Pedestrian zone

Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, and as pedestrian precincts in British English) are areas of a city or town reserved for pedestrian-only use and in which most or all automobile traffic may be prohibited. Converting a street or an area to pedestrian-only use is called pedestrianisation. Pedestrianisation usually aims to provide better accessibility and mobility for pedestrians, to enhance the volume of shopping and other business activity in the area and/or to improve the attractiveness of the local environment in terms of aesthetics, air pollution, noise and accidents involving pedestrians. However, pedestrianisation can sometimes lead to reductions in business activity, property devaluation, and displacement of economic activity to other areas. In some cases traffic in surrounding areas may increase, due to displacement rather than substitution of car traffic. Nonetheless, pedestrianisation schemes are often associated with significant drops in local air and noise pollution, accidents, and frequently with increased retail turnover and increased property values locally. A car-free development generally implies a large scale pedestrianised area that relies on modes of transport other than the car, while pedestrian zones may vary in size from a single square to entire districts, but with highly variable degrees of dependence on cars for their broader transport links.

Pedestrian zones have a great variety of approaches to human-powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and kick scooters. Some have a total ban on anything with wheels, others ban certain categories, others segregate the human-powered wheels from foot traffic, and others still have no rules at all. Many Middle Eastern kasbahs have no wheeled traffic, but use donkey-driven or hand-driven carts for freight transport.

The idea of separating pedestrians from wheeled traffic is an old one, dating back at least to the Renaissance. However, the earliest modern implementation of the idea in cities seems to date from about 1800, when the first covered shopping arcade was opened in Paris (see Covered passages of Paris). Separated shopping arcades were constructed throughout Europe in the 19th century, precursors of modern shopping malls. A number of architects and city planners, including Joseph Paxton, Ebenezer Howard, and Clarence Stein, in the 19th and early 20th centuries proposed plans to separate pedestrians from traffic in various new developments.

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