You can listen to (or read) the piece on Chicago Public Radio's website.
As is usually the case, there was more information than would fit in the alotted time (five minutes), so here are a few follow-up notes.
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Ped Malls is the US - past and future
Several hundred pedestrian-only malls were built in cities around the US, starting in the late 1950s with Burdick Street in downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1959. According to Robert Bruegmann, the urban planning professor (and author) quoted in the report, all but about 20 or 30 of these have been torn out. The pedestrian mall movement in the US was a response to a trend that started in Europe after WWII. Bruegmann says that in Europe more of the malls have remained, in part because many of the streets that have gone pedestrian-only were already too narrow for motor vehicles. In the less dense, car-dependent US, the pedestrianized malls faced greater challenges, not least among them the convenience of the suburban shopping centers with their free parking lots. Two pedestrian-only malls in the US that are doing well are the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and the 16th Street Transit Mall in Denver.
Bruegmann also had this to say: "I think this is the end of a particular chapter in the pedestrian mall story, but my guess is that we're going to come back to it. As cities become more and more complex organisms and there's a lot more revival in inner cities, my guess is that we'll see further generations of pedestrian malls."
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The Density Factor
Another planning expert I spoke to is Daniel Lauber, who formerly worked for the Village of Oak Park as a city planner. He opposed re-streeting Lake Street back in the 80s and Marion Street in 2007, but now that the streets are all open again the Oak Park should be concentrating on raising the density of housing in its downtown.
Lauber: "Any downtown, a suburban downtown in particular, really needs high-density housing to thrive. It produces a captive market for your retailers and restaurants in your downtown. That will help them thrive and produces more sales tax for the village."
Oak Park's Village President David Pope says that where density is concerned the town headed in the opposite direction. The Village Board plans to actually lower height restrictions in the area from 125 feet to 45 feet. This is to help preserve the intimacy of the space and to ensure that it doesn't become, "a row of condo towers."
This is in contrast to Evanston, another Chicago suburb, which has pretty much gone hog-wild for density in its downtown. In fact, Evanston has taken the first steps toward a plan to build a 49-story skyscraper downtown. As an admitted newcomer, it seems to me Oak Park and Evanston are in an unspoken contest to be the area's "most enlightened suburb" so it should be interesting to see how this works out for both.
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Further Reading
Here's what the Project for Public Spaces has to say about downtown Oak Park:
- Great Public Spaces: Lake Street - why the 1988 re-streeting worked
- Hall of Shame Nominee: Marion St. Pedestrian Mall - a call for revamping the mall and keeping it ped-only
