September 22nd, 2010
Sidewalk fences at a typical corner in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon
Earlier this month, a pair of pedestrians tried to push their way through a crowd of people on Dundas Street, one of the most crowded streets in Hong Kong’s most crowded neighbourhood. One of them cast a withering glance on the grey metal fence that lined the sidewalk, preventing him from stepping into the road or crossing the street. “What a hassle,” he said to his friend. “That thing is such a pain.”
Every day, more than 200,000 pedestrians pass through the centre of Mongkok. At peak hours, the footpath on Dundas Street, between Sai Yeung Choi Street and the Tung Choi Street Ladies’ Market, becomes so crowded that many people choose to dodge cars and minibuses instead of walking on the packed sidewalk.
In June, the Highways Department hoped to put a stop to that unruly behaviour by installing a long, impermeable fence along the entire length of the sidewalk. But the barrier seems to have had the opposite of its intended effect. On a recent Thursday evening, hundreds of people could be seen walking in the roadway, outside the fence. At one point, there were more pedestrians in the street than on the sidewalk.
“The fence has been bad for business because people can’t easily cross the street to get here,” said the owner of a dispensary located halfway down the block. He said he had not been consulted before the fence was installed. “When the government wants to do something, it just does it,” he said.
Nearby, a man was leaning against the fence while browsing Facebook on his iPhone. “The only reason it’s here is so the government can cover its ass if there’s an accident,” he said.
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August 27th, 2010
Ste. Catherine Street. Photo by Kate McDonnell
Two years ago, when Ste. Catherine Street in the Gay Village was pedestrianized for the summer, it was organized like a festival, with a corporate monopoly on outdoor beer sales and over-the-top decoration (and not in a fabulous way, just in a tacky commercial one). Even worse, the Village is not the liveliest place on weekday afternoons, so the street felt a bit forlorn before the sun went down.
But the enjoyment of experiencing a street free of cars outweighed all of the drawbacks. The Village’s summertime pedestrianization was successful enough that it has continued for the two summers since.
Now it has spread to other streets. This year, for the first time, St. Paul Street in Old Montreal was closed to traffic, something that should have been done a long time ago. Despite being one of the narrowest commercial streets in the city, and despite the tourist crowds that throng it all summer long, most of the space on St. Paul was taken up by cars. Walking along it meant a choice of squeezing past fanny-packed day-trippers on the narrow sidewalk or dodging cars on the street.
St. Paul Street. Photo by Kate McDonnell
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January 7th, 2010
It’s hard to describe the sound of Sai Yeung Choi Street on a typical evening. It’s the echo of horns and sirens through the Mongkok canyons, the cacophony of video billboards and shop stereos. It’s the sound of sixteen thousand shoppers flocking each hour to the most crassly commercial of Hong Kong streets.
But there’s more to it than just shopping. Sai Yeung Choi Street is also the “West Dog-Dragon Cultural District,” a feisty theatre group’s response to government-led cultural initiatives like West Kowloon. (In Cantonese, dog and nine are homonyms, so Dog-Dragon and Kowloon are pronounced the same way.) Since 2003, FM Theatre Power (FTMP) has used the street as the base for its off-kilter performances, turning a shrine to consumerism into a haven for art.
“We want to engage Hong Kong people in the street, to break the barrier between them and performers,” says Banky Yeung, FMTP’s enigmatic creative director. “They’re not used to seeing street performances – they think it’s for beggars. They think that streets are only for walking or shopping. That attitude goes up into the government. We want to challenge these negative perceptions.”
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July 23rd, 2009
Hong Kong’s government has finally decided that sacrificing its air quality in favour of cars, buses and trucks isn’t such a good thing after all. Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising departure from its reluctance to make big plans, the government pledged to fight roadside air pollution by revamping the city’s vast bus network, planting more trees, expanding bicycle infrastructure, creating “low-emission zones” in the city’s most congested areas and permanently pedestrianizing nearly two dozen streets. Emission standards would also be tightened for boats and private vehicles.
While details on many aspects of the plan have yet to be confirmed — and of course it’s still just a proposal, with no guarantee that any of it will be actually put into place — it has the potential to drastically improve the quality of life in Hong Kong’s central areas. In Mongkok, the network of pedestrian streets already in place would be expanded, while vehicles that do not meet the highest European emission standards, known as Euro IV, would be banned from the entire neighbourhood. Vehicular access outside the pedestrian areas would also be limited.
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September 20th, 2007
Today is Montreal’s fifth annual edition of Car Free Day, known officially (and awkwardly) as “In town, without my car!” The east end of the downtown core, between McGill College on the west and St. Urbain on the east, de Maisonneuve on the north and René Lévesque on the south, will be closed from 9:30am to 3:30pm. (Ste. Catherine in front of Place des Arts will be closed all day.)
The car-free zone will be divided into three sections: the “Active and Public Transportation District,” featuring a sit-in “to take action in favour of streets for everybody”; a “Health and Transportation District,” with “cardio fun” and line dancing; and an “Environment District” providing information on green roofs and urban gardening. This being Montreal, there will also be a “car-free happy hour” from 5 à 7.
It’s easy to be cynical about the AMT’s official celebration of Car Free Day. Already late to the game in 2003, the car-free perimeter has actually shrunk over the past five years. The fact that it begins at the end of the morning rush hour and ends at the beginning of the afternoon rush hour is a reminder that, whatever politicians say about getting people to use alternative modes of transit, the private automobile still rules.
Meanwhile, Montreal’s year-round commitment to getting people out of their cars has been uneven. While new bike lanes and paths have been inaugurated and a handful of streets have had their sidewalks widened, the most important effort needed has been slow in coming: investment in public transportation.
Still, even if you’re inclined to view Car Free Day as token recognition of the need to reduce private vehicle use, you have to admit that it does have a big impact, even during the few hours that it takes place. In 2003, during its inaugural edition, the levels of nitric oxide and carbon monoxide within the car-free perimeter fell by 40% below normal.
So get out there and enjoy Car Free Day. Don’t forget that, along with the AMT-organized event along Ste. Catherine Street, McGill University’s downtown campus will also be closed to cars. Information booths and other special events will take place around the lower field just off Sherbrooke Street. Have fun.
January 23rd, 2007
The volume of the crowds that descend on Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay every Sunday would generate chaos in most cities: Pedestrians would pour off overcrowded sidewalks and into the streets, snarling traffic. Police would scramble to either push people back or close the roads altogether. Nobody would quite know what to make of it.
But Hong Kong doesn’t have that problem. Thanks to a forward-thinking pedestrianization project, many of its neighbourhoods, including Causeway Bay, boast at least some pedestrianized or partially pedestrianized streets, making Hong Kong one of the most pedestrian-oriented cities in the world.
Hong Kong’s pedestrian scheme dates back to 2000, when the territory’s transport department set out to improve Hong Kong’s pedestrian experience, encourage more people to walk, and improve the city’s often dubious air quality. Three different categories of streets help achieve those goals. Full-time pedestrian streets give pedestrians absolute priority—vehicular access is restricted to certain times of the day and for specific activities, such as deliveries. Part-time pedestrian streets are closed to vehicles for specific periods of the day; and traffic-calming streets give more real estate to pedestrians with wider sidewalks, reducing the amount of space given over to cars.
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October 1st, 2006
To Ottawans, the ongoing saga of Sparks Street is somewhat of a tragicomedy. The street, which runs parallel to Wellington Street just one block south of Parliament Hill, exists mostly as a pedestrian mall, with vehicular access limited from Kent Street in the West to Elgin Street in the East. During its prime from the 1880s to the mid-twentieth century, Sparks Street was the commercial hub of the nation’s capital. Several of the nation’s top banks established central branches along the street to serve the city’s booming business class, and the street was home to local department stores who competed with others across the Canal in Lowertown. Sparks Street is endowed with over thirty buildings of historical significance – perhaps the highest concentration of such landmarks in Ottawa, and a reminder of the city’s heyday.
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