I am a huge fan of pedestrianisation. So why am I torn about the proposed pedestrianisation of Oxford Street? For much of my career as an architect, pedestrianisation has been one of my foremost ideological goals. What is still my proudest professional moment occurred when, as a young architectural assistant, I worked on the 2003 part-pedestrianisation of Trafalgar Square, a totemic redevelopment that re-wrote our urban rulebook about how British public spaces should be used and configured for the 21st century. 

My first book, Designing London, emphatically extolled the virtues of pedestrianisation and I’ve consistently endorsed it in countless articles as an architecture critic. Moreover, were I ever Mayor of London for a day, I would banish cars from key London locations with a vengeance. Most of Parliament Square and Old Palace Yard would be instantly pedestrianised, as would Broad Sanctuary to provide an appropriate paved forecourt to Westminster Abbey. 

Marble Arch would be freed from its vehicular girdle, Hyde Park would crawl eastwards to entirely reclaim the western carriageway of Park Lane, the northern side of Hyde Park Corner would be closed to traffic to reunite the park with the marooned Wellington Arch and swathes of permanent road closures would ripple across Soho and render me persona non grata to legions of fist-clenching taxi drivers.

… few politicians are being honest about Oxford Street’s problems

So why then my hesitation with Oxford Street? There are a number of reasons. First, few politicians are being honest about Oxford Street’s problems. Yes, it has its challenges, as its downmarket descent into candy store captivity attests. But it is important to remember that with around 200 million visitors a year it is still Europe’s busiest shopping street and single-handedly generates around 5 per cent of London’s Gross Value Added (GVA) earnings.

Equally, when at the launch of his plans last week Mayor Sadiq Khan referred to Oxford Street as the former “jewel in the crown of Britain’s retail sector” and pledged to once again ensure it “competes” with New York’s Times Square, Paris’s Champs-Elysees and Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, he conveniently omitted that all three still maintain vehicular traffic and have fewer annual visitors than Oxford Street, which incidentally was also full of cars and buses in its heyday. 

There are other socioeconomic and cultural reasons why Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation should be handled with caution. Arguably the biggest is its monocultural usage. Pedestrianisation works best when a mix of uses can sustain activity and natural surveillance throughout the day and night. With their variety of shops, bars, restaurants and leisure attractions, destinations like Covent Garden and Madrid’s Gran Via (Europe’s second busiest shopping street) are both excellent examples. 

Not so at Oxford Street where the vast majority of units are retail. Consequently, there are valid concerns about the nature and safety of the thoroughfare if vehicles are removed at night and the shops are closed. This leads onto another key misgiving, crime. Theft, violence, robbery and antisocial behaviour on Oxford Street have surged in recent years with its recorded crime rising by 40 per cent in 2022 and 120 per cent the year before. 

And then there are the wider structural changes that have ravaged the UK physical retail sector and are well beyond Oxford Street’s control. Marshall & Snelgrove, Bourne & Hollingsworth, Waring & Gillow, Debenham’s, DH Evans, C&A, BHS and Topshop were all once household names that have now vanished from British high streets. With its concentration of flagship stores, these closures have hit Oxford Street particularly hard.

“Where will all the buses go?” is the perennial pedestrianisation plea and while Wigmore Street is the obvious candidate for an alternative parallel, east-west route, (west of Oxford Circus at least) there are also concerns that the removal of buses, a key part of Oxford Street heritage, will limit access for Oxford Street’s older and more vulnerable users. 63 per cent of Londoners over 65 use the bus at least once a week compared to only 21 per cent who use the tube. 

So while one of Oxford Street’s key assets is its excellent public transport provision, it should be remembered that any reduction in modal access will leave at least one group disproportionately impinged. Some, including former mayor Ken Livingstone, favoured the construction of a new full length tram link to replace the buses. But, as well as, in the wise words of transport expert Christian Wolmar, “unnecessarily cluttering the street”, this would also be inhibited by the comparatively narrow dimensions of London thoroughfares. While Champs Elysees is 71m wide and Las Ramblas 57m, Oxford Street is just 26m. 

None of these concerns should, in themselves, prevent the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. From Carnaby Street to the Strand, London has a long, if glacial history of resounding pedestrianisation success, a roster soon to be joined by Smithfield, Camden High Street and St. Paul’s Gyratory. The pedestrianisation of major Continental shopping streets like Strøget in Copenhagen, Anspach Boulevard in Brussels and Kärntner Strasse in Vienna has been telling a similar story for decades.

But if pedestrianisation is to work at Oxford Street, it must come hand in hand with committed measures to reduce crime, innovate physical retail, maintain accessibility and diversify its amenities. 

Jeremy Dixon, co-architect of London’s notorious shared surface pedestrianisation of Kensington’s Exhibition Road, once said that “We have to be careful with full pedestrianisation, it can sometimes be a killer to the dynamism and excitement you want in a big city.” 

While our current climate of extreme environmental activism potentially condemns any perceived support for the car as heresy, many will doubtless miss the sensory thrill of strings of car headlights burrowing into the night or the childhood metropolitan ritual of gaping awestruck at the Oxford Street Christmas lights from the top of a double-decker bus.

But these were urban stimuli for the 20th century and the 21st century will invariably offer new ones. Cities change and society has shifted from Oxford Street’s heyday when car use was universally coveted. Now the public rightly expects an urban experience augmented by nature, walking, socialising and space, attributes pedestrianisation is superbly well-equipped to deliver.

Pedestrianisation can’t be the plaster that heals all of Oxford Street’s ailments. Yet if those ailments are treated properly, then pedestrianisation can make its recovery infinitely more successful.