When pedestrians ruled the streets

In the future, says Christopher Gray, "perhaps our time will be known as the first decade of the Bicycle Wars, with righteous armies fighting over traffic lanes, bike paths and sidewalks, indeed over the very purpose of the streets themselves."

"Like many wars, it’s a question of territory, and the pedestrian has been losing for years," Gray writes in his Streetscapes feature in the Sunday New York Times real estate section.

The contest over who or what should feel at home in the streets leads Gray to look back to a time when pedestrians had "undifferentiated dominion over both the sidewalks and the roadbed." He argues that the situation changed in the 1880s "with the advent of electric and cable streetcars, with their much greater weights and speeds than horse-drawn vehicles, not to mention their guillotine-like wheels."

The installation of trolley tracks created a kill zone, he says. In the 1890s another threat appeared: the bicycle craze, in which speeding cyclists sometimes threatened the lives of people walking in the streets. By the early decades of the 1900s, when automobiles entered the scene, the roadway became a domain that people entered at great risk.

Still, it's fascinating to look at a photo in The Times of Columbus Circle in 1921 and see pedestrians apparently crossing at various points, almost at random.

For a fuller understanding of what urban streets were like in the period just before the automobile began to reign supreme, watch this 11-minute, 30-second film clip on You Tube. It shows men and women sauntering across Market Street in San Francisco in 1906, mixing almost nonchalantly with trolleys, horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and autos. The trolleys don't seem to have created a killing zone. Automobiles seem more of a threat, but because speeds were generally fairly slow, people and vehicles made all sorts of spontaneous maneuvers. The clip brings new meaning to the phrase "street life."

The street, it seems, was a fun place to be rather than a constant danger.

For more in-depth coverage on this topic: 

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• See the September 2011 issue of New Urban News. Topics: Walk Score, sprawl retrofit, livability grants, Katrina Cottages, how to get a transit village built, parking garages, the shrinking Wal-Mart, Complete Streets legislation, an urban capital fund, and much more.

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• See the July-August 2011 issue of New Urban News. Downtown makeover, agrarian urbanism, bike sharing, bike-ped issues, TIGER III livability grants, unlocking remnant land value, selling the neighborhood, Landscape Urbanism vs. New Urbanism, new urban resort, granny flats, The Great Reset. 

• See the June 2011 issue of New Urban News. Mid-rise living, elevated walkways, Jane Jacobs and observational urbanism, affordable transit-oriented development, the coming housing calamity, rental and TOD to dominate market, New Town in bankruptcy, regional approach for high-speed rail, the civic costs of sprawl, redevelopment of mall 

• See the April-May 2011 issue of New Urban News. Transit-oriented development, “Cycle tracks,” gentrification versus revitalization, HUD grants, economic silver linings, light rail development, pocket neighborhoods, close-in Maryland housing less expensive, transit outperforms green buildings, Charter Awards, shift to smaller stores