In February, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that Britain’s best-known thoroughfare, Oxford Street, would be pedestrianised. To the surprise of every Londoner that I have spoken to in the past few months, it is actually happening. On Monday 26 October, the busiest shopping street in Europe – or, precisely, half of its 1.2-mile stretch – will be closed to traffic, putting an end to several decades of bitter arguments, obstructions and delays.
Cars, lorries, vans, taxis, buses, bicycles, ebikes, scooters will be banned. Nothing but pedestrians (and emergency vehicles) will be allowed in. This change will mark the most remarkable transformation to the streetscape of central London since at least 2003, when Trafalgar Square was turned from a glorified roundabout into one of London’s most recognisable public spaces.
It will also form the most visible part of the mayor’s legacy, whether or not Khan runs for a fourth term in 2028. Three years ago, Khan published a memoir and manifesto, Breathe, attributing his asthma to growing up inhaling London’s polluted air. For the mayor, pedestrianising Oxford Street is the culmination of a mission to create a greener city that is oriented around public health, walking and cycling.
Pedestrianisation is one thing; making Oxford Street somewhere anyone actually wants to spend time is another. For weary Londoners and anxious visitors alike, it is a headache in the form of a high street. Its primary associations are crowds, stress, dirt, noise, the tackiest incarnations of consumer capitalism, and crime.
At one point during my research I approached a harried police officer in the throng outside Tottenham Court Road tube station and asked if she thought pedestrianisation would be good for Oxford Street, or make her job harder. This is not to say Oxford Street is an empty, dying high street. At the last count, it receives more than 500,000 visitors every day – equivalent to the population of Edinburgh.
It seems reasonable to assume that most of London’s 22 million annual foreign visitors set foot on it at some point. The street generates 5% of the capital’s economic output, and lives in the national imagination the way few others do. During the course of writing this article, I haven’t met anyone who will even admit to liking it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
