Power to Pedestrians

Rarely have cities avoided congestion; even ancient Rome was jammed with chariots and oxcarts. Yet today the world's cities are being drastically reshaped by the automobile, that super-congestor and enemy of pedestrians. The car has thrust high-speed freeways through downtown areas; it has squeezed city dwellers onto narrow sidewalks and into motorized suburbs. Worst of all, 60% of urban smog is caused by motor-vehicle exhaust.

All the same, autos need not destroy cities--as evidenced by a new revival of car-free malls, which could conceivably return the streets to the people. In cities like New York and Tokyo, experiments have already dramatically reduced air pollution in downtown areas, to say nothing of making streets pleasant places for walkers.

Lure for Shoppers. The first big U.S. city to try banning the auto was New York. As part of the city's observance of Earth Day last April, Mayor John Lindsay decreed that portions of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street be closed to vehicular traffic for the day. The idea was so popular that Fifth Avenue was closed on four successive Saturdays in July. Two weeks ago the ban was extended to eight streets, which will be closed this month or in September.

Apprehensive at first, many New York merchants now support the ban. For one thing, a survey conducted by New York's Department of Commerce and Industry found that 77% of the strollers along Fifth Avenue stopped to shop on car-free days. For another, the festive spirit and near absence of smog apparently enticed more shoppers into mid-Manhattan. Suddenly the avenue was full of baby carriages, bicyclists, street musicians and smiling couples, all reveling in the car-free quiet and safety of what had become a wall-to-wall sidewalk.

Tokyo followed New York's lead, and with good reason. During a five-day stretch last month, the world's largest city was nearly asphyxiated when exhaust fumes from its 2,000,000 cars were trapped overhead by a temperature inversion (TIME, Aug. 10). Autos were first kept away from Ginza Street, the famed half-mile-long business thoroughfare, plus three other shopping areas. Later the ban was extended to 122 of the city's busy streets.

Buddhists and Bikinis. The advent of Tokyo's hodosha tengoku ("pedestrians' paradise") touched off a fierce sales battle to lure customers into shops. One store on the Ginza offered to decorate the street with 3,000 potted petunias. Another used bikini-clad girls to dispense 10,000 servings of ice cream to passersby. While the streets were enlivened by antiwar protesters, beggars and robed Buddhist monks, news cameramen recorded the scene from helicopters whirring about in the suddenly clear blue skies. At street level, concentrations of lethal carbon monoxide dropped from 10.5 parts per million to 2.3.

The logistics of converting streets into urban malls have been most efficiently worked out by the Germans. In West Germany, as in much of Europe, some city streets follow the meandering paths that cows once took on their way to market. As a result, these streets are exactly two cows wide--one cow each way. The solution has been to turn the streets into permanent Fussgaengerstrassen, or "pedestrian streets," by closing them to automotive traffic. About 30 German cities now have pedestrian streets in operation or in planning.

Stopgap Remedy. In similar fashion Italy has taken belated action against the mass traffic jams that increasingly choke the beautiful piazzas of Rome, Florence, Genoa and other cities. Ignoring the complaints of some businessmen, Rome's traffic commissioners have established seven "pedestrian islands" in historic locations like the Trevi Fountain and the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. In these areas all motorized traffic is banned, and drivers must leave their cars on side streets. Shops, restaurants and cafes can load and unload trucks between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., and 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Most citizens are delighted: they can actually stroll safely about their famous squares for the first time in years.

Despite all this, instant pedestrian malls are only a stopgap remedy. Says Victor Gruen, architect of the air-conditioned Midtown Plaza in Rochester, N.Y.: "Unless creation of a pedestrian mall is only one element of thorough and comprehensive downtown renewal planning, it will not solve problems but merely displace them." Without the addition of parking areas and bypassing roadways, vehicles banned from the inner city will just pile up on side streets.

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