[CydeWeys]

I live in NYC and ... in the winter, on cold days, people just wear heavy coats. It doesn't stop them from doing the things they need to do, like go to work or buy groceries. There's way too many people here for everyone to take cars anyway, regardless of heating requirements. Traffic is already in gridlock conditions for many hours of the day in the summer, so it's not like you could add any trips in the winter for people who don't want to walk.

The real solution, although we're starting to go tangential here, is to do what Toronto has done and build a massive city-spanning series of underground pedestrian passages and malls. I've walked through a large part of the system and it is pretty astounding.

Here's a map of it: http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Economic%20Develo...

[Samantha1989]

I'm from Toronto, that's what informed my original comment. The path is primarily used by commuters with offices in the downtown core. There aren't typically places you would choose to spend prolonged time in - they're often closed on weekends. The idea of 'superblocks' is a great ideal, but needs to be adapted, not duplicated for cold climates. Agree that cities in generally should be much better suited to walking.

[CydeWeys]

We're fortunate enough here in NYC that it doesn't get down to Toronto-levels of cold very frequently, meaning that the construction of something similar to the PATH hasn't been necessary. I think the superblock layout would work pretty much unedited here. There might be a few super cold days in some winters that'll make you just want to hate life, but the subway is already the solution that most people use for that, and adding superblocks isn't going to make anyone's walk to the subway any longer -- it'll actually make it shorter, since there's fewer pedestrian crossings to stop for.

I like the other commenter's idea of above-ground enclosed passages with access to sunlight and windows. That sounds need. Vegas actually has something sort of similar on the Strip, but for different reasons. I think that, at least in NYC, something like this is orthogonal to the issue of superblocks; most people already aren't using cars to escape the warmth anyway, so if this kind of solution were necessary it would've already been made, with superblocks having little effect.

[notatoad]

or, like other northern cities, build the pedestrian passages one story above road level instead of burying them underground, where the light and windows makes them a much nicer place to be.