Europe

Cities without cars sound wonderful. My personal utopia. 🤩

I'm not an urban planner, and know little about such things. But I imagine 20th century city planning plays a part in today's tensions between status quo car-centered policies and pro-pedestrian policies. I mean, I look at how cars dominate cities like Brussels, cutting though the medieval foundations of the city, or how much of Copenhagen was turned into parking lots in the 20th century (now, thankfully, the trend is being reversed). Drivers depend on getting from A to B in the city by using their cars; pedestrians (really, everyone) suffer the resulting air and noise pollution, not to mention the sheer amount of space dedicated to blacktop and parking.

I'd prefer a city exclusively dedicated to pedestrians and bicyclists. But seeing this from the car owner's perspective, I can appreciate that, for some, there are no viable alternatives. Public transport might take 2 hours vs 30 minutes driving. Then what do you do? In some cases, I'm guessing we'd need A LOT more investment in public transport, bike-lane super highways, etc. before it would be politically viable to completely eliminate cars, and even then, it would have to be gradual. After all, old habits die hard.