I spent some time last century living in Toronto, a moderately large North American city. The main street of the neighbourhood in which I lived was a former streetcar route crowded with small human-scale shops on the north side, and a church with a parking lot and some large office blocks on the south side. The north side was always crowded, the south side was always empty. It was obvious where people preferred to walk.
The same thing could be seen in the downtown core. Developers had torn down a quarter mile of the west side of the main shopping street and build a huge indoor shopping mall with virtually no street engagement except for a parking lot entrance midway. The east side of the street maintained its human-scale former streetcar-street landscape. Pedestrians would crowd both sides of the street above and below the mall, but only the east side in the stretch with the mall. It was obvious where people preferred to walk.
It's about human scale and human engagement. If you want to attract people, make it for them. Not for cars, not for architect's egos, not for political idiology. It's really just that simple.
This sounds a lot like downtown Minneapolis. In the 70's they went all in on the skyway system - a series of enclosed walkways over streets that went through the second floor of many buildings. The result is that all of the retail and amenities got pushed to the interiors of these buildings, and the facades were reduced to featureless stretches, save for a few particular streets (Hennepin and Nicollet). I admit when I worked downtown that I enjoyed not having to go outside in the winter, but much of downtown lacks charm and utility.
There is some basic math that can make a pedestrian downtown difficult. A walking person needs the resource of space, time in the pathway. So take the number of employees per square foot of office space (~200 sf per employee) to get an estimate of the total number of people in a downtown area. If we assume they each need to commute in/out each day we need a system of movement that can accommodate that number. Even if they are all elite joggers willing to run a couple miles each day, there is only so much street before people have to be relegated to tunnels/bridges. Depending on the office density, there are likely a great many cities where pedestrian commutes are physically impossible for the majority (London, NYC). Either they live downtown or we must move them in/out by faster mechanical means.
This is actually a very studied problem in pedestrian-dominated areas such as stadiums, airports and theme parks. There is a breaking point when the numbers get so big that you simply have to haul people to/from the perimeter entrances. I'm sure that Disney works from some very exact specifications.
Having pedestrian only downtowns is not really relevant when it comes to having a pedestrian friendly environment, so I’m not sure why this is a relevant counterpoint.
Most people in downtown Toronto or Manhattan are not solely walking to work, but the walking environment is still pleasant.
Pedestrian traffic is by far the most space efficient method of transportation, so that's not a problem with pedestrian traffic, it's a problem with density in general.
Uh, firstly, have you heard of this invention called public transit. Or this other invention called a bike? Also, this comparison to crowds around stadiums is bizarre. Cars use up more space than pedestrians, so it is possible to commue by car, then it is possible to commute on foot - at least as far as crowding is concerned.
> I spent some time last century living in Toronto, a moderately large North American city. The main street of the neighbourhood in which I lived was a former streetcar route crowded with small human-scale shops on the north side, and a church with a parking lot and some large office blocks on the south side. The north side was always crowded, the south side was always empty. It was obvious where people preferred to walk.
I'm in Sydney, AU - I've never been to Toronto, and know only that it's much further from the equator than Sydney is. Even in the mild climate of Sydney, I've noticed myself and others favouring the south sides of streets in winter here, simply because it receives more natural light & warmth.
For any given street, there's probably a handful of other candidate explanations for one side of a street being more favoured. It may well be an abundance of shops - if I want to amble, that would (all other factors aside) rate it higher. If I wanted to get somewhere, then I'd eschew a store-dense route, to avoid the myriad amblers that would slow me down.
In San Francisco, many people avoid walking in areas with higher crime - which is not mentioned on this site. Sometimes higher crime areas are not as well lit, don't have enough visibility, or don't have clear egress in the case where someone might hassle you.
Also, while walking routes are not 1:1 with running routes, Strava has very good data on popularity of particular streets globally. Here's a link to the Boston area (you can navigate wherever from there) which has strong similarities to the map that the MIT site shows.
Egress goes both ways. Streets with no hiding places nor alleys to flee down tend to be safer.
Also, a street lit well in some pockets but not others ruins night vision and creates hiding places. A residential street with lights on at every door might look nice at night but may also be worse for safety. Except for the psychological deterrence of "people live here, are home, and care enough to leave the light on."
I can't seem to find the paper, but there was a study conducted in my city that found that, beyond a certain point, more lighting makes people feel safer, but seems to also be associated with more crime.
As I recall, they didn't really figure out the reason for that, but the paper suggested one potential problem is that adding lights simultaneously ruins people's dark vision and creates more shadows to hide in. One other hypothesis I'd want to rule out before drawing any big conclusions is that law-abiding citizens aren't the only ones who know that people choose the more brightly lit streets when walking at night.
My own personal best guess is that, if there's any relationship, it's non-causative. I'm guessing that what muggers actually prefer is areas with low foot traffic, and it just happens to be that places with less foot traffic also tend to have fewer lights.
sadly I tend to avoid walking through parks at night for this reason, even though it ought to be a more pleasant (and often more direct) route. there's nothing good about crossing paths with a crowd after dusk where I live.
If you're referring to the tenderloin, there's a larger issue there with obstruction of sidewalks. I'm certainly not arguing these should be 'cleaned' or 'swept', though, just pointing out that 'crime' is rather incidental to the reasons why someone might avoid the area.
My first day in SF downtown was "oh cool, here is a bunch of free parking spots along the street" when I got to Tenderloin. I didn't see any crime but at the same time I started to avoid this neighborhood since then.
Urban crime is all about lack of eyes on the street. Well utilized People friendly environments will create safety. (Cf jane jacobs, death and life of American cities)
I wouldn't say it's all about eyes on the street. There are more dangerous and less dangerous neighborhood overall--especially if you're a confused-looking tourist. But I agree that a well-lit busy city avenue will tend to be safer than some deserted street.
Interesting article... it does make me wonder if they're missing some key ingredient.
One example for me personally is the level of aggression in the locals. There are certain streets I avoid due to this aggressive behavior, and something like that wasn't even mentioned.
Perhaps there are other missing variables too.
edit: in case anyone was wondering, no, I'm not implying some kind of racist undertone here. I've walked through many diverse neighborhoods in many cities without any problem whatsoever.
By "aggression" I mean panhandling and other interruptions by people undergoing obvious psychosis with no sense of social norms.
The reason I stated this oddly is because there's a large tangent of people on HN who will attack you for inferring that some homeless people (yes, these psychotic people are generally homeless) are psychotic and aggressive. Perhaps they live in gated communities?
No matter what I do, these people are allowed to exist where I live, but I don't consider them part of my community at all.
> By "aggression" I mean panhandling and other interruptions by people undergoing obvious psychosis with no sense of social norms.
I'd like to throw in interruptions by people who are completely sober but have something they want to sell. Going to get your coffee and having someone say "hey, let's have a chat really quick" then reply "wow, ignore me like I didn't just talk to you" when you ignore them is irritating as hell. In the pre-covid days people in my office would go to the Starbucks that was a half block further away just to avoid those people. Note: if a homeless person was this aggressive, the police would definitely get involved.
Also while calling it aggression is a bit of a stretch, I noticed the block that surrounds a couple of the busiest transit stations are noticeably less polite. Things like smaller personal space, more tolerance for cutting people off, less "excuse me" or "pardon me". It makes sense in the context, but if you are passing by it could be a hassle that you'll put a bit of effort into avoiding.
I'm glad someone brought this up, because I honestly find these sorts of aggressive sidewalk salespeople to be much worse than any panhandler. I've had them walk directly into my path, forcing me to walk around them or stop and I think that level of obstruction is asinine. I'm kind of an anxious person and someone moving that aggressively to block my path sets off my fight or flight very badly. Reminds me of the behaviour of the perpetrators of beatings I took in school.
Yes, thank you, these people are actually a bigger issue than panhandlers in my experience (though panhandlers are much more common in my area and they slipped my mind)
This is off-topic, but I can't help but notice how this is worded. I am having trouble articulating what bothers me about it. But it seems like you feel like you're "in the community, but not of it". There is an implicit distinction between you and your household, and the "locals". The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
Just my thoughts. I know this is irrelevant but I feel like it needs to be heard.
For what it's worth, I think you're reading way too much into what the poster said.
For me, "the locals" means nothing more than "the people who are habitually in that area". In my neighborhood, I am one of "the locals", other places I go, I'm perhaps not.
I took "aggression" to mean something like "proclivity to force a social engagement regardless of my desire to be part of it".
In New York City, that's sometimes panhandling, sometimes people with mental health issues, sometimes the guys with the CDs or the people who want to tell the whole car about their personal religious conversion while you're riding on the subway.
If my only role is "being there" then my only element of control is "not being there", which is sort of the poster's entire point.
> But it seems like you feel like you're "in the community, but not of it". There is an implicit distinction between you and your household, and the "locals".
If we're talking about a larger city, for example Boston (the city focused on for this webpage), then there will undoubtedly be communities in that city to which you do not belong. I would wager that in nearly every city in the world, there are neighborhoods and communities which non-residents of those communities try to avoid walking through.
> The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
Honestly, what are you talking about? Are you insinuating that pedestrians frequently go into neighborhoods in which they don't live to start trouble?
You assume the OP doesn’t refer to him/herself as a local. Have you considered it’s meant to be about how the article doesn’t distinguish between behavior of the locals in various regions?
> The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
You’ve clearly never experienced aggressive panhandling. Your only “role” is being present.
> If you beat up someone for being "not of your community", you're scum.
but deleted it before I was able to reply. While I'm on this topic I would like to point out how this perpetuates the same issues by replying to it directly:
"Scum" is an interesting word choice. (Yes, that use of 'interesting' is a very loaded one.) But OP didn't say anything about "beating up," just "aggression." And they also didn't claim it's solely because they're "not of the community." There is a lot of obscured context here, but the invariant to notice is that folks who are generally antagonistic against those they perceive as lower classes will use this kind of reductive, dehumanizing language to describe their interactions.
There’s a major economic and racial discussion missing here... the huge gaps in the southern part of their map (east and west of warren st... roxbury and dorchester) are the poorest areas of boston and heavily segregated racially... I’d wager that this data isn’t actually representative of the population and skews heavily towards high income white people...
> No matter what I do, these people are allowed to exist where I live, but I don't consider them part of my community at all.
this makes me sad to hear. who would disallow them to exist? and how would that disallowing happen? how would things change if you did consider them part of your community? maybe your interactions would be different if your attitude and energy changed?
In many cities, they are bused out to become someone else's problem.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but many of these people are obviously extremely unhappy, and they show no sign of changing soon.
If I viewed them as part of my community, it would probably be like pouring money into a black hole. Heroin tolerance goes up very quickly, and the associated costs go up just as quickly.
"Three main features characterize desirable streets: access to parks, nearby shops & businesses, and sidewalks & street furniture".
Really. I never would have guessed. Especially that last one. Really? People prefer to walk down a street with a path explicitly designed for humans instead of one that's designed entirely for cars?
While it seems like a fatuous point, I think stating the obvious is a feature, not a bug, for research. Explicitly confirming common sense with data is a good thing.
I will also take a longer path if the street is heavily tree-lined.
And in this pandemic, I usually avoid walking near shops and businesses because there are more people. (That said, it kinda proves the point that those streets are more desirable, in general.)
While shops probably attract people, its even more the case that people attract shops. For example, many cities have areas close to the water with surprisingly few shops, even though people like being close to water. The water restricts how you can move in the area, so there are fewer ways that people can happen to pass by - meaning even if the location is beautiful, there won’t be a lot of people there. Adding more shops won’t bring more people, just more bankruptcies.
I can't help but feel like this is overthinking the reasons behind the actions. Human beings need variety in their life, fresh stimulus. Walking to the store taking different paths every now and then is a great way to do this. If anything, I think it would be more useful to measure undesirable streets — places people avoid on purpose. In my personal opinion, those would be ones by busy roadways, bad infrastructure etc. As shown by car-free regions in Madrid and other cities, people like being out and about even in the city, so long as it isn't made too uncomfortable by the man-made nuisances.
Personally, if I am out on business, I have always preferred busier streets when living in the city- more people means less opportunity to get mugged, unless a less busy street or park both looked safe and were more direct routes.
Safety, directness, and pleasant surroundings in that order. Since pleasure strolls / exercise don't really have a direction, I'm not really counting them here.
Page is jumping all around on me and barely comprehensible and all I can think is "Desirable Websites: where do people prefer to browse?" and the answer is not this =/
I had no technical problems with the site, but it really irritates me that I have to scroll down half a screen just to get to see the next bullet point. I closed it before reaching the end of the page.
I don't know if that particular website uses it, but you can usually turn on the "prefers-reduced-motion" flag to get rid of the animations in compatible websites.
This feels like the internet equivalent of increasing the line spacing and font size because you don't have that much to say.
The point where I had to frantically scroll to have elements fade in horizontally is where I gave up. I thought the page was broken or I'd reached the end because I kept scrolling down with no vertical movement.
Also related: Desire Paths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path). Desire Paths are often shortcuts (people often optimize for nearest path) but sometimes people prefer a more scenic view, a less frequented route etc.
I discovered the concept of desire paths in college and found it very interesting at the time. it flips the narrative of "these inconsiderate kids keep walking on the grass!" to "these landscape architects failed to anticipate how students would use the space where they live and work".
If you ever need to find a desire path, for whatever reason, the first place to go is any college campus/quad.
Every corner is cut and all open spaces are crisscrossed with paths.
I remember seeing photos of some university - I can't remember where - that actually ripped up the old paths and paved over the desire paths, to great success.
Walking in NYC is the art of picking the most pleasant path. 10st across the villages is more pleasant than one block south or north, Henry St allows twice the rate of speed of walking on Canal.
One of the companies that graduated from the Urban-X accelerator (BMW+VC firm) in my cohort was numina, they create a technology/dev tools for understanding how people use streets. I think it's an awesome company. Their blog has some interesting stuff and is worth digging through if you're interested in urban ecology: https://numina.co/blog/ (particularly interesting to the HN crew: https://numina.co/announcing-numina-api-sandbox/)
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The same thing could be seen in the downtown core. Developers had torn down a quarter mile of the west side of the main shopping street and build a huge indoor shopping mall with virtually no street engagement except for a parking lot entrance midway. The east side of the street maintained its human-scale former streetcar-street landscape. Pedestrians would crowd both sides of the street above and below the mall, but only the east side in the stretch with the mall. It was obvious where people preferred to walk.
It's about human scale and human engagement. If you want to attract people, make it for them. Not for cars, not for architect's egos, not for political idiology. It's really just that simple.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/beneath-the-skyway
This is actually a very studied problem in pedestrian-dominated areas such as stadiums, airports and theme parks. There is a breaking point when the numbers get so big that you simply have to haul people to/from the perimeter entrances. I'm sure that Disney works from some very exact specifications.
Most people in downtown Toronto or Manhattan are not solely walking to work, but the walking environment is still pleasant.
I'm in Sydney, AU - I've never been to Toronto, and know only that it's much further from the equator than Sydney is. Even in the mild climate of Sydney, I've noticed myself and others favouring the south sides of streets in winter here, simply because it receives more natural light & warmth.
For any given street, there's probably a handful of other candidate explanations for one side of a street being more favoured. It may well be an abundance of shops - if I want to amble, that would (all other factors aside) rate it higher. If I wanted to get somewhere, then I'd eschew a store-dense route, to avoid the myriad amblers that would slow me down.
Also, while walking routes are not 1:1 with running routes, Strava has very good data on popularity of particular streets globally. Here's a link to the Boston area (you can navigate wherever from there) which has strong similarities to the map that the MIT site shows.
https://www.strava.com/heatmap#13.00/-71.12481/42.34039/hot/...
Also, a street lit well in some pockets but not others ruins night vision and creates hiding places. A residential street with lights on at every door might look nice at night but may also be worse for safety. Except for the psychological deterrence of "people live here, are home, and care enough to leave the light on."
As I recall, they didn't really figure out the reason for that, but the paper suggested one potential problem is that adding lights simultaneously ruins people's dark vision and creates more shadows to hide in. One other hypothesis I'd want to rule out before drawing any big conclusions is that law-abiding citizens aren't the only ones who know that people choose the more brightly lit streets when walking at night.
My own personal best guess is that, if there's any relationship, it's non-causative. I'm guessing that what muggers actually prefer is areas with low foot traffic, and it just happens to be that places with less foot traffic also tend to have fewer lights.
One example for me personally is the level of aggression in the locals. There are certain streets I avoid due to this aggressive behavior, and something like that wasn't even mentioned.
Perhaps there are other missing variables too.
edit: in case anyone was wondering, no, I'm not implying some kind of racist undertone here. I've walked through many diverse neighborhoods in many cities without any problem whatsoever.
By "aggression" I mean panhandling and other interruptions by people undergoing obvious psychosis with no sense of social norms.
The reason I stated this oddly is because there's a large tangent of people on HN who will attack you for inferring that some homeless people (yes, these psychotic people are generally homeless) are psychotic and aggressive. Perhaps they live in gated communities?
No matter what I do, these people are allowed to exist where I live, but I don't consider them part of my community at all.
I'd like to throw in interruptions by people who are completely sober but have something they want to sell. Going to get your coffee and having someone say "hey, let's have a chat really quick" then reply "wow, ignore me like I didn't just talk to you" when you ignore them is irritating as hell. In the pre-covid days people in my office would go to the Starbucks that was a half block further away just to avoid those people. Note: if a homeless person was this aggressive, the police would definitely get involved.
Also while calling it aggression is a bit of a stretch, I noticed the block that surrounds a couple of the busiest transit stations are noticeably less polite. Things like smaller personal space, more tolerance for cutting people off, less "excuse me" or "pardon me". It makes sense in the context, but if you are passing by it could be a hassle that you'll put a bit of effort into avoiding.
This is off-topic, but I can't help but notice how this is worded. I am having trouble articulating what bothers me about it. But it seems like you feel like you're "in the community, but not of it". There is an implicit distinction between you and your household, and the "locals". The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
Just my thoughts. I know this is irrelevant but I feel like it needs to be heard.
For me, "the locals" means nothing more than "the people who are habitually in that area". In my neighborhood, I am one of "the locals", other places I go, I'm perhaps not.
I took "aggression" to mean something like "proclivity to force a social engagement regardless of my desire to be part of it".
In New York City, that's sometimes panhandling, sometimes people with mental health issues, sometimes the guys with the CDs or the people who want to tell the whole car about their personal religious conversion while you're riding on the subway.
If my only role is "being there" then my only element of control is "not being there", which is sort of the poster's entire point.
If we're talking about a larger city, for example Boston (the city focused on for this webpage), then there will undoubtedly be communities in that city to which you do not belong. I would wager that in nearly every city in the world, there are neighborhoods and communities which non-residents of those communities try to avoid walking through.
> The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
Honestly, what are you talking about? Are you insinuating that pedestrians frequently go into neighborhoods in which they don't live to start trouble?
> The "aggression" you reference is also a bit troubling because it is framed entirely with an external locus of control, which absolves you of any role.
You’ve clearly never experienced aggressive panhandling. Your only “role” is being present.
> If you beat up someone for being "not of your community", you're scum.
but deleted it before I was able to reply. While I'm on this topic I would like to point out how this perpetuates the same issues by replying to it directly:
"Scum" is an interesting word choice. (Yes, that use of 'interesting' is a very loaded one.) But OP didn't say anything about "beating up," just "aggression." And they also didn't claim it's solely because they're "not of the community." There is a lot of obscured context here, but the invariant to notice is that folks who are generally antagonistic against those they perceive as lower classes will use this kind of reductive, dehumanizing language to describe their interactions.
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this makes me sad to hear. who would disallow them to exist? and how would that disallowing happen? how would things change if you did consider them part of your community? maybe your interactions would be different if your attitude and energy changed?
I'm not sure what the solution is, but many of these people are obviously extremely unhappy, and they show no sign of changing soon.
If I viewed them as part of my community, it would probably be like pouring money into a black hole. Heroin tolerance goes up very quickly, and the associated costs go up just as quickly.
Really. I never would have guessed. Especially that last one. Really? People prefer to walk down a street with a path explicitly designed for humans instead of one that's designed entirely for cars?
And in this pandemic, I usually avoid walking near shops and businesses because there are more people. (That said, it kinda proves the point that those streets are more desirable, in general.)
Safety, directness, and pleasant surroundings in that order. Since pleasure strolls / exercise don't really have a direction, I'm not really counting them here.
The point where I had to frantically scroll to have elements fade in horizontally is where I gave up. I thought the page was broken or I'd reached the end because I kept scrolling down with no vertical movement.
Also related: Desire Paths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path). Desire Paths are often shortcuts (people often optimize for nearest path) but sometimes people prefer a more scenic view, a less frequented route etc.
Every corner is cut and all open spaces are crisscrossed with paths.
I remember seeing photos of some university - I can't remember where - that actually ripped up the old paths and paved over the desire paths, to great success.