Avinguda de Mistral / Ruth Porter Mall

I'd like to talk about this five-block pedestrian mall.



Avinguda de Mistral.  Click to Enlarge

Before we talk about it though, let's set up the context.  It's in Barcelona, a city many St. Louisans have never been to, so let's learn some landmarks.



Click to expand. 

Barcelona is a city by the sea, so begin at the beach (A).  Look towards the city and note the statue of Christopher Columbus (B) 

Taken at sunset from the beach looking towards Las Ramblas



The center of Barcelona is the old gothic town with a beautiful street called Las Ramblas going through the middle of it between the Placa de Catalunia (C) and the statue of Columbus (B).



Las Ramblas has lots of trees.  Note Columbus in the foreground.



The Placa de Catalunia is a huge plaza at the center of Barcelona surrounded by huge stores and hotels with a subway station underneath.



Las Ramblas is the popular center of the city and runs between B and C.


Once outside the walls of the old city, a street grid of beautiful and uniform buildings unfolds called L'Eixample.

To better understand the map, D is the Torre Agbar, E is the Placa d'Espanya, F is the Montjuic fortress, and G is the Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's cathedral that has been under construction for a century).  D and E are important for orientation, and F and G are simply landmarks.  Here they're pictured in order.



So there's a basic orientation.  Las Ramblas is a very popular pedestrian mall filled with street theater and flower venders, and it runs through the heart of the city and between the Placa de Catalunia and the Columbus Statue.  The bulk of the urban core of Barcelona is bounded by the sea and the Gran Via (the road connecting the Placa d'Espanya to the Torre Agbar).  There's plenty of city beyond the Gran Via, but personally I found it less gritty and lively than the neighborhoods closer to the sea.

I spent 37 days in Barcelona in 2007.  I got an apartment and spent every day walking around on self-guided architecture tours.  My apartment was right next to the Placa d'Espanya (E), and most days I began my journey by walking towards the center (for a fantastic restaurant called Juicy Jones).  That meant that I would often walk by a Botero sculpture (H),

and a huge produce market (I),

and I would always walk along the Avinguda de Mistral.

Click to enlarge.  Avinguda de Mistral is outlined in yellow.  Note the way the street grid changes between the gothic quarter and L'Eixample.

Now we can talk about the image that this post began with.  The five-block Avinguda de Mistral can be seen on google streetview.  Here are some images.  Click any to enlarge.

When people think of successful pedestrian malls, they very often think of Barcelona and Las Ramblas, which is actually a widened median with lots of car traffic on the sides.  The Mistral pedestrian mall is a lot more interesting because it isn't full of popular attractions.  It isn't particularly famous.  It isn't flanked by youth hostels and museums.  It's a quiet promenade in a primarily residential area of the city.  It has density, mixed-usage with plenty of shops, wide crosswalks across narrow streets, benches, a playground, transit access, and plenty of trees.  Very different from the average American pedestrian mall, the Mistral doesn't actually interrupt the street grid.  Look closely at the very first image in this post.


Now I'd like to contrast Barcelona's lesser known pedestrian mall with St. Louis' lesser known pedestrian mall (not 14th street), Ruth Porter Mall.


Porter Park runs between Etzel and Delmar.  Click to enlarge.


Plans for the St. Vincent Greenway call for a redesign of the Ruth Porter Mall as part of a bike and pedestrian greenway connecting UMSL to Forest Park.

Concept Plan for Porter Park.  Click to Enlarge.

At the moment, it is impossible to ride a bike through Porter Park because there are a lot of curbs to lift your bike over.  That isn't very difficult to fix though, especially if the whole place is going to be completely redone.  What is hard to fix is scenes like the one on Cates Avenue.

When the greenway is finished, this street will still be blocked.  No bus will serve it.  It wouldn't be the only closure either.

The St. Vincent Greenway is a fantastic idea that connects a major university to major cultural institutions.  The area between however (Pagedale, Wellston, West End), has seen better days.  In their relative vulnerability, unfortunate suggestions could have weight, like the idea in the concept plan to expand the park towards Goodfellow through land clearance.

How much difference is there between a pedestrian mall and a linear park?  Is it inappropriate to compare a dense European one to an abandoned American one full of broken glass?  Both are connectors through residential areas.  The difference is that the one in St. Louis is not mixed-use.  It isn't surrounded by dense housing.  It doesn't allow car traffic.  It isn't an integral part of the urban core.  It doesn't have people.

There was a walk audit of the West End neighborhood on May 24th with Dan Burden, an international expert on walkability.  In his summary of the event for NextSTL.com, Andrew Faulkner wrote some despressing things about the existing challenges.

The most striking barrier to walkability in the West End neighborhood are the rampant street barricades. While these barriers specifically exclude automobiles, they create dead zones that discourage pedestrian use. The majority of residents present at the Walk Audit balanced their opposition to the barriers with an apprehension of increased crime and traffic. Dan Burden specifically addressed these concerns by explaining that the existing street barriers concentrate traffic on Maple Avenue; if these barriers were removed, traffic would be evenly distributed across the other seven east-west streets. In addition, removing the barriers would increase pedestrian traffic and provide more eyes on the street in blocks that are significantly depopulated.
It is evident that the barriers are failing to keep the neighborhood safe. At the intersection of Ruth Porter Mallway and Clemens Avenue additional Schoemehl Pots and limestone boulders had to be deployed on the sidewalk and front yard of 5670 Clemens Ave. to prevent cars from driving across the grass to avoid the street barrier. One of the boulders blocks the sidewalk and cuts off access to the Ruth Porter Mallway and the future St. Vincent Greenway.



Faulkner's photo of obstacles to pedestrians and wheelchairs near Porter Park


I've been following the St. Vincent Greenway for a few years now.  I've walked the entire length of it.  I've ridden my bike along it.  I've talked to the designers and to residents.  I've seen students involved in art ideas for the park get their work displayed at the Sheldon.  I have no idea what people think the future Porter Park will look like.  It's developing to be a slightly better version of what is there now, but perhaps with even fewer people that actually live there.

For me, every time I go to Porter Park, I feel like I'm on the Avinguda de Mistral again, but everything is wrong.  Things are missing.  It's an orphaned urban space that never matured.  Were I Catalan and living for a month on Etzel, I would be very confused by Porter Park.  There isn't even consensus on what to call it. 

Google calls it Ruth Porter Mall Way, but the sign says Porter Park