Streetscapes and Peoples

So when you walk around the Quad Cities, it is unusual, except at very specific times of day (school out-time, major events, etc.) to encounter other pedestrians. This can make it uncomfortable to walk about, both because infrastructure may be missing (since no one is perceived to use it) and because it almost attaches a stigma to being on foot.

This is emphatically not the case in other places, scaling up to places where there are actually too many people on the street to walk comfortably for the opposite reason.

In this post, I wanted to think about the different levels of pedestrian streetscapes I perceive there as being, how they come about, and how they differ.

1. The Empty Scene

This can be empty in the way that quasi-urbanism produces, where there is infrastructure but no people, or empty because there's just nowhere to walk at all.

Or sometimes it's a failure of other elements, like a place that used to have people but now, due to population decline, changing transportation or entertainment options, or some other reason does not.

They used to wait for the interurban here, but no more.

2. The Open Street

Here we have people, but only occasionally; it's not actively unusual or strange to walk, but people always assume they'll have space to walk.

A university outside of actual instructional months may be this kind of space: there are still people around, but the space is quite large enough to accommodate more, and so they're almost swallowed up.

Another example would be a place that in summer might be populated, but when the weather turns a bit colder, wetter, or otherwise unpleasant, it is not.

Downtown Milwaukee can be like this in the winter: it's not quasi-urbanist, it is indeed urbanist, but it's just not currently occupied.

One could say the same about the Toronto waterfront as well.

Another cause for this is darkness, in places that quiet down at night, as here in Amsterdam:

Or the opposite: a hopping night area during the day can become this as here in Bardstown Road, Louisville:

3. Pedestrian Areas

Here we see actual human crowds, though not so much as to overwhelm the space. This can be because there isn't a huge space but there is enough, and demand to fill it, as here in Vancouver:

Or a deliberately pedestrianized area that actually fits its design, as here in London:

This is often seen at street markets as well, as here in Amsterdam:

Or here in Wimbledon:

These are ideal spaces, in my opinion, because they represent the match between a space that pedestrians can fill and the actual demand for pedestrianism by the people and activities that surround it. Ironically, I have the fewest pictures of this scale, because it feels sometimes awkward to take people's picture in public. It's also difficult to achieve, because you risk falling into the next category above:

4. The Overcrowd

Here we have too many people to comfortably occupy the space. This can be a temporarily filled area at a festival or other gathering, as here in Louisville:

Or too narrow of a space for the known demand, as here in  Boston's North End:

Or just a flood of people, as here in New York's Times Square:

These are spaces that I still find enjoyable, but which are beginning to overwhelm their streetscapes.

The difficulty, I find, in designing spaces to move up this scale is often imagination: if people are not there already, how can we dare think that they'll show up? But if the space is neither designed for nor inviting of them, why would they be there?

This is why intermittent events like this market in Croydon can be helpful for juicing the imagination:

It's much easier to imagine a space filled with people when you have a reason to bring them there. Even places like the Quad Cities have our farmers' markets and QCSO Pops that fill downtown streets. The key is making spaces that make those events feel reasonable, not eccentric, and trying to build the city to encourage that kind of pedestrianism outside of a big event.