This particular example is mapped both as a linear street and a pedestrian area. You could probably make a case for either of those, but not both.
it is common tagging to have area=yes highway=pedestrian and have other highways running over it, you can find lots of this. This predates area:highway, and has probably more usage.
area:highway=pedestrian has under 8000 instances tagged, area=yes on pedestrian highways is almost 250.000.
It doesn’t mean it’s correct 
In this example, you’d think you had 50% more roads than there actually are.
I get your point.
Do you feel the wiki should be changed? It says highway=* can be mapped to areas.
@Spatialia I checked Memphis for highway=pedestrian & area=yes but none of them have names:
Charlotte: the first 20 or so I clicked don’t have names:
and many, many of this 250 000 area=yes highway=pedestrian are tagged correctly
you would need to at least randomly sample them to check how many should be area:highway=pedestrian as this kind of mapping popular enough to be considered as de facto valid
It doesn’t mean it’s correct
In this example, you’d think you had 50% more roads than there actually are.
I don’t think you can count highway objects or see highway polygons as the same kind of objects as linear highways. Deduplication is surely possible in these cases.
The wiki also suggests to do it: “ An area (closed way or multipolygon) tagged with = + =[](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:area%3Dyes) is the most common way to map the pedestrian area of a square or plaza, where pedestrians can travel freely in all directions. If there are roads passing through the area of the square, map them as usual and make connecting nodes at all intersections with the pedestrian area. ”
To be clear - this is instead of, not as well as, an existing linear way. If you want to map a linear way and the area that it represents you can do that with a linear highway=blah surrounded by area:highway=blah.
In Nederland two thirds of pedestrian areas have no name and worldwide probably more. That’s clearly intentional.
JOSM reporting these as errors is wrong.
There’s an interesting cultural dimension here that is probably colouring how people are replying to this question.
In Germany, and probably also in the Netherlands, it’s quite common to have a single big “pedestrian zone” in the city centre, with signage as you enter and leave it. Similar maybe to a low emission zone but smaller and no vehicles are allowed at all (or very few).
In the UK, and from what I know also in the US, it’s more common for only individual streets to be pedestrianised.
As a result if you look at central London and look for highway=pedestrian area=yes most results are a single plaza or square, or the area covered by a single street. Whereas if you look at some German cities you see what is effectively a huge multipolygon that has been split up just for convenience, and doesn’t have a name…
Does noname=yes make the validator shut up?