In 2007, I had the great fortune to rent a flat in Barcelona, Spain, for six weeks. It was near Plaça d'Espanya, which was a major transit node for trains out of town. I used to walk along the Mistral to La Rambla almost every day to get a falafal. My walk is the light green path.
Looking at Barcelona from the sky, it is clear that the old town is in the middle and the grid-like L'Eixample around it is much newer. In fact, Barri Gotic is very old. It is full of gothic architecture from the middle ages, and Roman ruins under that. We can see three transit nodes easily in this image, which upon investigation we'd find to be: Espanya, Catalunya, and Glories. Note where they are relative to the red line, which is La Rambla. La Rambla begins from Plaça de Catalunya and goes through the old quarter to the statue of Christopher Columbus, and to the sea,
Walk around the marina and to the beach, and you can still see Senor Colon. He is perched much higher than STL's Running Man.
La Rambla is filled with beautiful Sycamore trees and is a very popular place to walk.
I'm sure every city wants to have a street like La Rambla, but few pull it off. Look at the satellite image above though. The very structure of the city is designed to funnel people to La Rambla. It is where everyone goes. There are hotels, hostels, restaurants, bars, arts, and...
and...
and...
Clearly La Rambla is a really interesting place with plenty to do. What about St. Louis, Missouri?
The structure of the city's transit has often been compared to a wheel with all spokes going downtown. The spokes in purple here are highways. I-64 is like a giant wall going through the city. It it is coupled with train tracks and impossible to cross on foot through most of its length. Who but the Science Center would let a pedestrian cross it? I-70 cuts the arch off from the rest of downtown,
Back to the map above, the blue line is a little more friendly. That's Gravois on the South, Tucker downtown, and Florissant on the North. Still, these are not easy roads to cross on foot. Where is the pedestrian route? Well there's that Riverfront Trail there in green. That's one way to get there.
The Gateway Mall goes from Union Station (in pink on the map above) to the arch. La Rambla goes from Catalunya to the statue of Christopher Columbus.
Union Station is a great draw card for downtown. Barcelona's inter-city bus and train stations are removed from La Rambla. They flank it. St. Louis has Amtrak and Megabus both downtown at Union Station. It also has a metrolink station. When Metro gets funding again, perhaps they will see Union Station as the ideal place to build a bus interchange for local buses. Union Station's back rests against I-64 and the city's rail lines. As the St. Louis matures and Union Station grows into a better transit hub, perhaps it will grow to include the Amtrak station and build a pedestrian bridge linking the Gateway Mall to the other side of the tracks on the south.
If we just look at the Gateway Mall and La Rambla next to each other like this, we see that as the STL Urban Workshop has pointed out, St. Louis has an obesity problem. The streets are just too fat. La Rambla is quite wide and even has car traffic on the sides. Yet, there are no places for the cars to cross it. This is the critical difference in this comparison. One can walk to La Rambla from anywhere in the city, but cars cannot cross it. One cannot walk to the Gateway Mall from other parts of the city, and the Mall is sliced to pieces by automobile right-of-ways.
We could also discuss shops and restaurants. The Gateway Mall has few, but is gaining some. Personally, I'd like to see a falafal stand.
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This post relates to the Gateway Mall.
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