The Ecopolitan

Pedestrian Space a New Broadway Hit

Several years ago in New York I sat down to a brown bag lunch in Washington Square Park with Enrique Penalosa--the visionary mayor who made Bogota, Colombia, an unlikely leader in green urbanism. We ate sandwiches from a Caribbean deli and talked about how to improve urban life around the world.

At the time, Penalosa was a visiting professor at NYU. But he had left behind an impressive legacy of accomplishments in Bogota that included a world-class bus rapid transit system, the world's longest pedestrian street (17 kilometers), 300 kilometers of bike paths and dozens of new parks.

Between bites of spicy pork, I asked him how we could improve life for citizens in an American city like New York. Without hesitation he said, "Turn Broadway into a pedestrian street."

A wonderful idea, I thought, even though it would never happen here. American planners steadfastly refuse to ban vehicle traffic on any city streets, despite decades of evidence from Europe and Asia showing that pedestrian zones dramatically enliven the public life of towns large and small.

Some of my fondest memories hark back to wonderful strolls in car-free centers of Helsinki, Athens, Prague, Strasbourg and tiny Nerja, Spain. But I abandoned hope experiencing anything like it at home, except in the rare case of free-thinking college towns like Charlottesville, Virginia; Burlington, Vermont; Ithaca, New York; and Iowa City, Iowa.

But Enrique Penalosa may turn out to be more of a prophet than I expected.

Taxis and trucks still race down Broadway today, but in one lane between 35th and 42nd streets people chat at café tables or stroll down the middle of one of the world's most famous and busiest streets. This mini-pedestrian zone, made secure by half-ton planters strategically located between vehicles and humans, is an experiment launched by New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan who has set out to reclaim the city as a place for people, not just for vehicles.

This thin slice of Broadway may not be the Stroget--the charming lane in central Copenhagen that launched the modern idea of pedestrian streets--but it's a start. And it could lead to a flowering of pedestrian zones across North America. Because as the old song "New York, New York" tells us, "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere."

© The Green Guide, 2008

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