Placing the North American Post-war Pedestrian Mall Within the Legacy of Downtown Urban Renewal

Abstract

This paper investigates how the pedestrian mall concept evolved and was broadly replicated in the post-war period in North America, specifically positioning downtown pedestrian malls as a case study of urban renewal ideas and practices. This research describes how ideas of pedestrianization evolved from a modernist utopian concept, to a more constrained pragmatic approach that was widely implemented. Furthermore, this research links the proliferation of pedestrian malls to federal urban renewal funding in the US. Like many mid-century urban renewal projects however, only a few pedestrian malls remain intact today.