Life in the Spanish city that banned cars
One of the most interesting experiences in my life was visiting Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur. On that day all car traffic is prohibited (also TV stations are offline etc). It was absolutely amazing. Tel Aviv is a city with large roads and usually extremely busy. On that day, cyclists ride over the highway, kids play on the streets. I never felt that directly before how invasive the normal car situation is.
Here's a photo https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2015/09/F141003...
I don't know why this didn't occur to me but in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I enjoy that place so much with my kids because of the fairly large area where cars have to have very slow speed limit or no cars allowed at all and pure walking which was far better even. There is such freedom allowing your children to laugh and play and walk on their own pace without worrying they'll be run over and having to strictly hold their hand near each cross walk where cars zip by at instant collision death speeds. I could hear the birds too. Was calming and slows the perception of time so you can actually relax.
Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there.
https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/
The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy:
https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-...
I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedestrian district plans need to be considered carefully, else they backfire.
Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.
However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...
>pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre
It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.
>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."
Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.
>And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis
Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.
>The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.
Good on them for not asking for a handout.
Cars have to some extent led us through part of the industrial revolution. However, it's my belief that cars, except from polluting the environment and destroying our cities - makes people unhappy and sad.
Visiting LA this summer, I knew I was in for a car heavy metropolis but this... I can't understand why people waste so much time of their precious life (usually alone which also greatly worsen the problem) - locked in a car.
Coming to the topic of the autonomous car revolution, which I frankly do not understand. Sometimes it feels like the ambition is to end up as the humans in WALL-E. What kind of life is that?
Ps. Coming from Europe, I crossed US by bicycle a few years ago, from NY to US. People say it's a country to be seen through a car, but I argue it's to be seen on a bike.
First thing I noticed when moved to SF Bay Area from Europe was “God, Los Gatos would be so beautiful if the main street was a pedestrian area.” Then went actively searching for one and found a little stretch at Santana Row in San Jose, if you can call 30 meters of blocked off street pedestrian area.
But even dense populated cities like SF dont have a pedestrian zone. It is one of the rare things I miss quality of life wise.
As a kid in the early '90s the corner market, grocery store, schools from elementary to high, both jobs I had, and park were all within a 10 minute walk -- and that was in the suburbs. Cars don't need to be a requirement for daily life even in the suburbs it just requires good planning or planning at all.
>People don’t like being told they can’t drive wherever they want, but Lores says that while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges.
This strikes me as the fundamental issue.
I work in the Domain of Austin Texas, it's an outdoor mall, office park and residential area that is supposed to be like a downtown 2.0 in many ways. A place for humans to "live, shop and work" according to their mantra.
In reality, it's scary to walk to whole foods to get lunch at times. Cars NEVER yield to crosswalks or pedestrians. It's so bad they have flashing LED's on the stop signs in some areas.
The domain would be beautiful if parking garages were on the exterior and everyone had to walk in. Imagine being able to walk to shops, work and dining without worrying about getting plowed down by an F150 with a "thank god for our snipers" sticker on the back.
In fact, the best couple of days at this area are the art walk days but its been a while since I've seen those. For the artwalk days, they close the streets and it's like a magic little city of everyone breathing easier, enjoying some quiet serenity and kids walking around without parents needing 100% attention.
For the price they demand to live and lease space here, it would seem serenity and peacefulness would be the best thing they could do! (and there was plenty of land at one point for exterior garages... now its just a mad dash for people to find spots across the different garages which are all too small for the big trucks texans love)
>“The city is the perfect size for pedestrianisation,” says local architect Rogelio Carballo Soler. “You can cross the entire city in 25 minutes.
This seems to be the key point why it works.
Most cities in the Netherlands have a car-free inner city or shopping streets, no need to idolize this particular one. Going from a congested city to a car-free one is a good move though.
Interestingly, while Amsterdam's historic inner city is fully open to cars, you don't really see much of them - in part because it's just not practical, in part because parking is very expensive.
It drives me crazy seeing people claim to "just" prefer living in the car-oriented suburbs when
1) that lifestyle is vastly subsidized by economic activity generated in the cities
2) the biggest reason cities are unpleasant is (surprise) the high density of car traffic and noise!
The mass distribution of personal cars is going to go down as the greatest mistake in societal development.
If you're interested in "walking" around yourself, here's the streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/gxHkcvg4LWB2
Hi!
I'm living in one of the closes villages around Pontevedra, I'm heabilly use the city, and I'm doing some remote job for an SF startup.
If you have questions, I'm happy to help and provide feedback.
I thing "banning" cars in a Town/City work well for smaller cities, through you still might want to have some time frame in which e.g. trucks can bring new goods to super markets, fire fighter etc.
For larger cities I think it would still be possible to have many "no-car" isles, paired with good public transportation available for anyone at "any" place (which can be done today by e.g. using this small and _slow_ self-driving mini buses to connect the home/side streets with the underground trains, regular trains and potentially normal sized buses, you just need to deploy enough of them with a good rout planing algorithm and a smartphone app, through it might be slightly expensive).
It's interesting how people's expectations and attitudes develop. I remember landing at San Diego airport and asking how I could walk the relatively short distance into the city center. I just got looks of derision and directions to the taxi rank. I did attempt to find a walkable route myself to no avail.
It's an interesting contrast to banning cars and essentially banning walking
I'll preface this with saying that I own two cars and in general like cars. However, I think personal motorized transportation along with industrialized animal farming are for me among the two biggest evils that arose in the last century. Cities in North America are entirely architected for the presence and convenience of cars. The mortality arising from pollution and accidents is staggering. The alienation and isolation of people as well. The cities and suburbs stretch so far out that you rarely get to see your friends unless you specifically organize something well ahead of time. Pedestrian zones with small shops are replaced with massive shopping malls.
I've always imagined a modern city with no cars, but I never knew that anyone actually had the balls to make this a reality. Kudos to this Spanish city! You can try to argue that the specifics of this city make it more amenable to being car-free, but I think that if there was enough desire, it would work anywhere. Just think if everyone paid their monthly car loan/lease into the public transportation system how incredibly functional it could be.
Working in the center of Berlin, I wish Berlin would do the same. There is a hospital near, and a constant load noise level from ambulances. Without cars, those could be much much quieter, but traffic increased, cars got more soundproof and people hear loud music, so ambulances became loader all the time. Noise kills people.
I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city. They take up massive amounts of space through parking that could be better used. They force the public to subsidize car owners. They kill people through both air pollution and through collisions. They dominate a city's life in an extremely unattractive way.
I base a lot of my existence around avoiding cars and living in places where I can have a pleasant walk without having to deal with traffic. To the point where I recently moved from Chicago, Illinois to Portland, Oregon because Portland is a much more pedestrian friendly city. And it shows. You walk around the city and it's actually alive and working.
In Portland, people don't have to have their children on leashes because every street isn't a 4 lane highway with constant traffic that is disrespectful to people's space. People are strolling down the streets and wandering into businesses. In Portland drivers slow down and wave you across the street instead of swerving around you at 40 miles an hour.
In Chicago a common occurrence was for a car to decide to make a red light, so they would make a turn into a crowd of pedestrians who are crossing the street and "shoot the gap" without slowing down, with maybe 3 feet of clearance on either side. People would open doors without a second thought and door bikers. Trucks would make dangerous turns into bikers and frequently kill them ( A young woman was recently killed this way, and I once had to jump off of my bike and drag it onto the sidewalk to avoid being run over ).
Cars drivers seem to enter this "magic circle" where it's fine to do dumb and extremely dangerous things because you are driving. When you are in a car, all behavior is acceptable.
Decide to teach the biker a lesson by turning into them? They won't charge you with anything.
Swerve into a crowd of pedestrians? It's fine normal behavior.
Make a blind turn into an alley and have to slam on the breaks to avoid running into a pedestrian? Totally A-OK chief! Great work!
As has been pointed out elsewhere, a lot of European cities do not have this problem. When visiting France, I went to the city of Strasbourg where they have a very nice little "park and ride" system where you park your fume-spewing, space-taking machine and park it in the PARKING AREA, instead of letting you drag it into their beautiful city.
strongtowns.org has a lot of great information about how the US road infrastructure is, to put it bluntly, a dumb and bad experiment that has failed.
Population: 82.5k - obviously cars have no business driving through such a place.
I spend a good chunk of the year in Bologna, Italy. The city centre there is a roughly ~4km^2 Zona Traffico Limitato - an area in which only certain vehicles are allowed during certain hours. Pretty much every city in Italy has such a zone and 4km^2 to me seems to be the ideal size for it.
That being said I know a few people who live in the centre and judging by their experiences, I wouldn't want to move there. It's so densely packed that noise bounces off the walls effectively amplifying itself. Also there are no residential waste bins so if you miss trash day during the summer your organic waste turns into an unholy bag of stink.
Walkable cities are a nice concept, but one has to watch out for one perverse incentive that is created along the way: pack everything as densely as possible.
There is a pedestrian city in my province (Córdoba, Argentina) called La Cumbrecita. You leave your car in the entrance to the city in a parking lot and you can walk the entire town.
First time I visit there made me wonder why not all towns aren't pedestrian like this. I mean most towns have nice sidewalks and are walkable but why not just banning cars. In addition to having less noise I can imagine plenty of other benefits.
> [La Cumbrecita] is completely pedestrian and reminiscent of the small German towns of the fifteenth century. One can hike up through the town (and then down) to the waterfall, a truly paradisiacal experience.
The one question I have, that I haven't seen answered in the article or elsewhere, is how deliveries are handled. Presumably shops and businesses in a car-free city need to get truckloads of goods or equipment moved in and out on a regular basis. How is it done?
I've always loved the idea of being able to live in a car-free city, but never quite understood how certain things would work, including garbage collection, deliveries, and emergency services, without vehicular traffic.
Or do they make exceptions for all of those? Does anyone know?
This may be nice in a sunny seaside tourist city, but any pedestrianised towns I've been to in the UK are barren, dull, and frankly scary once the sun starts to set.
I would like to take this moment to advertise a project currently under development in my city:
https://beltline.org/about/the-atlanta-beltline-project/atla...
The Atlanta belt-line is mostly being built on top of old light rail line around the city. The idea, as I understand it, is to provide a pedestrian and (unfortunately) cyclists only pathway that connects many of the notable places around the city. On this pathway, there already exists a large amount of beltline and road accessible shopping/restaurants/bars. There are plans to build a large amount similarly accessible housing on the beltline as well.
I assert that this strategy is a better alternative than closing off convex sections for cities similar to Atlanta. What would define a city similar to Atlanta? One that is not very dense, with some undeveloped or neglected land in urban areas, and whose centers of social activity are decentralized. By saying the centers of social activity are decentralized, I mean to say that the major parks, stadiums, shopping developments, chic neighborhoods, and so on, are dispersed around a few mile radius of downtown. Shutting of any two square mile area to car traffic would fail to capture more than a few of these places, and cause worse traffic problems elsewhere, which is costly regardless of how you approach it.
There are some downsides to the beltline of course, mainly its cost, but you get the same opportunity for a pedestrian urban experience, without overtly turning it into a political battle.
Most of Golden Gate Park in SF is closed to cars every Sunday (and Saturday during summer) and it is really magical. Normally living in a city makes you feel tiny but this makes you feel like everyone is on the same level.
http://sfrecpark.org/permits-and-reservations/special-events...
European cities were very much pedestrian and bike town in the 1950's. In Helsinki they proposed banning bikes from city center, because they caused traffic congestion and gave poorish image of Finland. Bike paths were kept open all year manually. I biked some 10 km to school and every single day dozens of guys had woken at 5 o'clock and shoveled and sanded narrow but adequate bike path just for me.
The Las Vegas Strip is the antithesis of this. It's probably the only place in the world where the main downtown area is also an 8 lane highway. It's so bad that you actually cannot cross the street there, and you have to get around by walking on raised walkways above the street. Uniquely terrible urban planning.
https://odis.homeaway.com/odis/destination/2ee03d5b-c981-44d...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/La...
http://theworldisurban.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Elevat...
What about people who live inside city limits but work elsewhere? For example, I currently reside in Washington, DC but work about 30 min away. There is no public transportation to my work. At night, I park in a garage but there are others who park on the street and commute out of the city every morning.
I grew up in the suburbs in Los Angeles. I lived on a cul de sac. Think the family house in ET. We played in the street all the time. That seems pretty normal for suburbia isn't it? I would ride around the block or over to the next cul-de-sac from like 4yrs old.
The article has similar sentiments on promoting walkable cities as the whole blog "Strong Towns". https://www.strongtowns.org/
It's also possible to design cities for both people and cars. The trick is to separate them.
For example a shopping street where no cars are allowed could have parking lots at the back of the shops. So trucks can supply the shops and customers can pickup large goods with their car.
Another method is what we call in Dutch a 'Cauliflower-neighbourhood'. The closer a road comes to the place were people live, the smaller they become. And speed limits will go down as well. The limits most of the time go from 50km/h to 30km/h to 15 or even 5km/h.
I wish, we could do that in the few feets of Murphy's Square in Sunnyvale. It would be so pleasant to not have hot spewing smog vehicles park, one feet from your dining table.
In my city, Linz in Austria, only a small part is pedestrian, and even then the main-line of the 4 (actually 2+2) tram lines is cutting right through it. I wish they'd extend the pedestrian area and add that second tram line overground rather than underground as the current political fantasies look like.
Anyways, from that article, if you have a change in a city's government, change is a lot more likely to happen. If only there were some time-limitations on mayor posts and the council.
We so so need this in Hongkong, especially in the older areas where the streets feel as narrow as a rickshaw. Public transport is excellent and ppl here so unhealthy i general they need the walking anyway! Most of the corridoor from Saiyingpun all the way to North Point at least should be car free. And pretty much all of TST through to Mongkok. More than enough metro lines and bordering causeways to move the masses in an out of the area.
We were living in downtown Toronto during [the Northeast blackout of 2003](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003). It was amazing to experience the city, for several days, without the usual crush of cars and trucks and busses on the roads. Really magic couple of days I'll never forget.
I really like the idea of restricting where and when people can drive their cars. In China there are policies in place that only allow to commute with your car on certain days of the week. The other days you need to use public transport or find a car pool.
A lot of Americans think that they should be able to drive and park their car when and where ever they want. This mentality needs to change if we want to continue to grow our cities sustainably.
I have a fantasy that once a year a major US cities (think Manhattan) ban private cars for a day. Public Transit, and emergency vehicles pass as normal.
Many cities in the US have banned cars from a significant number of Downtown Streets. We call them skyways for the most part, though sometimes they are underground. It works well, keeps cars out of the way of people. It also makes for a nice environment to walk around.
Our zoning is such that those streets close at night, and I wouldn't recommend them in the late hours before they are officially closed.
All of a sudden, Elon Musk's vision to have all traffic underground is a lot more sound.
I love this guy, seeing him so misunderstood makes me sad.
Seems like a good time to re-post this rant by James Howard Kunstler on what's wrong with modern USA urban planning:
https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...
In Slovakia every bigger city have pedestrian zone with no cars. Its the one of the best things you can do for city.
I am sure it also helps tourism. I'm definitely putting this on my bucket list when going to Spain next time.
Had a quick search and didn't see anyone talking about it.
If your interested by this article you might enjoy the book 'happy city'. It's a bit one sided but looks at how cars have changed cities, and how changes can be made to make them happier.
In Germany we have a similar paradise: the island Helgoland [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland#Road_restrictions
So how does these car-less cities manage followings:
- Truck delivery to businesses such as large stores/shopping malls
- Ambulance, police car services
- Disabled/old people wanting to move around
If you allow any or all of above, you still need roads for vehicles only, traffic lights etc, right?
I'd love to live in a city like this. I spent a couple of days in Dublin and it was just crazy how loud, crowded and congested with cars and buses the city is. Was not really pleasant walking through the city.
What piques my interest is why on earth has Pontevedra a Citibank office
my wife and I used to need to take vacations and drive to the mountains on the weekends just to get away from the stress of the city. Then we moved to an area where we can bike to two separate town centers and we haven’t felt the need to take a vacation in years.
We are more social and more relaxed now, and I swear it’s because we can bike to all the places we would have driven, like restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores.
Ditching the car has been a very positive experience.
> pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre,
I'm reminded of the Isle of Sark. I thought it must be bigger but wiki says it's only 5,000 sq m.
If it weren’t for the massive culture shock and difficulty, I’d live in Munich. I love the quiet city center.
I wonder when "I don't own a car", will be the new "I don't own a TV"
Been there recently. The peace and quiet was uncanny, it felt like my hometown half a century ago.
Are stores and restaurants able to get supplies by vehicle to restock?
That must feel so weird, but at the same time, so quiet and peaceful.
I walk to the grocery store most days. It seems to kill several birds with one stone:
- unwind after work
- get exercise
- get outside
- time to think
You would think it would be a lot more popular but it's not. It seems more like there must be something wrong with you if you walk on a daily basis lol. ... societal norms I guess.
Why is this news? The town of General Belgrano in Argentina banned cars ages ago.
This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward.
Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense regions, but in modern cities other solutions have to be found. Mass transit, biking lanes, electro-scooters, (elevated)-footpaths are the way to go. Maybe even electric ridesharing.
But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society.
I know european cities are much more pedestrian friendly & that US cities in general are more oriented towards the car lifestyle, but as said previously, this needs to change. It is a big cultural and infrastructure change over a longer timespan, but it is achievable.
Of course change always requires some sacrifice, and I imagine the car-drivers in above mentioned article must have been plenty pissed at the beginning. But they paved over the streets, made the inner city pedestrian only, and now they are better for it. Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like, and much more complex projects will have to be designed for bigger cities. But it is doable (see initiatives in e.g. Madrid, Munich & most of the netherlands) and "only" requires some long-term commitment. But we all know how good politicians are at that (what's global warming??).
I want to finish this comment with a call to engage in democracy. Make your opinion heard, loudly, go to the voting polls, participate in your local council, actually engage in politics. Because if you do not, no significant change will be made any time soon.
Not sure what your situation is but there are a fair number of options for people who are decent programmers to move to Europe permanently..
It'd be so nice in downtown Seattle if a few of the streets were closed off to cars for 4 hours a day or so.
What about those for whom it is hell?
Maybe in tomorrow's edition?
Leftist propaganda.
>How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?
Regardless of what you think of this policy, this is the level of reasoning of a 14 year old.
Eliminate cars. Eliminate the options for people to be autonomous. Pack everyone into major metropolitan cities by the millions. Stop building houses. Build Up. Build condos and apartments. Eliminate the option for people to buy land because it is unsustainable and the state knows better. Sounds like a perfect dystopian society.
Once all cars become electric this will solve one of the biggest problems. Then once they become self-driving the other 25% of noise (honking, sirens, etc) would be significantly reduced.
Urbanists who hate cars like to tear down freeways. E.g. in SF they tore down the Embarcadero and Central freeways, instead of repairing and extending them. This of course forces more cars onto the streets, making life worse for everyone.
Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots.
The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the major highway which has speed limits within the town but still sees so much traffic as to be very dangerous for pedestrians.
These towns need the commercial visitors brought by the highway to survive — but the design common in Europe for this scenario is so much better. There will be a sign for an exit off the main road for the “city center” exit — there will be a single parking lot for the city center, and then comfortable walking distance to the businesses ... superior design.
Many small, especially old, towns in Europe have ancient road layouts that are too narrow and steep for cars within the town — which resulted in these car free designs for free. It’s beautiful. Parking is easy because there is only one place to do it on the outskirts — and then walk everywhere. There is no improvement for a small town to be designed otherwise in my opinion.