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Life In the Spanish City That Banned Cars (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Guardian: People don't shout in Pontevedra -- or they shout less. With all but the most essential traffic banished, there are no revving engines or honking horns, no metallic snarl of motorbikes or the roar of people trying make themselves heard above the din -- none of the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city. What you hear in the street instead are the tweeting of birds in the camellias, the tinkle of coffee spoons and the sound of human voices. Teachers herd crocodiles of small children across town without the constant fear that one of them will stray into traffic.
"Listen," says the mayor, opening the windows of his office. From the street below rises the sound of human voices. "Before I became mayor 14,000 cars passed along this street every day. More cars passed through the city in a day than there are people living here." Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores has been mayor of the Galician city since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn't give you the right to occupy the public space. "How can it be that the elderly or children aren't able to use the street because of cars?" asks Cesar Mosquera, the city's head of infrastructures. "How can it be that private property -- the car -- occupies the public space?" Lores became mayor after 12 years in opposition, and within a month had pedestrianized all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre, paving the streets with granite flagstones. "The historical center was dead," Lores says. "There were a lot of drugs, it was full of cars -- it was a marginal zone. It was a city in decline, polluted, and there were a lot of traffic accidents. It was stagnant. Most people who had a chance to leave did so. At first we thought of improving traffic conditions but couldn't come up with a workable plan. Instead we decided to take back the public space for the residents and to do this we decided to get rid of cars."
Some of the benefits mentioned in the report include less traffic accidents and traffic-related deaths, and decreased CO2 emissions (70%). "Also, withholding planning permission for big shopping centers has meant that small businesses -- which elsewhere have been unable to withstand Spain's prolonged economic crisis -- have managed to stay afloat," reports The Guardian.
"Listen," says the mayor, opening the windows of his office. From the street below rises the sound of human voices. "Before I became mayor 14,000 cars passed along this street every day. More cars passed through the city in a day than there are people living here." Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores has been mayor of the Galician city since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn't give you the right to occupy the public space. "How can it be that the elderly or children aren't able to use the street because of cars?" asks Cesar Mosquera, the city's head of infrastructures. "How can it be that private property -- the car -- occupies the public space?" Lores became mayor after 12 years in opposition, and within a month had pedestrianized all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre, paving the streets with granite flagstones. "The historical center was dead," Lores says. "There were a lot of drugs, it was full of cars -- it was a marginal zone. It was a city in decline, polluted, and there were a lot of traffic accidents. It was stagnant. Most people who had a chance to leave did so. At first we thought of improving traffic conditions but couldn't come up with a workable plan. Instead we decided to take back the public space for the residents and to do this we decided to get rid of cars."
Some of the benefits mentioned in the report include less traffic accidents and traffic-related deaths, and decreased CO2 emissions (70%). "Also, withholding planning permission for big shopping centers has meant that small businesses -- which elsewhere have been unable to withstand Spain's prolonged economic crisis -- have managed to stay afloat," reports The Guardian.
nailed it
While there are many more, and more important, things to consider; Pontevedra just made my list of cities that I might like to call home one day.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
So no cars just in the historical Centre ... big deal this is common here in Europe....
Teachers herd crocodiles of small children across town without the constant fear that one of them will stray into traffic.
Is that really the correct group name for children? A crocodile of children?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I'm trying to understand how this works. They make it sound like there's no vehicles of any kind. Pontevedra is 118,3 km, equivalent to a square 10,9 kilometers on a side. Do people walk 5km or so to get into town? Even the elderly and disabled and infirm? And if they buy something in town, walk back hauling that? Even things like furniture? Shops in town, stocked by... 5km hike with a handcart? Can someone explain to me how exactly this works?
ED: Aha, just read the article:
Not the whole city of ~80k people, just 1/394th of the city. 0,3km^2. Just a big pedestrian mall, really.
Why is this news?
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Even the "car-free zone" isn't actually completely car-free. E.g.:
They haven't talked about stocking shops, but if they're carving out exceptions like that, then I imagine vehicles for stocking shops also get exceptions.
There's also the obvious implications of the scheme:
Because, of course, people drive to it, then walk around in it, then drive home.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
"Before I became mayor 14,000 cars passed along this street every day. More cars passed through the city in a day than there are people living here."
So this is a city of less than 14,000 people. That's a good size for this experiment.
Now would this work for some of Manhattan? Hell yeah. Brooklyn? Maybe. LA, Phoenix? Nope. For the right size and density yes.
My only question is how those adorable coffee shops get their supplies daily. Hand trucks? Burros? So a mostly-ban would be probably just as useful as a total ban, and restricting deliveries to very early morning or late night only disturbs the sleep of residents. Small price to pay. \s.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Just reduce drug traffic.
The whole city is the size of a typical shopping mall. There are no cars inside shopping malls - for the same reason.
Would you prefer bananas of children ? Snakes of children ? Cluster of children ? Gaggle ?
I think I would have gone with "rabble".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A stickiness of children*.
*Writing this while sitting at a coffee shop table previously occupied by some little kid.
Have gnu, will travel.
Nope, its not a translation problem, its a line of children, 2 by 2, led by teacher(s) to get from one place to another
WTF is the etymology of calling two rows of children a crocodile? Is that the easiest formation in which you can march them into a swamp to be eaten?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By the way less CO2, is less food for the trees...
Wow, how on earth did trees survive before we built cars, then!?
In Groningen, in the netherlands, they did something similar a *long* time ago. You can drive your car into the medieval center, but you can't drive *through*. The city center is divided into 4 quadrants, and you can't get from one quadrant to another without first going to the edge. Also there's hardly any parking.space inside. There are cars in the city, but not many.
Still has the same problem of extra busy edges, but still I think it's a success.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkeerscirculatieplan_Groningen (in dutch)
I cabn see this working in Spain. Not because of the unemployment rate, nor because of your misunderstanding of the siesta.
I see this working in Spain as people in Spain tend to be out of their house more than several other countries.
I have visited several Spanish cities where cars where not a thing in the center of the city. And in many European cities, traffic is either banned or discouraged.
I work in the center of Brussels and they have turned on of the main streets into a pedestrian zone.
In Leuven where I live, they have devided the city in 5 parts, so driving from one part to another you need to go out of the city and back into it. That encourages people to take a bicicle or walk.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
..Scourge
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
According to the map, an average American mall has more area than where the cars are not allowed.
I know some people are trying to bring back the mall+residential concept here in order to keep malls from dying. The difference here is that Pontevedra is the city center instead of the middle of fucking nowhere.
This would make sense for any city that has never been rebuilt since the invention of cars. But it doesn't make for a useful model on existing major cities.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
We visited Florence once and found it much more pleasant as a pedestrian tourist because of their traffic restrictions.
https://www.visitflorence.com/...
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Pedestrianized zones in city centers are common across Europe. It's typical to see 'loading hours' in the early morning when delivery trucks and garbage collection can roam. Emergency vehicles and police tend to get a free pass so the roads need to be passable.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
you can be almost anywhere in the Bay Area in under 15 minutes. With stops.
15 minutes transportation time. 2 hours to get through security and another hour to find some to park near the hyperloop station
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
While there are many more, and more important, things to consider; Pontevedra just made my list of cities that I might like to call home one day.
Not to take away anything from the city, but we have suburbs larger than Pontevedra (which makes its social experiment possible.)
If you can afford to move and live there, by all means. I just hope you are paying attention to job prospects in such a small city with double digit unemployment rate, with the Spaniard economy experiencing a lot of hurting.
It would be a nice place for retirement (though not necessarily the cheapest.)
No need to go that far away - probably most of the benefits of going car free can be had via superblocks - https://www.theguardian.com/ci...
I always thought being able to drive directly into my house garage was a massive luxury with clear exernalities like road noise, traffic danger and increased pollution, and honestly if I could instead park away from my house and had to walk there to take my parked car (or more likely, public transit or taxi), I'd consider it a good tradeoff (esp. considering kids would be safe from traffic in that superblock)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
What in the fucking vuck is rudeness and the kernel and the SJW religion got to do with congestion mitigation in the real world ?? Thou shall bow before the all powerful all knowing townhall planners ?
All five of the warmest five years on record in my area have been since 2012. The fact that we're experiencing an extreme drought is not a coincidence. This area would not be catching fire, especially in September, in a year when we had a remotely normal climate.
Facts are stubborn things. You can stand outside at noon in the noon and deny the sun exists - "no, there is no radiation, or at very least not solar radiation, you know nothing about radiation, get over it" - but you will still get burned.
There can be plenty of legitimate disagreements about what responses to global warming are appropriate. But claiming it's not happening, in the face of a decade of record temperatures and melting ice, or claiming it has nothing to do with us, in the face of obvious science about what CO2, methane, etc do and the fact that we've doubled their atmospheric concentrations in the past 70 years, is simply delusional.