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The £30 million plans at the Strand Aldwych in central London will remove vehicles from the street in front of Somerset House and King’s College London to create a major new public space around St Mary le Strand Church… read more here.
Brick Lane is now a traffic-free spot on weekends, bank holidays and Thursday and Friday evenings. Last year, the street was pedestrianised from August to November, allowing its many restaurants to offer al fresco dining options amid the pandemic… read more here.
A plan to drastically reduce car traffic in the centre of the French capital Paris by 2022 has been put forward by the city council. The scheme would ban through traffic in four central districts, giving priority instead to cyclists, pedestrians, and public transport… read more here.
The City of London Corporation has today unveiled proposals to pedestrianize areas around Bank Tube Station to make the busy junction safer for walkers and cyclists. Under the plans revealed this afternoon, Threadneedle Street could be closed for motor vehicles between Bank Junction and Bartholomew Lane in both directions to create a walking and cycling only area… read more here.
A scheme to turn Bristol’s historic centre into a pedestrian-only zone has been officially launched as part of moves to get the city back on its feet following the shock of the coronavirus pandemic. A chunk of the Old City, which includes restaurants, cafes, independent shops and some civic buildings, has been cleared of traffic… read more here.
The pedestrianisation of Soho has been hailed a success, as 90 per cent of the area’s hospitality businesses have reportedly reopened. While at one point much of the area looked at risk of collapse, the campaign to allow restaurants to serve al fresco appears to have offered a lifeline to many… read more here.
Architect NBBJ has unveiled a masterplan for Net City, a car-free district in Shenzhen "roughly the size and shape of Midtown Manhattan" for Chinese technology company Tencent… read more here.
Large areas of London are to be closed to cars and vans to allow people to walk and cycle safely as the coronavirus lockdown is eased, Sadiq Khan has announced. In one of the biggest car-free initiatives of any city in the world, the capital’s mayor announced on Friday that main streets between between London Bridge and Shoreditch, Euston and Waterloo, and Old Street and Holborn, will be limited to buses, pedestrians and cyclists… read more here.
Private cars will be banned from passing through the centre of Birmingham in an effort to cut air pollution and congestion. A newly published transport plan says that vehicles will be able to travel into the city centre but will not be allowed to make through journeys… read more here.
The City of London Corporation has given the green light for Beech Street, much of which runs under the Barbican Estate, to be restricted to zero emission vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians by spring 2020, pending final approval by Transport for London... read more here.
Measurements taken by researchers at King's College London during the London Marathon highlighted an 89% drop in air pollution levels in the capital. The research shows the impact that a wide-scale ban on polluting vehicles could have on the city... read more here.
Zaha Hadid Architects said removing traffic from Islington’s signature shopping street would help make it a cleaner and less dangerous place. It’s part of the Clerkenwell firm’s “Walkable London” project, a more ambitious take on mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s pledge to pedestrianise Oxford Street... read more here.
Parts of Melbourne's inner city could become car-free "superblocks" that prioritise pedestrians and public spaces, as the council proposes ways to combat the growing congestion on roads, footpaths and public transport… read more here.
Swathes of central London should become car-free zones, Zaha Hadid Architects principal Patrik Schumacher has told Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. A map produced by Zaha Hadid Architects for the exhibition imagines four main areas of the capital eventually being pedestrianised, roughly covering Soho, the City of London, the South Bank and Clerkenwell… read more here.
The largest-ever study of the link between city walkability and blood pressure has been held up as evidence of the “intangible value of urban design” in improving long-term health outcomes, say researchers... read more here.
Patrik Schumacher took part in a fireside chat organised by the Startup Cities Foundation. The panelists discussed how entrepreneurship, creativity and densification can boost urban economy. A recording of this talk can be viewed here.
Walkable London: upgrading the urban prosperity engine exhibition was launched at the New London Architecture. After the opening remarks by NLA chairman Peter Murray, ZHA’s Patrik Schumacher announced the goal of the project: to create “a full-scale network of pedestrian routes which will create corridors of activation across the capital”. The exhibition is free and open until February 26th.
The firm has recently been in touch with the Mayor of London about plans to create a network of pedestrian walkways crossing the capital. At Healthy Cities, he explained that this would take the idea of “walkable London” well beyond the pedestrianised historic centres that are found in European cities, or the existing network of shopping precincts such as Covent Garden in London. A video of his talk can be viewed here.
When residents of the International Business District (IBD) in Songdo, South Korea go to work, pick up their kids from school, or shop for groceries, driving is optional. That's because the $35 billion district — currently a work-in-progress about the size of downtown Boston — was designed to eliminate the need for cars... read more here.
Western section of Oxford Street could be transformed to create the world’s best outdoor shopping experience and an unrivalled place to live and visit. Ambitious plans for the start of the transformation of the Oxford Street area, centred on new world-class public spaces, were unveiled today… read more here.