Tag Archives: pedestrian street

The streets of Asakusa

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As a “shitamachi” (or low city) district of Tokyo, Asakusa has numerous charming pedestrian streets. For example, this is the street leading to the Sensoji shrine. It is lined with shops selling wares to tourists and to devotees.

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The entry to this street is emphasized by a fine gate.

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There are streets with a covered arcades — interesting both by day and by night.

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And, of course, there are just plain pleasant pedestrian streets!

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Lining the streets, whether pedestrian or not, are, of course, buildings. Some of these buildings are heart-meltingly attractive.

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Others, not so much–though these, too, sometimes have a certain charm.

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One feature of even the most ordinary buildings is a certain tendency to decoration–wonderful, very Japanese decoration.

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A dragon!

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Samurai!

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Finally, we found one especially fortuitous combination of all these things–pedestrian street, building, and decoration.

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The Little Street of Unbearable Cuteness

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Late in the afternoon of our first full day in Tokyo, having seen how big and modern Tokyo can be, we headed to a small district that retains much of the texture of pre-WWII Tokyo–smaller houses, narrower streets, no high rises. And its own pedestrian shopping street.

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It is . . . the Little Street of Unbearable Cuteness. And a notable feature of this street is . . . cats!

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On the signs . . . cats!

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Prominent among the merchandise . . . cats!

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On the rooftops . . . cats!

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In the windows . . . cats!

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Wait a minute! Let’s look at that last one again!

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Is that, “No cat, no life”?

And yet, and yet, we saw no live cats on the Little Street of Unbearable Cuteness.

The streets of Essaouira

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The medina of Essaouira is different yet again from either Fes or Marrakech. For one thing, it’s probably smaller. And for another, Essaouira is a center for artists, and so there are a lot of shops–especially in areas where tourists are likely to go–that sell art. And other items for tourists. And there are a lot of areas in the medina where tourists are likely to go. Also, it is entirely pedestrian. No automobiles, no motorbikes, no donkey carts.

Also, in a weird way, it’s kind of like Washington D.C., only with less traffic and narrower streets. That is to say, in the late eighteenth century a European planner was brought in, who laid out a grid of major straight streets around which the less-planned minor streets evolved. In fact, the very name “Essaouira,” according to one source, means “well designed.” The plan of Washington DC was done by the French architect Pierre L’Enfant in 1791. The plan of Essaouira was done by the French architect Theodore Cornut in 1764.

And the combination of the planned and the random, the European and the Moroccan, is completely charming.

Narrow streets provide shade and surprises.

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Two major streets define ninety-degree axes that demarcate the city. These are broad and vibrant pedestrian thoroughfares lined with shops and hotels.

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In the next post, we’ll look at a couple of special spaces in this lovely town.

 

Fes – streets of the medina

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What gives the medina of Fes such character are its streets. They are narrow and intense. And almost completely pedestrian. There was the occasional donkey delivering goods to the shops–“medina taxis,” the natives joked.

We hardly knew whether to look at the people, or the shops, or the wares arrayed attractively in the streets, or the architectural gems that appear here and there–or just to sink into the experience, the world’s complete opposite of a sensory-deprivation chamber, and enjoy everything.

This broad square is just inside one of the gates.

 

Here we look down from above at the texture of the light, the street, the wares, and the people.

   

Maybe these few examples provide a good idea of the beauty of the busy market streets. And it turns out that the quiet side streets have their beauty, too.

 

 

Singapore – shopping in and around the Bugis district

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Singapore is famous for many things, all good. It is a democratic society composed of myriads of ethnic and religious groups, all of whom live nonviolently together in harmony. No one lives in abject poverty. Everyone has housing, food, and probably a job. The economy is in overdrive. And what do people in a thriving capitalist economy do when they are relatively well off? We all know the answer to that question.

They go shopping.

Singapore is a shopper’s paradise. I don’t know the statistics, but I’d be willing to wager that Singapore has more retail space per capita than any country on Earth.

The place to go, of course is Orchard Road, which is jammed with block after block of shopping mall after mall. It’s number one on every list of Singapore tourist attractions, and so naturally, with only two days in the country, I avoided it. I figured I can go to malls at home any time I want. Dan, who has been to Orchard Road, tells me I made a mistake.

Maybe so. But I like to learn a place by walking the neighborhoods, and this is what I did.

Day One: Bugis and the surrounding areas, including the Muslim District, Kampong Glam, and Little India.

But this is Singapore. There is no avoiding shopping.

On the way from our hotel to Bugis and in the surrounding area there were numerous malls, both upscale and otherwise.

There was also a really nifty zone of pedestrian streets around Waterloo and Bencoolen Streets.

 

But that’s not all! I stumbled upon a blocks-long seemingly ad-hoc flea market.

 And of course, all this is in addition to Singapore’s famous shop houses, two- or three-story townhouses with retail on the first and sometimes second floor, and housing above. These may originally have housed a shop and its owner’s family, but now there’s not necessarily a relationship. Shop houses are the old urbanism, and a model for the New Urbanism as well. They can be funky or upscale.

 

With their exterior stairs, the backs can be as charming as the facades.

And what do they sell in these retail spaces on the street, you might ask?

Anything from groceries to gold.

 

 

Calle Florida

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Florida Street (or Calle Florida in Spanish) is one of Buenos Aires’s famous tourist attractions. Okay, so… we’re tourists, aren’t we? And the malls in Recoleta, where we’re staying, are just ever so chi-chi and correct. And full of chain stores a lot like those we have back home. We’d like to see some shopping that’s a little more colorful and local.

Calle Florida is certainly colorful. And busy, with street vendors selling their wares on both sides of the street as well as up and down its middle, for block after block after block.

What we hadn’t expected–though if we’d read more about the street’s long history as a pedestrian shopping street, we should have known–is that Calle Florida is also lined with beautiful old shopping galleries.

We also found some attractive and interesting street details.

Finally, ending on a gargoylish theme, this one is from the door of the university administration building just a few blocks away from Calle Florida.