Some Cities Revert Pedestrian Malls Back to Regular Streets

Closing off streets to cars to create pedestrian malls doesn’t always work.

Land Use Digest, published by the Urban Land Institute, reported in its May 1996 issue that Chicago is joining such cities as Eugene, Little Rock, and Norfolk in reverting pedestrian malls back into regular streets. Merchants have complained in these cities that street closure created a “ghost town atmosphere and caused a sharp decline in shopping,” according to the article. Chicago will spend $24.5 million to convert nine blocks of pedestrian mall with widened sidewalks created in 1979 back into conventional street. These failures represent only a small percent of pedestrian malls in the U.S. and Canada.