Reclaiming cities for people.

• Author: Lowe, Marcia D.

THE SUBURBAN shopping mall inspires little ambivalence--one either despises or adores it. To some architecture critics, the mall is a sterile monstrosity; to environmentalists, a blight on the landscape and testament to car-dependence. To many others, however, the mall is a favorite place. Teenagers, for example, spend more time there than anywhere except school and home. Chroniclers of popular culture even have extolled the mall as a reincarnation of the traditional small-town Main Street.

Like it or not, this sprawling, climate-controlled structure is a symbol of the times. Once a distinctly American phenomenon, the suburban shopping mall has proliferated throughout the industrial world and even is invading developing countries. The shopping mall offers a reprieve from the harsh landscape of the modern city. People are attracted to its array of bright, new stores; trees and flowers; fountains; benches; and sunlight pouring in through skylights. There are precious few other places in today's cities, towns, and suburbs where one can stroll around freely and enjoy such amenities.

Why are so many urban areas hostile to humans? They were planned and designed that way--not to be hostile, but to have features that turn out to be inhospitable. After decades of accommodating automobiles first and foremost, city landscapes are scarred by dangerous traffic, acres of concrete and asphalt, and towering, garish signs aimed only at viewers speeding by in cars. Once lively downtowns have lost residents to the suburbs. The provision of parks, squares, and other public spaces has been neglected, and even the few remaining ones often are uninviting and unsafe. Michelangelo had something else in mind when he exulted, "I love cities above all. "

With better urban planning and design, city dwellers could enjoy the qualities they find appealing not only in a shopping mall, but everywhere they live, work, play, and go to school. Streets could welcome pedestrians safely, and people could reach shops and entertainment conveniently without having to get in the car. In animated town centers, sunlight would stream down not through skylights, but through a canopy of trees. Best of all, this environment would not be created artificially, but would have the richness of diversity, informality, and spontaneity that city-lovers like Michelangelo have revered.

Of course, making metropolitan areas more humane requires far more than just a redesign of urban spaces. Deep social alienation and the decline of central cities result from the formidable forces of racial and class discrimination and income disparities. All metropolitan dwellers deserve a more welcoming physical environment. Wiser planning of urban space also can help spark the vital economic development that would address more fundamental social dilemmas, which, in turn, can help stem the flight of people (and tax base) to the suburbs.

Architecture critic Lewis Mumford was a young man when, early this century, he fixed attention on the expanding role of the automobile. Dismayed by the approaches car-infatuated urban planners already were taking, he admonished, Forget the damned motor car and build cities for lovers and friends."

Today, it is obvious that few heeded Mumford's advice. City streets are so ruled by motor traffic that they form impenetrable barriers. In the U.S., it is not unusual for a single intersection to have two identical convenience stores of the same chain at opposite corners. The high-speed, heavy traffic divides the intersection into entirely distinct markets. In many places, people can not get to destinations that are within easy walking distance without the protection of an automobile.

Even in countries where few can afford cars, speeding motor traffic shreds the city. In India, a nation with one automobile for every 408 people (compared with at least one for every two in the U.S.), a foreign visitor recently complained of having to hire a taxi just to cross a street.

In cities all over the world, automobile traffic needs to be restrained. A London Planning Advisory Council study concluded that traffic restraint is "the only way of improving the environment of central and inner London." Many European cities have redesigned roads to "calm" traffic. Typically, this entails posting reduced speed limits and introducing strategically placed trees, bushes, flower beds, or recreation areas along or in the roadway--gentle inducements that make drivers proceed slowly and yield the right-of-way to pedestrians, cyclists, and children at play. Traffic calming is most common in Germany and the Netherlands and is gaining ground on numerous residential streets and main roads throughout northern Europe, Australia, and Japan.

Many of the world's large...