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.

Comments

Re:Crocodiles of Children

[Rei]

Interesting, had to look that up:

2 chiefly British : a line of people (such as schoolchildren) usually walking in pairs

Re:Haha - say hello

[Rei]

Even the "car-free zone" isn't actually completely car-free. E.g.:

If someone wants to get married in the car-free zone, the bride and groom can come in a car, but everyone else walks,” he says. “Same with funerals.”

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:

The main grumble is that the scheme has led to congestion on the periphery of the zone and that there aren’t enough parking spaces.

Because, of course, people drive to it, then walk around in it, then drive home.

The whole centre city is the size of a US Mall

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole city is the size of a typical shopping mall. There are no cars inside shopping malls - for the same reason.

Re: The whole centre city is the size of a US Mall

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea. I lived in Spain for 8 years. Pontevedra isn't an outlier, most Spanish towns are already heavily pedestrianised and this was just the final step. This is the way modern towns and cities in the EU in general are going. Cars in town and city centres are just a waste of space and people's time.

Re:good story destroyed by CO2

[Gornkleschnitzer]

By the way less CO2, is less food for the trees...

Wow, how on earth did trees survive before we built cars, then!?