Economic Aspects

Wherever a pedestrianisation of a street is planned, there is an uproar of the shopkeepers who believe that the car-drivers are better customers than pedestrians. However in nearly all cases the shops do better after the pedestriansiation. Possibly furniture stores move away, but three new ones with a higher turnover per squaremeter move in. Hardly any case is known where a street had to be opened for cars again after a pedestrianisation.

Walkability pays

Urban designers nowadays know that walkable areas are the much better business districts, for the simple reason that walking is the transport mode that allows the highest density of wallets along the storefront.

More about walkability see: www.walkable.org

An interesting and comprehensive study on the
Economic value of Walkability by Todd Alexander Litman, Victoria Transport Institute (Canada) you find here:
www.vtpi.org/walkability.pdf
This paper has received the TRB Pedestrian Committee’s 2003 Outstanding Paper Award

Many papers on economy and walking by authors from different countries you find on the search-page of the walk21-website