We Walk Far, If We Can See Where We're Going
And why there's parts of downtown that thrive and others that fail
The first time the term “pedestrian shed” showed up in the radar was while learning about the concept of “Walk Appeal” in the book “The Original Green” by Steve Mouzon.
The Pedestrian Shed is the basic area that a person reads as reachable from their specific point of view at a given moment.
Walk Appeal refers to the attractiveness of a place that makes you *want* to walk, as opposed as just putting up with a walk. It is why walks feel shorter along beautiful streets like Kalverstraat in Amsterdam of Melantrichova Ulice in Prague, than along drab, forced walks, such as 14th St. and D St. in Washington, DC or 12th Avenue by the 30s in Manhattan.
For example. If you are standing on the National Mall by the National Museum of American History, the Capitol seems unreachable.
Conversely, if you are standing in the middle of Madison Square Park you can very easily read the enclosure and calculate how many steps to your delicious Double Smokeshack on the other end of the square.
A very similar phenomenon is present in downtowns and main streets. People read the enclosure and calculate how far they are willing to walk. The space where they are, the things they can see and the visual cues that they get will influence the decision of how far to walk.
Our downtown or main street may feel like a cohesive space when it’s our job to walk up and down and knock on every business’ door, and we see the big picture on a scaled map.
For regular folks, however, the diverse pockets or “pedestrian sheds” that have formed because a gas station breaks the continuity of the walk, or because a residential development put up a boring, blind wall can mean that venturing past a point just doesn’t feel worth it.
That would explain why parts of the district are thriving, full of people and bustling, and other parts have to try twice as hard, receive double the amount of help and still get dismal results.
The good news is that it is possible to capitalize on those sub districts that chance has created. They each have defining characteristics. The lack of clear links with the epicenter part of the district obligates businesses to adapt and think differently, and thus have a certain grit associated with their reality.
It means they are unique and brave and willing to work hard. That is a better start than many privileged districts have.
Finding the jewels to polish may be difficult in some cases, but they are always there and it’s a matter of finding the right stories to tell. Knitting those stories into a legendary branding for the subdistrict and then promoting each as part of the whole falls into what the Placemaking community calls “The Power of Ten”.
The basic explanation for the Power of Ten is that a place must have at least ten different things to do that attract diverse people. Think of food kiosks, benches, playgrounds, green patches, walkways, giant chess games, fountains, public gyms, free Wi-Fi, etc.
A good district would have at least ten of those attractive, diverse places to become a destination, and a city must have at least ten of those districts to be, well, a diverse, prosperous and attractive city.
This is how I see a way out of the different results that disjointed areas within downtowns and main streets are getting.
Focus the efforts on seeing each subdistrict as unique. Identify each area, find its purpose, tell its stories, brand it, and articulate it with the rest, promoting its uniqueness and knitting them all together to create a legendary destination.
Some links you may enjoy:
Shameless self promotion: my book on creating epic storefronts that enhance any walk
“Walk Appeal” from Steve Mouzon’s The Original Green
The pedestrian shed, as told by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck
Christopher Alexander’s influence on software development and Wiki