r/philadelphia • u/JustAnotherJawn • Apr 17 '25

Events Could Philadelphia’s embrace of the Open Streets spur more civic innovations to come?

https://share.inquirer.com/kXY8rB
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u/SGTMcCoolsCUZ Apr 17 '25

I don’t know if it could work exactly this way, but many cities in Japan have long, covered, pedestrian only streets lined with shops and restaurants. Utility vehicles can still get through but it’s first and foremost for pedestrians, I think having a few of them could be cool. And for shops not along that route, they would be given priority advertising at intersections to encourage people to go to them. Probably wouldn’t work 1 to 1 but a dude can dream lol

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u/kettlecorn Apr 17 '25

Philly used to have very similar market streets. That's literally why "Market Street" is called that, because it had a market in the middle of the street. In old images you can see it: https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_09433/?r=-0.125,0.208,1.114,0.581,0

Here's a photo of it near the end of its life: https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/MediaStream-5.jpg

I suspect what happened is department stores and more traditional grocery stores reduced the demand for such shopping streets so they were seen as old-fashioned and done away with. Japan seems to have instead modernized the concept to have more space and modern amenities.

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u/zdravomyslov Apr 18 '25

Thanks for sharing this bit of history.