‘Shadyside Summer Sundays’ Opens Street to Community 

by Guest Contributor Adam Peterson

Open streets are awesome. Whether long and winding or short and sweet, dedicating more time and space for residents to enjoy their city is an unparalleled win. The success speaks for itself: BikePGH reports they had roughly 18,000 individuals participate in their OpenStreetsPGH events this past June and May, respectively. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder then that the businesses on Walnut Street in Shadyside are looking to make their own foray into the OpenStreets concept, with their first ever “Shadyside Sundays” event series this summer on July 16th from 9AM to 9PM and August 20th from 12PM – 5PM.

Similar to OpenStreets, Walnut will be open exclusively to bike and pedestrian traffic and closed to cars. You’ll find workouts, planned adoption events, live music and more throughout the day. If you’re looking for a chance to experience the neighborhood anew, free from cars, and dedicated completely to its’ residents, be sure to take a stroll in Shadyside and check out your favorite shops or discover a new restaurant. This event is taking place thanks to the hard work of the Shadyside Chamber of Commerce and with the promotional support of Shadyside Complete Streets, a local bike and pedestrian advocacy committee. 

Note that on Aug 20, vendors and popups will take place 12 PM – 5PM.

Most who attend BikePGH’s OpenStreets know that the streets will be car dominated once more after the end of the event. Yet if enough people come to Shadyside Sundays, the local business owners might start to imagine how they could make Walnut more of a permanent pedestrian destination. After all, it’s worked in many places before – Pearl Street in Boulder, CO, State Street in Madison WI, the list goes on and on. In fact, Walnut shares many of the same traits of the most successful pedestrian streets. If the idea of a Walnut street that’s dedicated completely to its residents excites you as much as me, then be sure to splurge a little more than usual during these Shadyside Sundays, and tell the waiter, clerk, or manager assisting you “We should have this everyday!”. As the saying goes, “money talks” and in this particular case, we may just find that it “walks” too.

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Article by Adam Peterson, PhD. Adam is one of the leaders of Shadyside Complete Streets and currently works as a Data Scientist at Google. He has published research on statistical methods for analyzing the built environment and still writes about related topics at xstreetvalidated.com. Illustrations were provided courtesy of Walt Haim. Poster provided by ThinkShadySide.