Should we bring back cars to City Walk?

Posted on 13 October, 2015

Could bringing back traffic revitalise City Walk?

One of my favourite old photos of Canberra captures a barely-recognisable Garema Place and City Walk in the 1960s. The street is alive with activity.

In the foreground, a group of women, children clinging to their skirts, stop to chat. Others look in shop windows teeming with tantalising cakes and consumer goods. Men in three piece suits walk briskly along the bustling sidewalk. There’s not a faded for lease sign to be seen, nor an empty shop window. Perhaps most surprising of all, cars line the street.

City Walk in the 1960s. Image courtesy of imgur.com/a/eZ7bc

City Walk was created in the 1970s by blocking off Alinga Street between East Row at the City Bus Interchange and Binara Street, near the casino. While pedestrians can walk almost the entire length of the city without having to cross any roads with cars, sadly they often choose not to. Why? Because City Walk is largely empty of life.

The move to pedestrianise City Walk was part of a growing trend around the world. City planners, trying to replicate the success of suburban shopping malls and capture the ambience of European boulevards, closed streets to traffic.

But rather than rev up the retail experience and transport pedestrians into lanes reminiscent of the Left Bank of Paris or Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, the lack of activity gave these streets a deserted, even dangerous feel. Within a few years thriving thoroughfares became ghost streets as foot traffic dwindled and high-end retailers fled.

In America alone, more than 200 cities created pedestrian malls – but urban planners have lately begun to rethink their enthusiasm for the urban mall. They’ve learned that city centres are different from suburbs – and that people love city CBDs that bring lots of us in together.

In Chicago, the broad pedestrian walkways along State Street were ripped up to reintroduce two-way traffic, with retailers saying that more traffic improved activity by reminding passers-by that stores were open for business. In Philadelphia, the disastrous ‘transit way’ along Chestnut Street was removed after planners admitted it became neither a pedestrian walkway nor a street, but something completely devoid of character or purpose.

Sound familiar?

When we think of the best streets in our cities, they usually blend pedestrian and automobile traffic. The buzzing streets of Melbourne – the cosmopolitan charisma of Lygon Street, the chic shops along Chapel Street or the bustle of Chinatown along Little Bourke Street – are all open to traffic.

Melbourne’s major streets are all pleasant pedestrian experiences because of the exciting built form that features active street frontages, attractive street furniture and public art. Most of the streets in Melbourne’s CBD have both cars and trams running up and down them day and night.

Little Bourke Street in Melbourne

In contrast, Hastings Street in Noosa oozes character and laid-back charm. The interesting mix of retail shops and cafes, human-scale buildings and eye-catching street furniture and trees make this a lovely street on which to linger – all the while cars meander slowly up and down its length.

Hastings Street in Noosa. Image courtesy of architectus.co.nz/en/projects/hastings-street-streetscape

Our very own Bunda Street has been transformed recently into a shareway, with traffic calming measures, street furniture that encourages people to rest their feet, and a growing mix of interesting cafes and shops along the way.

The bottom line? There are many examples around the world where pedestrianised streets work miracles. However, there are other places where they fail miserably.

Is City Walk a delight or a disaster? I think introducing traffic back into City Walk is worth thinking about.

Catherine Carter is ACT Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia