Local shopping street in the city of Montréal, It’s the beginning of the summer here, and more and more streets are being closed to cars every summer (although they’re reopened during the cold Canadian winters), the difference in the amount of people there now vs last week when it was still open to cars is absurd.
Since It’s the beginning of the summer there was a marching band to celebrate, which was nice.
Businesses set up stands where they sold stuff, offered free samples and stuff like that, and there was also seating and games set out for kids, like a bouncy castle, some (mini) mini-golf courses and a mini skate park.
Just closing the street to cars made the space much nicer, and there were way more people there than when the street was open to cars.
But this street isn’t closed all year is it? I mean, this is part of an art festival. I am all for closing streets and building walkable/bikable communities. But don’t pick and choose based off a single event that draws a crowd regardless of it takes place on a street or in a park.
This is simple urbanism. Cars don’t stop in to see what a new business has to offer, pedestrians do. Pedestrians don’t need parking. Good urbanism makes local business boom. They are terrified of it.
I think I told this one here at some point, but in my town we had a particular storeowner who aggressively opposed making a street pedestrian-only. I’m talking camping in town hall as a protest. Threatening a hunger strike. This lady was on a mission. Her storefront was plastered with propaganda about how this was going to kill the town.
She was an absolute nuisance and her karmic punishment for this? She has prime commercial real estate on the most popular street in town while stores in streets open for traffic had to relocate or close because all the business happens in the car-free area.
damn, I as really hoping the story ended with everyone boycotting her store as she watched her business neighbors thrive before she eventually goes out of business.
Nope. Rising tides floating all boats include the really annoying boats, as it turns out.
Still, she was so spectacularly wrong I do still imagine how she processed that and whether the contradiction ever stuck. She really made a whole personality out of this for years.
It’s nice to see that this asphalt area is being used for something valuable for society!
In my country they do both: the roads have crazy car drivers and the sidewalks are covered with these vendors
There’s nowhere to walk. It’s a nightmare
And yet the shop owners will see this and then decide to just reject reality and still complain anyway about all those imaginary cars constantly stopping by to buy something.
Funnily enough, the closing of the roads has happened enough and is accepted enough that they can’t really argue that in montreal anymore.
Now they argue that it’s bad because it drives up shop rents on streets because demand to start stores on those roads go up 🤦.
Any small, local business owner that believes foot traffic will hurt their business should just close up shop already. Because they are idiots.
Not only is it better for the health of the community not to have cars there, but it strengthens the community by allowing people to interact with each other like human beings, and not caged animals.
!["Not allowing cars on the street will kill businesses" [Montréal; Canada]](https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/7926cc0a-d955-44b1-8f73-1c3f88b7f2ab.webp){kind=link}