A unique new town is currently being planned in England, to be built next year.
It will be entirely pedestrianised. On its perimeters will be a vast underground car park.
All of its streets plus the CBD will as said, be pedestrianised, thus no footpaths or kerbs are necessary. That is the future.
New Zealanders are well travelled and will be aware that pedestrianisation is occurring everywhere, but especially in European cities.
I’ve campaigned for years on this and finally, and unsurprisingly, the Auckland CBD is acting.
Wellington’s Lambton Quay cries out for it, but decades of mediocre do‑nothing Councils shy from acting.
8 Comments
Unless the underground carparks have good security with regular patrols by security guards, they will be a magnet for car thieves. Every day in our cities and suburbs where cars are parked on streets and driveways overnight, owners awake to find their cars have been broken into or stolen and tradies find their vans with windows smashed and tools required for their livelihood pillaged. It will only get worse when vehicles are located en masse in a few locations.
Sounds awful. What if you need to carry something heavy to work from your car? What if, like Wellington, it rains, which isn’t beyond the realms of possibility in England? Why is giving up the fruits of civilisation foisted on us as a good thing these days?
Because it’s important to create cities that make having more than 1 or 2 kids painful. Population control.
You do what people did years ago, you carry the thing, or have a little wheeled trolley. Its called incidental exercise i.e. exercise as part of normal living. Now-a-days we’ve mostly removed incidental exercise, so the population is overweight and unfit. Seems radical I know and it will slow things down – which is what we actually need to do.
There have been limited attempts at this here. They are called ” malls ”
If the proposed english town will be anything like them, it will not bode well.
They set up Onehunga Mall as pedestrian only back in the 1980s. At some later time it reverted back to being a normal street.
Has anyone asked why?
Bob NZ wants public transportation especially in Auckland, I dont think it will be successful unless we condense our living to four of five levels above ground and two or three below like the Germans.
We are spreading out like Texans and want public transport to work, drive you car to the train?
Telluride in Colorado uses overhead Gondolas I thought they were great maybe they could feed the rail. Guess we will have power for E cars and trains if Rio Tinto finally leave us.
Phillip.
When there is incredibly dense foot traffic then vehicles are an intrusion. That takes a helluva a lot of people though.