Pedestrian zone

Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, as pedestrian precincts in British English, street malls in Canada, and as pedestrian malls in the United States and Australia) are areas of a city or town restricted to use by people on foot or human-powered transport such as bicycles, with non-emergency motor traffic not allowed. Converting a street or an area to pedestrian-only use is called pedestrianization. Pedestrianization usually aims to provide better accessibility and mobility for pedestrians, to enhance the amount of shopping and other business activities in the area or to improve the attractiveness of the local environment in terms of aesthetics, air pollution, noise and crashes involving motor vehicles with pedestrians. In some cases, motor traffic in surrounding areas increases, as it is displaced rather than replaced. Nonetheless, pedestrianisation schemes are often associated with significant falls in local air and noise pollution, better pedestrian safety, and frequently with increased retail turnover and increased property values locally. A car-free development generally implies a large-scale pedestrianized area that relies on modes of transport other than the car, while pedestrian zones may vary in size from a single square to entire districts, but with highly variable degrees of dependence on cars for their broader transport links. Pedestrian zones have a great variety of approaches to human-powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and kick scooters. Some have a total ban on anything with wheels, others ban certain categories, others segregate the human-powered wheels from foot traffic, and others still have no rules at all. Many Middle Eastern kasbahs have no motorized traffic, but use donkey- or hand-carts to carry goods.