Pedestrian ways: The passage

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Pedestrian paths come in a wide variety and are anything but simple. To  understand their variety and complexity, it is useful to begin by noting  their relationship to other movement systems, and where on the Transect they are typically found.

One fundamental division of kind is between those that are separated from  vehicular routes, and those in which pedestrians and vehicles share a common  movement space. The choice to separate, or not, ought always to be seriously thought through. Following the lead of Le Corbusier, modernist planning  fetishized separation of circulation modes. The dismal outcome of a half-century of such planning suggests that separation of pedestrian paths and vehicular thoroughfares may be an effective model only towards the two extremes of the Transect, that is, towards the most rural and most urban conditions.