How to return big cities to pedestrians

By closing part of Oxford Street to traffic, London is joining a wider trend

Copenhagen did it as far back as 1962. More recently Paris and Madrid have done it; so has New York. Now London is following suit. A portion of Oxford Street, the UK’s best-known — but today somewhat shabby — shopping street, was pedestrianised this week in hope of boosting a nascent revival under way since a post-Covid nadir. In doing so, it is joining a wider movement. While the tendency for much of the late 20th century was to improve access to cities for cars, today’s welcome trend is towards reclaiming city centres for those on foot.

London’s mayor Lord Sadiq Khan first tried to pedestrianise Oxford Street in 2018 but local opposition stymied the plan. Residents of neighbouring districts remain sceptical today, fearing noise and disruption from rerouted traffic. This is a familiar pattern ever since Copenhagen’s Strøget — whose name translates, fittingly, as “strolling street” — became Europe’s first big-city shopping street to be temporarily closed to traffic in 1962 amid gripes from shops and residents. The city’s mayor for urban planning needed police protection after death threats.

Yet the experience of big European cities, at least, is that opposition fades once the benefits become clear. Strøget’s pedestrianisation became permanent in 1964. Done well — an important proviso — evidence suggests such projects can boost footfall and support retail activity by encouraging shoppers to linger, make the streetscape more vibrant and reduce commercial vacancies. After the shift to online retail, pedestrianised spaces also fit with the idea of using physical stores for brand building and making shopping an “experience”.

So what has been proven to work? First, pedestrianisation should not be an end in itself, but part of a broader urban renewal strategy encompassing office and residential as well as retail space. It must be about more than paving over the roadway. Success depends as much on the quality of the design and the urban furniture — the seating, trees and greenery, the outdoor dining and cultural activities. It also needs ongoing management and investment.

Second, pedestrianised streets require good public transport links to ferry people in and out, and ideally a reasonably dense local population to ensure the buzz continues into evenings and weekends. Oxford Street is well suited with its four Underground stations, two of them also stops on the £18.9bn Elizabeth line opened in 2022 that links directly to western and eastern suburbs and Heathrow airport.

A lack of those elements helps explain why pedestrianisation worked less well in many US towns and cities. Scores of them paved over main streets from the 1960s to 1980s to compete with emerging suburban indoor malls, but a large portion were later reversed (pedestrianisation proved no panacea in many smaller UK cities and towns in part for similar reasons).

Third, be pragmatic, not purist. The 1km stretch of Oxford Street being pedestrianised is barring cyclists too. Paris’s Rue de Rivoli, by contrast, which made Covid-era restrictions on most ordinary car traffic permanent in 2020, remains a key cycling artery; an ongoing project to réenchanter the Champs-Élysées will cut eight lanes of traffic to four, turning the reclaimed asphalt into tree-lined footpaths. New York carved out parts of Times Square and Broadway to create pedestrian plazas.

Finally, consult closely with local commercial and residential occupants, and use temporary projects to find out what works before making anything permanent. New York’s urban transformation scheme, as one of its architects, Janette Sadik-Khan, has put it, changed the city “from places people want to park to places people want to be”. A worthy slogan for any major city.