes but still allowing buses. Instead of ambling along a pleasant street, Chicagoans had to choke on fumes. (Minneapolis is grappling with the same issue today.)
Big cities, such as Toronto and Chicago, were outliers with most pedestrian malls flourishing in smaller towns. While not all survived – Gruen’s mid-century designs were erased from Kalamazoo in 1998 and scrubbed from Fresno in 2017 – one common thread among those that have persisted is a university. Pedestrian malls have thrived in places such as Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado and The Ithaca Commons in New York state, where students create a steady stream of foot traffic.
Pedestrian malls in charming college towns have had an easier run than those in big cities that grapple with higher rates of retail vacancy, property crime, rough sleepers and open-air drug use. It was public safety perception that partly doomed the 20th-century’s pedestrian malls, as the absence of car traffic began to make the streets feel less safe.
The new wave of pedestrian malls, however, is not fixated on bringing customers into a bygone era of downtown shopfronts. “Downtowns are no longer just about retail,” says Gregg. “The pedestrian malls that have adapted are more focused on entertainment, bars and restaurants.”
This was definitely the case on Vancouver’s Granville Street, a designated entertainment district where one in four shopfronts is vacant. “We are fighting very hard to save this street,” says Jane Talbot, the president and CEO of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. “We know that people love this street and that when we give them a reason to come to Granville Street, they will.”
Downtown Vancouver’s team programmed a summer of activities in the temporary pedestrian zone: free cotton candy, outdoor DJ sessions, an International Cat Day celebration, a Belmont Cameli lookalike contest, a morning baby rave for families. The list might resemble the lineup on a cruise ship but today’s North Americans are drawn downtown by intensive programming.
In Vancouver’s case, the hyperactivity during the frenzied summer months is part of the city’s seasonal rhythm before winter hibernation, as well as an astute political move. A short-term move towards pedestrianisation “is a tactic that helps with the people who don’t want it,” says Talbot. “They’re far less likely to push back on a seasonal approach.”
The flip side, warned Gregg, is that cities can get stuck in a “permanent temporary” state, unwilling to invest in quality design. New York’s former transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan pushed to close Times Square and five blocks of Broadway to cars in 2009, which is widely considered the vanguard of 21st-century pedestrianisation in North American cities. It took almost a decade, however, to replace flimsy, fold-up café furniture with Snohetta-designed stone benches. As urban design critic Diana Lind writes, “Increasingly, when I see moveable chairs in a public space, I feel that it’s a cop out.”
One city bucking the trend is Denver, whose 16th Street Mall was a late arrival but one that came with star power: architects IM Pei and Henry Cobb collaborated with landscape architect Laurie Olin. The stretch opened in 1982 to public adulation and design plaudits for its “character-defining carpet of diamond-patterned, charcoal-grey, light-grey and Colorado-red granite pavers” inspired by Navajo blankets and rattlesnake skin.
Almost a year ago, the downtown street reopened after a $175m (€151m) revamp that replaced ailing locusts with a healthier tree canopy, upgraded underground utilities and added seating and play areas. By December of last year, the strip was back to pre-2020 levels of vibrancy, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership. But it had also dropped an important moniker in a key sign of the times: it’s just 16th Street now – no “mall” to be found.
