Liberal Landscape

Overcrowded sidewalks—a bad idea in a time of social distancing—have led many American cities to start a “slow streets” program, in which pedestrians and cyclists are encouraged to use the roadways of certain streets. Chicago came to this movement rather late, but the city’s Department of Transportation finally designated a small number of streets to be “shared streets” late last week. The first of these streets, Leland Avenue between Lincoln Avenue and Clark Street (a distance of just under a mile), opened on Monday, June 1, and I went and walked both ways along the street on four successive days this week.

It’s important to understand that this segment of Leland Avenue (like most of the other designated shared streets) is a lightly used residential street. There is a stop sign at every corner, except where the street crosses Ashland Avenue, where there’s a traffic light. There are speed bumps in the middle of certain blocks. Westbound traffic is forbidden east of Damen Avenue. No driver would use this street to get anywhere fast. Because of the low traffic volume, it’s a pleasant street to walk along, and I’ve frequently found myself using Leland when I’ve wanted to walk between the Lakefront and the Lincoln Square area. Many cyclists use the street as well. During the nearly three months of the Coronavirus Pandemic, I’ve noticed quite a few people walking in Leland’s roadway, since there are enough pedestrians on the narrow sidewalks so that social distancing is otherwise difficult. When I went to take some photos for an earlier post, I made a point of walking along Leland hoping to be able to take a picture of pedestrians in the roadway, and I succeeded.

I’m sorry to report that I couldn’t help but observe while visiting Leland Avenue these last four days that there were actually fewer people walking or cycling in the roadway than there had been a couple of weeks ago, before Leland’s official designation as a shared street. Perhaps the hours I was there—afternoons on weekdays—were ill-chosen. It was quite hot one day, and it’s likely that some people who were working from home or unemployed in May are now back in their usual workplace. Whatever the reason, pedestrians this week were mostly sticking to sidewalks. Most of the time, I was the only pedestrian in sight walking on Leland Avenue itself, and I had to hang around quite a while to take photos of the roadway that included pedestrians or cyclists. Perhaps this isn’t an altogether bad thing. No pedestrian or cyclist would have had any trouble social-distancing on Leland Avenue when I was there.

One factor may be that, early in the week, there was more traffic than usual, including quite a number of delivery trucks. The latter may have been making up for the fact that deliveries were interrupted as a result of the threat of demonstrations (and, unfortunately, looting) on the previous days. Most drivers were, I’m glad to say, moving pretty slowly, but one automobile driver seemed to think that a speed of thirty or forty miles an hour was okay. I’ve observed over the years that drivers sometimes react to what they perceive as a threat to automobile hegemony by behaving with an increased level of aggressiveness. I don’t know whether that was true in this case, but I wouldn’t in any case say that Leland Avenue seemed like a completely safe place for pedestrians.

Perhaps one issue is the signage. Most blocks just had a “Road closed local traffic only” sign (and someone had rotated this sign at the Lincoln Avenue end of Leland so that most drivers wouldn’t see it).

Other blocks had a much smaller “Slow down shared street” sign that I suspect would not have been legible to most drivers at all.

The signs were, I’m guessing, what was readily available to staff at the Chicago Department of Transportation. The “Slow down” sign may have been left over from the city’s experiment on Argyle Street between Broadway and Sheridan Road, where it attempted to create a woonerf, eliminating curbs and repaving both street and sidewalk with the same kind of bricks. The result was a certain level of befuddlement on the part of both drivers and pedestrians who continued keeping to their traditional zones, as they were mostly doing on Leland when I visited.

I certainly hope that pedestrian usage of the street picks up and that Chicago’s version of “slow streets” ends up being a success. If there were more pedestrians and cyclists on the street, the problem of aggressive driving would surely vanish instantly. But what I’ve seen these last few days did confirm a sense that I’ve had for a while that, in the United States, pedestrians (and even many cyclists) just don’t feel comfortable using roads that allow motor vehicles, even when people on foot (or on a bicycle) theoretically have the right of way. I’m not convinced that a shared street in the U.S. is even possible.

Note added 21 October 2020. The Leland shared street was extended west to Virginia Avenue in late June and east to Kenmore Avenue this month; there’s still a somewhat awkward break between Lincoln and Western Avenues. The shared portion now runs approximately 2.25 miles (3.6 km) in all. Its western terminus is close to the southern end of the North Shore Channel Trail, and its eastern terminus isn’t too far from the Lakefront. Leland has thus become the gentlest way to get between these two important pedestrian and cyclist destinations.

I’ve been on both new sections several times. Like the original shared street between Clark Street and Lincoln Avenue, the added segments, while perfectly pleasant, were not very busy when I was there. I was often the only pedestrian for several blocks in both directions (there were plenty of pedestrians on the sidewalks though). And Leland does still carry traffic, including some vehicles being driven at substantial speeds despite all the barrels. I remain a little more skeptical about Chicago’s shared streets than some folks are. 

Note added 7 December 2020. All of Chicago’s shared streets, including the one on Leland Avenue, were dismantled around December 1. The Chicago Department of Transportation argues (quite reasonably) that it cannot keep streets free of snow if the right-of-way is blocked by sign stanchions and traffic barrels.

Note added 30 May 2021. The Leland Avenue shared street was reestablished during the week of May 24 (but only east of Lincoln Avenue). There is one new feature: a 5 mph speed limit, noted on new, highly visible signs in every block. I walked up and down the street several times this week and can attest that, while few drivers were driving as slowly as 5 mph, no one was driving at 40 mph either—that’s basically good news. Just as was the case last year, hardly any pedestrians were using the roadway; there were a few cyclists taking advantage of the implicit permission to go the wrong way on the one-way portions of Leland. 

Note added 10 September 2021. The Leland shared street was completely dismantled soon after Labor Day. CDOT argued that there were not enough users to justify its continuance.

There have been hundreds of newspaper stories describing the emptiness of American cities during the Coronavirus Pandemic. This view doesn’t jibe with what I’ve observed at all. I’ll gladly admit that my experience during six weeks of “lockdown” (ever since March 16) may be distinctive. I haven’t been further than three miles from my apartment in southeastern Uptown, Chicago, for six weeks.¹ I’ve been all over Lake View, Edgewater, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, and North Center, but I haven’t been downtown or, in fact, anywhere near it. And one of the things I couldn’t help but notice is that there have actually been more people walking about than there usually are, at least at certain times of day.

One reason for this is that the lockdown in Chicago (as elsewhere in North America) has been far less strict than the lockdowns in, say, Spain, France, China, or India.² Residents have been encouraged to go outside to exercise, with the proviso that they must be willing to obey the social-distancing rules of which the most important has been: keep at least six feet from anyone else. It appears that a significant portion of the population, at least on nice days, has been taking advantage of this. Since gyms and the Lakefront parks have been closed,³ anyone wanting exercise has had to use neighborhood streets.

Take Broadway between Diversey Parkway and (roughly) Addison Street, for example, a stretch just over a mile long, lying entirely in the Lake View community area. This has been one of Chicago’s best walking streets for something like the last forty years (and maybe longer), at least if you judge the quality of a walking street by the number of pedestrians it attracts. On weekends and in early evenings, the street has always been crowded for as long as I’ve known it, even on days when it’s been exceptionally cold, snowy, hot, or rainy. There really is no time of day or night, however, when the street has been without pedestrians. There are any number of reasons for this, of which the most important is surely that the neighborhoods adjoining Broadway are by Chicago standards pretty heavily populated, with densities of something like 15,000 per square kilometer. Thus, walking is the most efficient way to move short distances.

During the lockdown, I haven’t seen Broadway anything like as crowded as it has traditionally gotten on, say, weekend afternoons, but there have still often been a huge number of pedestrians on the street. Peak hours, however, have changed. With so many people working from home (or not working at all), nice weather seems to be the main factor in bringing out crowds. The fact that, during the last two-thirds of April, it’s been rather chilly and wet in Chicago has perhaps made pleasant days all the more enticing.

Pedestrians walking along Broadway at Aldine Avenue this week. Note the masks—and the number of people walking in the street.

Neighborhood residential streets have also been very nearly as busy as they usually are. Again, there seem to be some changes in the usage patterns. There isn’t any longer a strong rush hour peak since many fewer people have been commuting to work. There have been some pretty dramatic peaks on nice afternoons, however.

Many of Chicago’s more pedestrian-oriented North Side neighborhoods, in other words, seem to be about as bustling as they were before the Pandemic arrived. While I can’t imagine anyone arguing that the Coronavirus Pandemic is anything other than a horrifying event, it has not emptied the streets of at least one part of one city.

There has, however, been one major problem. Most people seem to be taking the social-distancing guidelines quite seriously and are thus trying to avoid coming close to other people. But Chicago’s sidewalks don’t make this easy. The effective width of sidewalks in Chicago varies enormously, but few provide six feet of walking space. Even when they do, for example, along much of Broadway, the width of the sidewalk is curtailed severely by trees, bus-stop benches, bike racks, bike-share stations, light poles, newspaper boxes, electronic parking meters, wastebaskets, and fences enclosing now-empty restaurant seating areas.

Pedestrians and cyclists along Broadway at Stratford Place. Note how street furniture reduces the sidewalk’s effective width. Before the corner restaurant’s recent closure, it had a fenced-in outdoor dining area between the trees.

On residential streets, sidewalks are typically a great deal narrower than six feet. Even where the distance between the lot line and the street is more than this, much of it is often taken up by substantial strips of vegetation called “parkways” in Chicago’s vanishing working-class English.

Pedestrians in the neighborhood called Saint Ben’s by many locals (it’s part of the North Center community area). Note the narrow pavement—and the wide “parkway.”

As a result, walking on Chicago’s sidewalks these days often forces people closer than six feet from each other. Alternatively, it requires constant lateral moves, to the edge of the sidewalk for example, or onto the parkways or front lawns, or even into the street. I’ve sometimes found myself making substantial swerves two or three times a block. And it’s become normal to see people walking (or running) in the roadway. Because traffic levels are way down, this isn’t as unsafe as one might think, but it’s hardly desirable.

Pedestrians walking in the street on Leland Avenue, west of Ravenswood Avenue, in the neighborhood often called Ravenswood, which is part of the Lincoln Square community area.

The situation would almost seem designed to keep people home. Perhaps this isn’t a bad thing, but it’s somewhat at odds with the government’s professed desire to encourage exercise.

So far Chicago’s government has resisted the “slow streets” movement that has opened some roadways to pedestrian and bicycle traffic in Oakland, New York, and elsewhere. The mayor claims that, in driving around the city, she hasn’t noticed any problems. Perhaps she should try walking.

Note added 5 June 2020. Chicago’s Department of Transportation announced on May 29 that it would create some “shared streets” comparable to other cities’ “slow streets.” The first opened on June 1. For a blog post on this, click here.

I recently spent a week in Miami Beach, where I was delighted to discover that, since my last visit there two years ago, what is now known at Miami Beach Walk had been more or less completed. This is a path for pedestrians and (in most places) cyclists that runs from South Pointe, at the southern end of Miami Beach Island, to the northern edge of Bal Harbour, at the northern end of the island, a distance of approximately 16 km (ten miles). There are extensions along Biscayne Bay at its southern end and to the bridge to Haulover Park at its northern end.

Map of Miami Beach and vicinity. The dark green lines represent “pedestrian facilities.” The dark green line along the Atlantic shows Miami Beach Walk. GIS data are from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap. I’ve modified the data quite a lot.

Two years ago, there were still major gaps, for example, in southern South Beach and north of Mid-Beach between 47th Street and roughly 64th Street, where the path disappeared and pedestrians had to walk either through loose sand on the beach or else along sidewalks a block or so to the west. For those walking or running, the sidewalk route was not a major hardship. Miami Beach probably has more pedestrians over a larger area than any other place in the whole American South, and while many sidewalks are rather narrow, they are generally in good shape. Still, it’s nicer to have a dedicated path (and the 47th-to-64th segment, between Mid-Beach and North Beach, is in the least pedestrian-friendly part of Miami Beach).

The new sections of path are all surfaced with ornamental tiles (“pavers”) and are mostly quite wide. There are almost always sand dunes followed by beach to the east, and there’s often an impressive row of substantial apartment buildings or hotels just to the west, interspersed in a few spots by classic art deco structures. Like many of the world’s other successful new urban recreational paths, Miami Beach Walk provides an intense view of a distinctive landscape. There are constant reminders that you are where you are.

One of the newer sections of Miami Beach Walk.

The Walk’s new sections appear to be attracting quite a lot of users of whom more than half were walking when I was there; the rest were running or cycling. Many users are clearly visitors. There may be no recreational path in North America where so many foreign languages can be heard.

I say “more or less completed” above, because the boardwalk that’s run through much of South Beach for several decades is slowly being replaced by a surface path that, like the new sections, is covered by ornamental tile. Many people love the boardwalk—it has a nice old-timey feel and, since it mostly runs on stilts through heavily vegetated sand dunes, it interferes less with dune flora and fauna than a solid surface would.

Miami Beach Boardwalk.

But a boardwalk requires constant maintenance to replace broken slats, hammer in loose nails, and remove splinters, which are a major hazard in a place where many people go barefoot or would like to ride a bicycle. (Bicycles have been forbidden on the boardwalk for years.) Thus, two sections of Miami Beach Walk were closed when I was there for boardwalk replacement. In both cases there are reasonable alternate routes.

Area where the old boardwalk is being replaced by ornamental tiles that rest on the surface.

There are also some detours in North Beach for construction work, notably between 79th and 87th Street, where it’s necessary to divert through North Shore Open Space Park.

The city of Miami Beach ends at approximately 87th Street. North of there, you’re first in Surfside and then in Bal Harbour, where there are parallel bicycling and walking paths surfaced with crushed gravel to the end of the island. Some people prefer these to the paver paths—except when it rains. The Surfside and Bal Harbour segments feel like an extension of Miami Beach Walk, but it may not be correct to label them that.

Miami Beach Walk in Surfside, where the surface is made of crushed gravel.

It’s not surprising of course that a well-off city that depends heavily on tourism would build a high-quality path for pedestrians and cyclists. But Miami Beach really is a city, and many conflicting points-of-view have to be accommodated by its government. In the case of Miami Beach Walk, some owners of apartments just inland from the beach were not pleased to have a public path at their doorstep, and it wasn’t easy to persuade them to get on board. Most apartment buildings and hotels along the Walk now have private, locked entrances on their eastern (Walk) side that have mollified their residents. But these buildings are still creating a problem. Miami Beach Walk includes three stretches where it’s quite a distance from one connection between the Walk and the nearest street to the next. Private property gets in the way.

Miami Beach Walk, despite its imperfections, seems to me one of the United States’ most distinctive and attractive pedestrian and cycling spaces.

I rode three new rail transit lines while in Bangkok last month: the extension of the MRT Blue Line west to Lak Song; the MRT Blue Line connection between Tao Poon and Tha Phra; and the BTS Light Green Line extensions to Kheha and Kasetsart University. Except for the relatively short part of the MRT line that extends from Hua Lamphong through Chinatown and Rattanakosin then under the Chao Phraya River, these lines are all elevated, so it’s easy to get at least a rough sense of what the areas they pass through are like.

Rail transit lines and pedestrian facilities in the Bangkok area. “U/C” = under construction. The lines labeled “U/C I” are scheduled to open over roughly the next year. The lines labeled “U/C II” are supposed to open in two or three years. Base GIS data from the Geofabrik versions of OpenStreetMap, modified somewhat.

What struck me most about all three lines was that the territories they traverse have fairly modest densities. The built environment along the lines consists mostly of smallish apartment buildings, row houses, factories, and ground-floor automobile-oriented retail establishments. There are a few taller apartment buildings, but they are in the minority. There are also a couple of shopping malls, but most commerce along the lines is pretty small-scale. There is a huge amount of traffic almost everywhere. Here’s a photo looking west from the Lak Song Station.

Looking west from the Lak Song station on the westernmost station on the MRT Blue Line, Bangkok.

Because the stations themselves tend to be located in pedestrian-unfriendly territory at some distance from the places passengers are actually coming from or going to, the rail lines need some help. There are always taxis, motorcycle taxis, buses, and vans waiting at the stations for passengers.

Looking north from the Kheha station on the BTS Light Green Line. Note the modest height of most buildings and the waiting taxis on the right.

The stations in these modest environments can seem overwhelmingly large-scale.

The Kheha terminus station on the BTS Light Green Line. The station (like most elevated stations in Bangkok) includes an elaborate mezzanine with a few shops.

When you consider that the new lines all use heavy-rail equipment and have frequent service, the routes chosen seemed in some respects a little odd. It wasn’t surprising that, for the several kilometers nearest their terminals, the trains I was in were all rather empty even during rush hour.

Passengers waiting for a signal to enter an MRT Blue Line train at the terminus station, Lak Song.

Of course, rail transit lines are often emptier near their endpoints than in the central city, but Bangkok’s lines—jammed near the new CBD around Siam Square and along Silom and Sukhumvit Roads—are an extreme example of this tendency.

It’s pretty clear that the lines’ apparently odd geography is rooted in the distinctive urban geography of Bangkok. The Bangkok Metropolitan Area is huge. The most recent (2019) edition of Demographia World Urban Areas puts its population at 16,045,000. But Bangkok is not a particularly dense place by Asian standards. Demographia World Urban Areas says that Bangkok covered 3043 square kilometers.¹ That means that it had a population density of 5,300 per square kilometer. In other words, it was a tenth as dense as Hong Kong, a fifth as dense as Singapore, and a third as dense as Jakarta.²

There are any number of reasons for Bangkok’s relatively modest population density. The city, of course, has few topographic or political barriers to expansion. Then there is the fact that most Thais if they can tend to prefer living in single-family houses or row houses, although many end up in smallish apartment buildings. Just as in the United States, only a minority prefer (or can afford) to live in inner-city high-rise apartments.³ Another reason for Bangkok’s diffuseness may be the fact that Bangkok came rather late to rail transit. Much of its growth occurred during a period when the assumption was that most movement would occur by private motor vehicle, and residential and commercial buildings outside the central city (and even informal settlements) tend to include space for parking. Finally, less of the city has been built or planned by the government than is the case with many Asian cities, notably Singapore and Hong Kong. There is only a modest public-housing program, and the government has not been very authoritarian about what should go where. It has also had a pretty laissez-faire attitude toward automobile ownership. Curiously, it has not been very energetic about building roads either, except perhaps freeways, which makes Bangkok’s sprawl an even more difficult problem than it might otherwise have been. There just isn’t enough space on Bangkok’s highways for all the vehicles that Bangkok’s residents own.

One of the consequences of Bangkok’s car-centric development is that not only its housing but also its higher-order commercial and administrative functions are quite spread out. The city doesn’t appear to have a very clearly articulated hierarchy of sub-centers, and its newish central business district, maybe 5 km east of the old center of Rattanokosin on the Chao Phraya River, is also rather diffuse, although perhaps no more so than central business districts in places like Manhattan, London, or Tokyo. As in New York and London, the major CBD functions of high-end retailing, office work, and entertainment are scattered over a dozen or more square kilometers. Its CBD, in other words, is big enough so that movement within it often requires mechanical transport of some sort.

Bangkok’s diffuseness obviously presents a problem if you’re planning a rail system. Rail systems work best when they can focus on important nodes. If nodes are dispersed or not all that important to begin with, rail systems are going to fit the urban landscape awkwardly at best.

Bangkok reluctantly started work on a modern rail transit system only when the problems of its car-centric development became obvious to all. By the 1980s its freeways and—even more—its arterial highways were so overburdened that traffic at certain times of day could hardly move. Furthermore, air pollution levels were absurdly high. The development of urban rail transit seemed the only way out. An additional push in this direction was given by the fact that visitors to the city increasingly found the absence of any serious modern rail system strange.⁴ And what visitors say has increasingly mattered as Bangkok has become an ever more important tourist destination (it’s been claiming in recent years to be the most visited city in the world).

The early years of rail development were not very happy ones (see my earlier post), and the result was a bit haphazard, but, after the two Green Lines opened in 1999 and the Blue Line followed in 2004, Bangkok at least had rail transit stations over much of its new CBD, and even had a rail connection to Suvarnabhumi Airport when the Airport Rail Link opened in 2010, although the absence of fare integration or easy connections among its three separate systems was clearly a barrier to their full use.

In recent years, the government has become a much more important force in planning rail transit. Most of the conversations on the subject of where the lines should go, and most of the documents about this are quite reasonably in Thai only. Unfortunately, I don’t read Thai, but I’ve been able infer the general outlines of these plans from talking with people and reading news stories in the Bangkok Post.

The overriding goal of transit planning in recent years has been to bring rail transit to as much of the city as possible. Because subways are so expensive to build, especially given Bangkok’s high water table, most of the new lines are elevated railways, and the critical thing has thus been finding corridors wide enough to run them along. This alone explains the distinctive patterns of the recently opened extensions of the Light Green and Blue Lines. They were built over fairly straight roads that take them a long way from the central city. This is especially true of southern Light Green Line extension, which runs 23 stops—and 45 minutes—from Siam Square. Its terminus is near the point where unambiguously urban structures peter out.

Additional construction on a very large scale is now under way (see map above). One of its distinctive characteristics is that none of the new lines will serve the central city at all. All the new lines are being built along corridors where construction of elevated rail lines is fairly straightforward. The Light and Dark Red Lines that may open this year run along railroad corridors and will terminate at Bang Sue. An impressive new railroad station is under construction here, several kilometers north of the new CBD, but it’s not a major destination yet. Bang Sue does have connecting Blue Line service. The Dark Red Line passes near the old Don Mueang Airport and is supposed to reach Thammasat University eventually, but it generally traverses a corridor whose most distinctive characteristic may be that massive amounts of stop-and-go traffic run through it. The Orange, Yellow, and Pink Lines on which construction has begun but that probably won’t be functional for two or three (or more) years serve a vast area in eastern and northern Bangkok and also completely miss the central city. They are described as “feeder lines” in some of the official literature.⁵

When these lines are finished, northern and eastern Bangkok will have a thin grid of rail lines, built for the most part over major highways and railroads in territory where traffic is heavy, sidewalks are irregular, and walking is difficult. But, even aside from the pedestrian-unfriendly territory through which these lines are being built, there is the issue that most passengers bound for central-city destinations like Siam Square or Silom Road will have to change trains. Thus, many of the journeys will take quite some time, especially as all of the trains will make stops fairly frequently. (The distance between stations will vary but seems to average something like a kilometer.) Because there will not be any new lines in the CBD, it’s likely that trains on the existing Blue and Green Lines will become even more crowded during the middle parts of their runs than they are now. (There is a possibility of using longer trains on these lines and running some trains over only part of the right-of-way, something already done on the Light Green Line.) An outsider like me, used to rail lines in dense, walkable neighborhoods, can’t help but wonder how many passengers will actually make their way to the stations on these new lines. Let me add, however, that the Airport Rail Link, which runs through similar territory, has had no trouble attracting riders. Its builders thought of it as a line that would mostly serve airport passengers. Plenty of airport passengers do use it, but it turns out that the vast majority of riders are commuters going to and from destinations in eastern Bangkok other than the Airport. Bangkok’s residents are used to difficult commutes.

I’m fascinated by the seriousness with which Bangkok’s planners have moved toward adding rail to a city that until the last couple of decades did not have modern rail lines at all. Due to the absence of such rail lines and a determinedly laissez-faire attitude to development and motor-vehicle ownership, Bangkok (like Jakarta and Manila and many other big cities in middle-income countries) has become a diffuse and sprawling place that rail lines arguably are destined to fit awkwardly. I have no idea whether the result of the new rail construction will be (as some are certainly hoping) to nudge Bangkok in the direction of becoming a denser and less automobile-dependent (and “greener” and less polluted) city. Rising property values along the rail lines and substantial amounts of new construction around the new CBD might suggest that the city is indeed becoming more concentrated, at least to a limited extent, but these changes may be connected with displacement of poor people to the periphery and their replacement by a smaller number of the wealthy. That is, rail construction could (as in some other places) be encouraging sprawl as much as greater concentration. I haven’t seen figures but suspect that much (and maybe most) new construction in Bangkok is far from the CBD and not necessarily anywhere near the new rail lines. I don’t in any case see much sign that an autocentric culture is being tamed in any way.

Most of the conversation on the new rail lines focuses on their theoretical ability to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. But it’s not lost on anyone who thinks about these things that Bangkok, a hot city much of which is barely above sea level, is one of the places likely to suffer most acutely from climate change. There isn’t much that Thailand can do on its own to stop sea-level rise, but the national government is quite aware that it needs to do something. It’s signed the Paris Agreement, and it’s taken numerous steps to implement it. For example, it’s converted some coal-burning power plants to natural gas. The new rail lines are supposed to be laying the groundwork for a substantial modal shift away from the automobile and hence an additional reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Only time will tell whether this is a pious hope or a realistic scenario.

I spent the third week of January in Doha, Qatar. I’d been there only once before, on a one-day trip from Dubai in 2010.

On the earlier trip, I’d been extremely impressed by the Corniche—and wasn’t much taken by anything else. The little bit of Doha I saw then seemed as spread-out and automobile-oriented as any city in the world.

West Bay’s impressive skyline in 2010, viewed from the southeastern end of the Corniche. There has been a considerable amount of infill since then, but Doha has resisted the construction of any new skyscraper that towers over its neighbors, an approach that I think makes the skyline as a whole more imposing.

The current, much longer trip confirmed some of my earlier impressions, but I was fascinated by the government’s efforts over the last decade and a half to make Doha a more “sustainable” city.

Let me explain.¹.

The Corniche is a pedestrian path between the old downtown (and the I.M.-Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art) at its southeast end and Doha’s stunning business district, West Bay, at its northeast end. The path curves around a bay, so that, at any point on the path, you can see the whole length of the Corniche.

Map of Doha and vicinity, focusing on rail lines and pedestrian facilities. GIS data are mostly from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap. I’ve had to modify the data quite a lot.

Map of central Doha, focusing  on rail lines and pedestrian facilities. Data sources as in previous map.

The central part of the path is approximately 5 km long, but there are formal and informal extensions at both ends, and the Corniche’s length is usually given as 7 km. If you include the paths in the gardens behind the Museum of Islamic Art in the southeast and in the Hotel Park in the northeast, the distance you can walk along the bay is actually longer than 7 km.

Fishermen and others on one of the piers that jut out from the Corniche.

The Corniche attracts quite a number of users, apparently from all of Qatar’s ethnic groups and economic strata, although, as is the case with many pedestrian paths, the composition of people using it changes over the course of a day. Early in the morning and at midday, runners and more or less serious walkers are common, and Western expatriates and tourists seem to be represented out of all proportion to their share of the population. Later in the afternoon and on weekends, many more people use the path simply for sitting around and socializing, and the proportion of native Qataris as well as of ethnic South Asians, Filipinos, and others (many of whom are service and construction workers) rises. The Corniche appears to be an enormously successful place.

The Corniche in the afternoon.

The Corniche is not, however, perfect. There is little shade, especially in its middle reaches, and it’s awfully close to a busy highway, which isn’t easy to cross. There’s a single tunnel at Suq Waqif, near the southeast end; elsewhere, you need to find one of the few traffic lights and will likely have to wait a long time for it to change.

But, still, there is something about the openness of the Corniche and the views of the Gulf and of West Bay’s skyscrapers and of the much more modest skyline of the old downtown that is deeply attractive. I’d go so far as to say that Doha’s Corniche is one of the world’s most distinctive—and appealing—urban pedestrian paths.

The rest of the city is not quite so special. As is the case with the other big cities of the Gulf, Doha’s speedy growth from the 1970s on has until recently been based more or less completely on the assumption that everyone would get around by automobile, even though few members of the subaltern labor force have access to a car. The environment for pedestrians is hostile. Major roads away from the old city center tend to be wide. Traffic moves quickly. The most desirable housing has traditionally consisted in large measure of single-family structures surrounded by walls. It’s not much fun to walk in neighborhoods consisting of such houses, even when sidewalks are available, which they’re often not. Sidewalks that do exist are fair game for parking, even in West Bay.

Parking on a sidewalk in West Bay. West Bay’s cluster of skyscrapers is generally quite automobile-oriented. There are generally not very many pedestrians.

Walking any kind of distance in the city is difficult, even aside from the problems caused by summer heat. Many intersections feature roundabouts, just about the most pedestrian-hostile of all non-limited-access road forms. There are occasional traffic lights, and they’re usually obeyed, but they just about never provide a moment when pedestrians have priority. Since drivers do not feel they ever have to cede to pedestrians, even when making turns, it can be quite difficult to cross streets safely. There are crosswalks here and there, but they appear to have no effect at all on drivers.

Of course, it’s not surprising that a country whose wealth is based almost entirely on the export of oil and natural gas would become car-dependent, especially when its only large city did not begin to grow substantially until the 1970s. Gas is cheap and is never likely to run out. Pollution is not a major problem in a city consisting of a narrow strip of settlement between the Gulf and mostly flat, nearly uninhabited desert. It’s also certainly the case that the automobile fits Doha and the other new cities of the Gulf very well. Cars are just about always air-conditioned, thus providing some shelter from summer heat. They’re also an important consumer item in a society where shopping and owning things are important both in themselves and as a way to establish status. And, of course, since just about everything in the city was built to accommodate the automobile, doing without one creates constant problems.

But, as is the case with all the states of the Gulf, elite decision-makers have undergone a major change of heart over the last fifteen or so years. The car-centric city no longer  seems an unalloyed good thing, for a number of familiar overlapping reasons. The realization that the automobile-oriented city causes health problems for its inhabitants may have more resonance on the Gulf than anywhere else; native Gulf residents have higher BMIs and are more likely to have diabetes than any of the world’s other well-off peoples. Arguments that invoke climate change have also seemed particularly strong given that major parts of all the Gulf’s newly substantial cities lie only a few meters above sea level. There is also concern about the area’s future and a strong sense that one must diversify the economy. Thus, all the Gulf countries have done what they could to build tourist and financial-services industries. To do this, they’ve had to become attractive to tourists and skilled expatriates, which has involved becoming less car-oriented. Closely related to this is a desire on the part of essentially defenseless states to be well thought of. The fact that Qatar sends more carbon into the atmosphere per capita than any other country in the world now seems rather embarrassing. The result of these and other factors is that there’s been a push in the direction of at least reducing the role of oil-based transportation everywhere. One component of this turn has been an effort to rethink the design of cities. (See my earlier posts on Dubai and Abu Dhabi.)²

Doha has arguably been in a better position than any other Gulf city to remake itself. Its chief advantage is its wealth. Qatar by many measures has a per capita income higher than that of any other country in the world. Its wealth is of course not distributed equally. Its expatriate manual and service workers live financially precarious lives, while its citizens (who constitute only something like twelve percent of the population) receive a huge amount of official support. Much of Qatar’s wealth goes to its government, which, even after putting a large portion of its revenues into a sovereign wealth fund, has enormous resources to invest in urban infrastructure—and the political power to spend as it sees fit.

The government has used some of its wealth to make Qatar a more “sustainable” place. Its urban geography has been altered in two major ways: [1] Dense neighborhoods have been created in several places; and [2] New rail infrastructure has been built.

[1] Dense new neighborhoods that encourage walking.

Suq Waqif. When I was in Doha in 2010, I found its old downtown a somewhat unappealing place. There wasn’t much there that was very “downtown”-like. There were few major businesses or government offices. There didn’t appear to be any older buildings. Most of the generally low- or medium-rise structures in the old downtown were post-World-War-II apartment blocks whose inhabitants appeared to be mostly South Asian workers.

I didn’t realize it then, but there had been a major fire at Suq Waqif (properly Sūq Wāqif سوق واقف), an old downtown commercial district, in 2003. I was seeing this area at its nadir.

In the years since the fire—and especially in the years after 2010—the government has completely rebuilt Suq Waqif and has chosen to do so in a kind of traditional Arabian style.

A street of restaurants and souvenir shops that bisects Suq Waqif. Much narrower (and sometimes covered) side streets feature shops.

Hardly any of the buildings, however, include genuinely old components. Most were constructed from scratch, using modern materials reworked to look old. Why use mud brick that you’d have to keep repairing when you can make concrete look like mud brick? The result, comparable to, say, Qianmen Pedestrian Street in Beijing, could be ridiculed for being a Disneyfied simulacrum of a traditional city. But I found it all surprisingly appealing. And so do many Qataris and tourists. The restaurants on its main street are full of people from all over the world, including (it appears) numerous local folk. And the shops on the narrow side streets are clearly patronized to a very large extent by Qataris. It’s not likely that tourists would want to buy, say, live rabbits or falcons, or kitchenware, or traditional unrevealing women’s clothing.

The new Suq Waqif has apparently been enormously successful, and it’s been growing continuously. Note that walking is practically the only way you can move around the central part of Suq Waqif. Most of its paths are too narrow for motor vehicles. In this respect, it’s completely different from most of post-1970 Doha.

Msheireb. Msheireb (the spelling approximates the Gulf Arabic pronunciation of Mushayrib مشيرب) is an area just to the west of Suq Waqif. In English it’s sometimes called “Downtown Doha,” and its location indeed corresponds more or less to the center of the old central business district. But this is not a CBD that’s evolved slowly over many decades. It’s essentially a contemporary real-estate development that replaces most of what was there before. It consists largely of medium-sized, more or less modern buildings on narrow streets (sometimes there are some Arab decorative motifs). The buildings mostly house offices of various sorts. The National Archives and some additional government buildings are also part of the mix. In addition, housing is planned.

Street scene in Msheireb.

The claim is that Msheireb is a “sustainable” development. Many buildings are LEED-certified. It’s said to be built in a style that’s appropriate for the climate, and, indeed, because of the narrow streets, there is plenty of shade. One of the streets—Sikkat al-Wadi Msheireb—has some water features that, thanks to evaporation, are supposed to help keep the street cool during the hot season. This is also one of the streets on which a 2.1 km tram line loop runs (more on this below).

I was struck in walking around Msheireb at how many of the people you see there seem to be native Qatari, at least if one can determine ethnicity on the basis of people’s clothing and facial features.

One of the characteristics of Msheireb is that it is walkable. There are several pedestrian-only streets, and there are good sidewalks (sometimes in arcades that provide shade). It is not at all like the areas of Doha that grew up between, roughly, 1970 and 2010.

The Pearl. The Pearl is a real-estate development on made land in northern Doha that was designed in part to appeal to Western expatriates. (It’s one of the only parts of the city where foreign ownership of real estate is allowed.) Much of it is on narrow C- or O-shaped land segments that feature a road on the spine, bordered by buildings that are flush with well-maintained sidewalks. A pedestrian path runs along the water side of the buildings. The ground floor of buildings along the pedestrian path typically contains restaurants and high-end shops. The Pearl is divided into a number of sub-neighborhoods each of which is supposed to be built in a particular theoretically Mediterranean architectural style, Venetian, for example. The Pearl, on the whole, seems designed to suggest a modernized version of a large Mediterranean village, although it’s hard to imagine a real Mediterranean village with expensive Japanese, Indian, and French restaurants and boutiques selling high-end women’s clothing, all side by side.

The pedestrian path in The Pearl.

What is perhaps most striking about The Pearl in the context of Doha is that it’s so pedestrian-oriented. The waterside pedestrian path gets crowded in the evening, and it’s certainly not rare to see pedestrians walking on the sidewalks along the neighborhood’s main roads, where the more utilitarian shops (like a large Monoprix) tend to be located. In many ways, the Pearl is comparable to (although not nearly so high-rise as) the Dubai Marina development in Jumeirah. If you want to appeal to Westerners (or at least Western Europeans) these days, you have to build neighborhoods where walking is possible.

Those who are cynical might say that creating a few islands of walkability in a sea of car-centric urbanism has a limited value, but it’s certainly a beginning.

[2] New non-automotive infrastructure.

Doha Metro. The most expensive and impressive new infrastructure in Doha is its Metro, all three lines of which opened in 2019 (although one station isn’t finished yet). The Metro has approximately 76 km of lines—it’s not a small system—and approximately 85% of the routes are underground—it isn’t a cheaply-built system either. Trains are driverless, and, as is the case with many of the world’s other driverless metros, trains run often (as frequently as every two minutes) and are short, three cars long.

Doha Metro train leaving the Qatar University station in northern Doha, one of the few places where the tracks are outside.

As in the Dubai Metro, one car is divided into an expensive “gold class” compartment and a larger area for women and “families.” The stations have been built so that longer trains (I think five cars) are possible, but, for the moment, longer trains are probably not necessary. Most of the trains I rode were fairly but not extremely full. Few people had to stand.

Inside a Metro car.

The stations all have attractive consistent design that’s supposed to suggest the inside of a Bedouin tent. They also have escalators and elevators; excellent signage; platform doors; next-train arrival information; and an amazingly large number of helpful staff members.

Msheireb station, where all three Metro lines come together.

Because the last of the three lines only opened in December, it’s too early to get a sense of how many passengers the system is attracting on a “normal” day. Last summer, when only one line was open, there were about 16,000 passengers/day (the population of the Doha Metropolitan area may be something like two and a half million), but on National Day (December 18) there were 333,000.

There has got to be a question, at least in the short term, of how useful a metro system could possibly be in a generally diffuse and low-density city. A few stations—Msheireb, for example; the stations in West Bay; and some suburban stations at shopping malls, for example, al Riffa’—are in locations where it’s possible to walk to significant destinations, but many stations appear to be, well, in the middle of nowhere, although most of these do have bus and van service. The powers-that-be are certainly aware of the problem. At least a couple of new pedestrian bridges between the Metro and useful destinations have been built, and parts of West Bay have received new and better sidewalks.

Near the DECC Metro station, West Bay. Note the wide sidewalk (and the even wider street).

The system has only 37 stations. That is, it’s on average approximately 2 km between stations, a larger distance than on the majority of older metro systems. The trains can, and, it appears, often do move at 100 km/h, and even the longest rides in the system last well under an hour, but I suspect that car travel is still faster most of the time to most destinations.

The government is serious about moving as much transportation to the Metro as possible, and fares are set quite low, especially considering that Qatar is not, on the whole, a cheap place to live. Fares are 2 QAR (0.55 USD) a ride. It’s 6 QAR (1.65 USD) for a day pass. It’s also possible to get a free connecting bus or van in some places—or to take a 3-km taxi ride for 8 QAR. Bus fares—variable but 5 QAR if you buy two tickets to be used on one day—have been more expensive.

I found the Doha Metro a pretty impressive operation.

Trams. The Metro is not the only rail system in Qatar. One tram system has opened, and two others are under construction.

The open system is the Downtown Doha/Msheireb tram mentioned above, a short (2.1 km) hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered line that’s been making a one-way loop around Msheireb since the beginning of January of this year. It runs on weekdays between 9 to 12 in the morning and 4 to 9 in the evening and on Fridays between 4 and 9. There are nine stations; in other words, it stops frequently. There is no cost to ride. Nonetheless, none of the trams I saw had more than two or three passengers. The trouble with a 2.1 km loop line is that it’s never going to take you further than something like 600 m from your starting point. It’s likely to be faster to walk just about anywhere in Msheireb than to risk waiting six minutes for a tram (the next-tram information at the stops wasn’t working when I was there). Perhaps the Msheireb tram will become a more attractive option during the hot season.

No doubt I’m being a bit cynical, but, for the moment, it seems that the chief advantage of the tram may be that it gives the Msheireb Properties’ some ability to boast about its sustainable tram line. Plenty of publicity about the tram is available on the Internet.

Two larger tram systems are under construction, at Education City and at Lusail.

Education City includes Qatar’s impressive National Library, specialized branches of several American universities, and some Qatari educational institutions as well. I was struck when I visited at the extent to which Education City is laid out like certain American outer suburban university campuses. Buildings are far apart, and there are large surface parking lots. There are few trees. Those uncomfortable in the extreme heat of summer must find getting around a problem, although there are free vans. The tram system is supposed to supplement these.

Lusail is Qatar’s enormous (and enormously ambitious) “sustainable” northern extension. In so far as I could tell looking from the Metro, only a little has actually been built there yet, except for the Metro itself. A huge stadium for the 2022 World Cup games is under construction, as are some parts of a substantial (19 km) network of tram lines, but as yet there is little housing. The goal is that Lusail will not be a car-dependent place. Some of the Gulf Region’s other “sustainable” urban additions (for example, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi) have been the object of a huge amount of publicity but have not gotten very far. It’s too early though to be cynical about Lusail. Doha has a pretty good track record of getting built what it’s set out to build.

Bicycle paths. You don’t see many cyclists in Doha, except along the Corniche (where bicycles are theoretically illegal). But the government has built a few bicycle paths along major highways in the outer city, and the publicity for Msheireb/Downtown Doha suggests that bicycles are welcome there.

I was in general quite struck by Doha’s elaborate plans to transform itself into a less car-dependent city. I have no idea how successful it will be at reaching its goals. Has any car-centric place has ever actually managed to become significantly less so? But I certainly was impressed by the scale of Doha’s efforts.