Proceed Without Caution: Cities Add Parkland by Closing Streets and Roads to Cars

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Peter Harnik

A thirteenth excerpt from the recently released book published by Island Press called Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities. In this post, we look at some cities who have added parkland by closing streets and roads to automobile traffic. In every city there are hundreds of acres of streets and roadways potentially available as park and recreational facilities. While parks [...]

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Visions of Closing Roads and Creating Parks

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Coleen Gentles

A previous post highlighted a few cities that closed roads through parks to increase pedestrian and non-motorized use. We’ve recently learned about a proposal to temporarily close streets to traffic during weekends and holidays in Buenos Aires and bring in portable playground equipment and benches to turn these roads into parks. A video of this [...]

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Road Closures: A Driving Force for Park Visitation

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Ryan Donahue

We’ve written before about city parks that close roadways for use by pedestrians, cyclists, rollerbladers, and more. Closing parks to cars actually has been shown to increase visitation, which may come as a surprise to some. Some of the more famous examples include JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, and [...]

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World Health Day Encourages Car Free Roads

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Ben Welle

Compelled by concerns over public health and a returning zeal for urban life with fewer cars, cities across the world are closing roadways to cars and opening them for people. This trend is getting a great endorsement through the World Health Organization’s upcoming World Health Day on April 11, in which it is encouraging cities [...]

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Testing Road Closures in Parks

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Ben Welle

Speaking of National Parks in urban areas, there’s some news from the Presidio in San Francisco that the park is experimenting with some road closures. Devising ways of reducing car use and encouraging non-motorized transportation within parks is becoming more popular with concerns about climate change, obesity and mental health and just a general interest [...]

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More Evidence of Successful Park Road Closures

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Ben Welle

There’s more evidence that road closures in parks can be a big success in increasing their usership and improving safety and conditions. Case in point: Kansas City is expanding its closure of Cliff Drive in Kessler Park to vehicles on every weekend throughout the year. This follows a pilot program last May through October to [...]

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