They did this in downtown Eugene, Oregon back on the early 70s. Blocked off a chunk of the downtown core, made it walkable, and turned it into a big outdoor mall.
One fault does not mean it’s a bad idea. Also reading through it the largest issues I see it faced was that once people started enjoying it other people didn’t like how they enjoyed it. Outdoor groups of people, gathering space, essentially using the public space in a public way, and other members of the public didn’t like that, so going into it knowing what you want is key there.
However, like I said one failure 50 years ago does not mean we shelve the idea and never look back. We should look at successes and failures and determine what differences are.
Definitly seems like a good lesson in that some interesting urban planning alone won’t fix every issue. A take that maybe more biased from my perspective, that an over emphasis on amenities over production (that ultimately pays for the amenities and the rest of peoples financially fufiled wants) is probably detrimental to both
They did this in downtown Eugene, Oregon back on the early 70s. Blocked off a chunk of the downtown core, made it walkable, and turned it into a big outdoor mall.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Mall
It slowly failed and the last remnants of it were removed after 30 years.
One of the reasons it failed is they went back to charging for parking.
One fault does not mean it’s a bad idea. Also reading through it the largest issues I see it faced was that once people started enjoying it other people didn’t like how they enjoyed it. Outdoor groups of people, gathering space, essentially using the public space in a public way, and other members of the public didn’t like that, so going into it knowing what you want is key there.
However, like I said one failure 50 years ago does not mean we shelve the idea and never look back. We should look at successes and failures and determine what differences are.
Definitly seems like a good lesson in that some interesting urban planning alone won’t fix every issue. A take that maybe more biased from my perspective, that an over emphasis on amenities over production (that ultimately pays for the amenities and the rest of peoples financially fufiled wants) is probably detrimental to both