Did pedestrian malls ruin U.S. downtowns?

Thank you to everyone who has sent me leads about pedestrian malls they know about! I've received a bunch and it's going to take me awhile to go through them all. I'll try and post a text update on YouTube when I've incorporated all of the new information. Thank you again!

"Pedestrian Malls are FAILURES !!!" - A Public Service Announcement brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood Auto Industry lobbyist.

I like pedestrian malls. In a nation where it seems impossible to escape the car, it’s nice to have spaces solely for, well, walking around.

So, in summary, malls succeed in vibrant, interesting cities, and fail in cities that are dumps to begin with.

To keep city cores alive, they have to build living space on top of the stores and keep a community living and working there.

Pedestrian streets can do nothing but good for businesses, however they have to be in densely populated areas that do have pedestrian traffic on first place.

I love how you immediately addressed people who will immediately compare us to Europe lol

Im from Slovakia but live in New Zealand now and I must admit it absolutely annoys me that there are almost none pedestrian zones in NZ. People have similar fear from them here as in US, everything is about cars. If they can't park beside their favorite restaurant is completely unimaginable for them. It's completely opposite in Europe. Shops and bars that are not on pedestrian zones suffer a lot, because people rather go an extra few steps to visit the ones that are placed on a beautiful square or street with a fountain and historical buildings around them. In Europe is not about "mall" is about the ultimate experience for tourists that city can offer you. That's why almost every city centre has pedestrian zone there

In Helena, MT there's a walking mall in the downtown that, as I understand it, was considered a miserable failure when it first started. Now it is a really vibrant community hub. I think sometimes it takes time to catch on and you need to pair it with other things that foster community in the space.

We have many public squares like the large Kim Il-sung Square that people love

To me, as a European, not having to take a car to go anywhere on a daily basis is normal. All in all, even European cities have declining commercial activity in their downtown areas.

Every city in Spain has at least one of this "pedestrian malls". It would feel weird if a city doesn't have one.

2:43 Clarification: a massive tornado removed the city center in Parsons, KS in 2000. They just decided not to rebuild it the same.

This is how you do academic research and disseminate the findings to a large audience!!!! The information is accessible and engaging. I definitely wanted to hear more as you spoke. Fantastic work and insight!

I also notice each of the thriving examples have a lot of shade trees, I wonder if that sort of (pardon the pun) organic climate control makes a pedestrian street inherently more appealing.

As someone who grew up in Charlottesville, VA, I find it interesting that college students get some of the credit for keeping the downtown mall alive, because in my experience almost all of the students hang out in a different area of town, closer to campus, and the mall is honestly more the place to be for high schoolers, young professionals, etc.

Calgary is a winter city, but the pedestrian mall is not near either large student campus. It does check off large city. It has multiple things along it that encourages it to thrive, City hall, museums, convention center, hotels,a large indoor mall, bars, restaurants, public green space. But I think one of the things that keeps it vibrant is that the city encourages festivals to be held along it even in winter. It draws people in to walk along the entire length and visit the stores

I like most ped malls I have visited. Still; I acknowledge that some ped malls create logistical issues for people to drive there and find parking in cities with skimpy public transit.

Moral of the story, let's make the whole world like one big college campus.

Well, if Americans are still obsessed with "convenience" and car-based life, then anything pedestrian is going to fail or not do as well as expected. Also, are these commercial areas mixed use? If people don't live above the stores then you don't have density to sustain mom-and-pop shops or a constant flow of people in the area.