Main Street

American cultural usage

Walt Disney

Preservation and Main Street

International use and equivalents

• Many small Canadian cities and towns have a thoroughfare named Main Street ; in other cases, the main street of the community has a name particular to that community. The phrase "a town where the main street is still called Main Street" is occasionally used as being synonymous with small-town values.
• * In Ottawa, main streets of various individual villages which had been annexed to the larger urban municipality bear names like "Manotick Main" or "Osgoode Main" to distinguish them from Smyth Road and from each other. The main street of centretown Ottawa is Bank Street.
• * In Toronto, Main Street is a mostly residential avenue in the East York district. At one time it was the main street of the hamlet of East Toronto, which was annexed by the city of Toronto in 1908. It has kept its historic name, and evidence of its commercial origins can be seen in the stores at the corner of Main and Gerrard Streets. Toronto's main street is considered to be Yonge Street, which divides the city's latitudinal streets into east–west.
• * Saint Laurent Boulevard, which divides Montreal between east and west, is unofficially known as "the Main."
• * Main Street in Vancouver is a neighbourhood shopping street, near the dividing line between east and west side of town. However, the city's main city centre shopping street is Robson Street.
• In Australia and New Zealand, smaller urban centres often have a main street. In some towns this street is officially designated Main Street or High Street; rarer variants include Main Road, Commercial Road, and Commerce Street. Often, though, the street is given a name peculiar to the town. For many small towns, the main street forms part of the principal road into, or through, the town. Large centres often have a central business district in which no one street is a clear focus for commercial activity, though for historical or cultural reasons there is often one street regarded as the city's "main street." Examples include Melbourne's Collins Street, Sydney's George Street, Adelaide's King William Street, Auckland's Queen Street, and Christchurch's Colombo Street.
• In Ireland most towns have a "main street," and this is usually the term given colloquially, though the primary thoroughfare of cities are often named after a historical figure, e.g. O'Connell Street. A more recent phenomenon in the media and with younger people is the use of the term "high street" to describe typical or average street level fashion—likely due to advertising by various British retail multiples which began operating in Ireland during the "Celtic Tiger" years.
• In the United Kingdom, the terms "Market Street" or "Market Place" are often used to designate the heart of a town or city, as is the more common "High Street". High Street is often the name of a fairly busy street with small shops on either side, often in towns and villages.
• In the Netherlands the Hoofdstraat is mostly one of the oldest streets in villages and towns. It's located in the old center and varying from very small pedestrian-only streets to wide four-lane roads.

• In Sweden and Norway, almost all towns and cities have their own main street, called Storgatan/''Storgaten. They are typically surrounded by stores and restaurants, and increasingly since the late 20th century, open for pedestrians only. A pedestrian street is called gågata/gågate.
• In Germany, the is a highly trafficked street. Hauptstraßen even have formal recognition in road construction guidelines, which specify the width of lanes, for example. The term chiefly refers to motorized traffic, whereas Einkaufsstraße or correspond better to the retail sense of a main street.

• In most Italian municipalities, the highway or another major route is called corso. There is no univocal definition of corso, even if it is generally applied only to municipal streets characterized by ancient traditions or a certain importance in the building physiognomy of the municipality.
• Jalan Besar is a common name used in Malaysia for the main streets of older urban centres in the country. Such main streets were originally constructed during British colonisation of territories in present-day Malaysia and Singapore, and were named in English as "Main Street" or "Main Road," depending on the size and nature of the urban centre, and often are laid out as parts of major thoroughfares between larger towns and cities.
• * The independence of states that would form Malaysia and the introduction of Malay as the national language in 1967 led to extensive renaming of certain Main Streets or Main Roads to Jalan Besar'' in Malaysia the following decades. Large cities tend to forgo the use of "Main Street" or "Main Road" altogether, as commercial or transport activity may be concentrated along more than one street.
• In South Africa, Main Road is the term used for the same concept as Main Street in the U.S. and High Street in the UK.
• In Cambodia, the Main Road is between the rice fields and settlements.
• In industrial engineering, "Main Street" is often used to describe a conveyor which transports the fundamental materials for producing objects to the automated construction site where the intended object will be assembled.