Designing great places for the comfort and enjoyment of the pedestrian is one of the most important aspects of urban design. Taken to the highest level of urbanism, the finest places in the world are cities with entire networks of car-free streets, known as pedestrian cities.
Pedestrian cities are growing in popularity in many top regions around the world. The incredible beauty, enjoyment, and convenience a network of connected pedestrian streets and squares provides to the residents on a daily basis is unsurpassed. Being able to walk to a mix of shops, restaurants, newsstands, coffeehouses and open-air markets within car-free neighborhoods and work centers delivers the highest quality of life, and adds great variety and vitality to an area. Jane Jacobs calls this "an intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially." There is a growing demand all around the world for entire city districts to be made pedestrian, and directly connected to a train line.
Lyon, France
The pedestrian scale cityis a much finer grain place - sized for people walking. It is a world away from suburbia, which is sized for cars. You can't walk in suburbia, and you can't drive in places like Venice. A walking city is the most enjoyable and sustainable.
