Car-free city
A car-free city is an urban area absent of motor vehicles. Car-free cities rely on public transport, walking, and cycling for travel, as opposed to motor vehicles. Districts where motor vehicles are prohibited are referred to as car-free zones. Car-free city models have gained traction in the second half of the 20th century due to issues with congestion and infrastructure, and proposed environmental and quality of life benefits. Many cities in Asia, Europe, and Africa have car-free areas due to the cities being created before the invention of motor vehicles, while many developing cities in Asia are using the car-free model to modernize their infrastructure.
Characteristics
A city can be fully or partly car-free. Cities that are fully car-free prohibit all use of private cars in the city limits, while cities that are partly car-free have car-free zones but allow some private car use in other areas. These zones tend to be focused around the city center. Car-free city projects are designed around the needs of people rather than cars, with careful zoning that increases pedestrian mobility and efficient structural placement.While there is no specific blueprint for designing a car-free city, many cities around the world have found success with variants of the following model.
An idyllic car-free city consists of two zones: a residential core and service-based periphery. The core consists of residences and living quarters within a public space in the center. In order to reduce motor traffic in this area, walking serves as the primary mode of transportation with cycling routes open as an addition. As a result, there is less conflict between motorized traffic and residences. A pedestrian and bicycle network also gradually emerges, joining several parts of the city.
The periphery, which encapsulates the residential core, is composed of services and facilities such as supermarkets and gyms. The distances between these facilities and the core are determined by the frequency of usage, with the more frequently used lying closest to the city center. These facilities will be decentralized around the city, with the goal to reduce walking distances, improve residential access, and minimize the need for new road infrastructure. An alternative to a decentralized configuration is a central public transport stop surrounded by dense shops and services that provide for easy public access without walking.
Outside the car-free city lie transportation zones and car parks to be used by the city residences. Car parks outside the city square provide access to the periphery of the city, but bar access to the core. Often, parkings are created at the outskirts of the city to allow people to park their car there, and/or take an alternative means of transport into town. These networks allow for logistical components such as centralized import/export and waste collection.
Motivations
Motivations for the transition to a car-free city include a reduction in air pollution and noise pollution, as well as the ability to reallocate land previously used for vehicle infrastructure such as parking lots and wide roads. Particularly in developing countries, the current infrastructures are not able to keep up with the increase of private vehicles, even after optimization and new construction of roadways.Regarding the environmental impacts, reducing the number of cars concentrated in an urban area can improve air quality and reduce noise. It is believed that vehicular pollution causes approximately 184,000 deaths around the world, and keeping cars out of heavily populated areas could reduce the impact of this pollution. Additionally, future plans of implementing superblocks in Barcelona could reduce the amount of the residential population exposed to noise pollution greater than 65 dB from 42.5% to 26.5%.
Regarding the ability to reallocate land, around 70% of downtown land in several U.S. cities is allocated for use by cars. The removal of parking lots and other car-heavy areas not only alleviates the air and noise pollution but provides the opportunity for land to be used for other purposes. If land is reallocated properly, it could also reduce the urban heat island effect, which occurs when concrete and asphalt replace greenery in an area, resulting in increased temperatures due to albedo and other effects. In developing countries such as Vietnam, efforts to curb traffic through optimization of roadways, building of new infrastructure, and change in policies have not been able to alleviate motorized flow. There is traction to introduce a new car-free city model that would allow for improving the quality of life while meeting the logistical needs of all residents.
Process
Current efforts to transform congested cities into car-free cities requires a few logistical and societal measures such as consultation meetings with all stakeholders, such as town halls, using computer modelling and measuring traffic before and after road closures, and enforcing restrictions once the plan is in place. Many cities undergoing transformation in the EU have outlined their guidelines from pre-implementation consultation, to design, to post implementation.After the closing down of streets and squares to personal car traffic, a pedestrian and bicycle network gradually emerges and joins several parts of the city. Similarly, prompted by the same need to avoid conflicts with car traffic and enhance pedestrian movement, pedestrian networks have emerged below street level or above road-level to connect large downtown areas as in the Minneapolis Skyway System. For new areas on the fringe of cities or new towns, two new complementary ideas have emerged. The concept of Filtered Permeability and a model for planning towns and subdivisions - the Fused Grid. Both focus on shifting the balance of network design in favor of pedestrian and bicycle mobility.