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TPO 13 Lecture 1
City planning
Narrator：Listen to the lecture in the city planning class.
Professor
In the last 15 years or so, many American cities have had difficulties inmaintaining a successful retail environment. Business owners in the citycenters or the downtown areas have experienced some financial losses,because of the city movement of the people out of the city and then intosuburbs. In general, downtown areas, just don’t have that many residential areas, not that many people live there. So what did city planners decide to doabout it? While, one way they’ve came up with the some ways to attract morepeople, to shop downtown was by creating pedestrian malls.
Now, what is a pedestrian mall? It’s a pretty simple concept really, it isessentially an outdoor shopping area designed just for people on foot. And…well, unlike many of other shopping malls that are built in suburb nowadays,these pedestrian malls are typically located in the downtown areas of the city.And there are features like white sidewalks, comfortable outdoor sitting andmaybe even for tens---UN…you know art. There are variations on this model ofcourse, but the common denominators are always an idea of creating ashopping space that will get people to shop in the city without needing theircars. So I am sure you can see how heavy an area that off-limits to automobiletraffic would be ideal for heavily populated city where, well, the streets willotherwise be bustling with noise, unpleasant traffic congestion. Now theconcept which originated in Europe was adopted by American city planners inthe late 1950s. And since then, a number of Unites States’ cities have createdthe pedestrian malls. And many of them have been highly successful. So whatdoes city planner learns about ** these malls succeed?
Well, there are two critical factors to consider when creating the pedestrianmalls--- location and design. Both of which are equally important. Now let'sstart with location. In choosing a specific location for pedestrian mall, there arein fact two considerations. Proximity to potential customers, UN…that's we'llcall it customer base and accessibility to public transportation which we will getinto just a moment. Now, for a customer base, the most obvious examplewould be a large office building since the employees could theoretically goshopping after work or during their lunch hour, right? Another really goodexample is convention center which typically has a hotel and large meetingspaces to draw visitors to the city for major business conferences and events.But ideally, the pedestrian malls will be used by local residents, not just peopleworking in the city or visiting the area. So that's where access to the publictransportation comes in, if… if the designer planed to locate the malls in centraltransportation hub, like bus terminal, a major train, subway station or they workwith city officials to create sufficient parking areas, not too far from the mall,which make sense because people can drive into the mall area or then theyneed easy access to it.
OK, so that's location, but what about design? Well, design doesn't necessarilyinclude things like sculptures or decorative walkways or… or even eye catching window displays, you know art. Although I bet the first to admen thosethings are ascetically appealing, however, visually pleasing sights, while thereare not a part of pedestrian malls design that matter than most. The keyconsideration is a compact and convenient layout. One which allowspedestrians to walk from one end of the mall to the other in just a few minutes,so you can get the major stores, restraints and other central places withouthaving to take more than one or two turns. Now, this takes a careful uncreativeplanning.
But now what if one ingredient to this planning recipe is missing? There couldquite be possibly long lasting effects. And I think a good example is pedestrianmall in the Louisville Kentucky for instance. Now when the Louisville mall wasbuilt, it has lots of visual appeal, it was attractively designed, right in the smallpart of downtown and it pretty much possessed other design elements forsuccess. But now, here is my point about location comes into play. Therewasn't a convention center around to help joining visitors and was the onlynearby hotel eventually closed down for that same reason. Well, you canimagine how these malls affected local and pedestrian malls business owners.Sort of what was we called it a chain reaction. It wasn't until a conventioncenter and a parking garage was built about decades later that malls started tobe successful.
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