A strange quiet descended over Paris on Sunday. Tens of thousands of Parisians and tourists moved around the French capital with bemused looks on their faces. An urban armada of pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, inline skaters—you name it—ruled the streets.
Gone was the angry, monotone roar of motorized traffic that rumbles through the air of cities around the world. The sky was bright and blue. The air was fresh and clean. For one day, large swaths of Paris went car-free.
What a curious and even quirky idea. That’s the gist of how the global press regarded the event. But the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, was clear in her purpose. She has said that people “are not obliged to move around in a personal car, there are other ways to approach mobility in a city”.
I’ve been thinking about what purpose and effect a car-free day might have. It is one of the most powerful tools for showing what is possible for the future of our cities. Paris didn't invent the concept of the car-free day, but they are well aware of the value. They also know that when Paris does something, it has a knock-on effect in cities around the world.
It is increasingly difficult to rally a crowd around any cause in our online societies where a Like on Facebook can suffice. With the increasing rise of urbanism and the focus on how we can make cities better, healthier, more livable, and more attractive, it’s important to go big in order to hammer home the message.
We’re inundated with causes. More often than not, the messaging has its roots in the environmentalist tone we’ve inherited from the 1960s and 1970s. Unfortunately, environmentalism is one of the greatest marketing flops in the history of homo sapiens.
Despite over 40 years of this approach, we reject by and large the finger pointing and guilt trips of the environmentalist tone. There is little inspiration for the 99 percent—only irritation.
You might have heard of Earth Hour, those magical 60 minutes where we turn off our lights in a symbolic earth-hugging gesture to save the melting Arctic and polar bears and stuff. Only to fire up all lights and devices when it’s done. It means nothing.
But car-free days, in Paris and elsewhere, tend to be light on messaging. The city shuts its streets to cars with a shrug, and tells people about it. That’s about it. People understand the point of it, but it’s not forced down their throat. They are left to wander out into their city and see it in a completely different light. To reclaim the space so arrogantly dominated by the most inefficient transport form ever invented: the private automobile. To envision what their city would look like with fewer cars.
Everyone wandering around the streets of Paris yesterday enjoyed it. There were people thinking, “Amazing! If only this was every day!” and others thinking, “Amazing! But as long as it’s just one day”. But the enthusiasm was unanimous.
Paris has been busy transforming itself for over a decade. I lived there in the late 1990s and I hardly recognize it today. It’s fantastic. Hidalgo’s predecessor, Bertrand Delanoë (2002-2014), started the shift. He introduced one of the world's largest bike share systems. He removed an expressway along the River Seine and started the process to calm traffic in much of the city. By 2020, 55 percent of Paris will be a 30 km/h zone (20 mph) for cars. Paris is setting the standard for big cities around the world.
“The fact is that cars no longer have a place in the big cities of our time," Delanoë has said. He gets it.
Paris didn't invent the car-free day. It’s an established thing that even has an official day (September 22), and a decades-long history. In November 1974, the Danish and Dutch governments implemented car-free Sundays in response to the oil crisis that was paralyzing the two countries. People walked and cycled on motorways. They picnicked in the fast lane.
As part of European Mobility Week this month, hundreds of cities in Europe, including Brussels, Stockholm, Budapest, and Madrid, joined Paris in hosting car-free days for their residents. Austria even has an initiative each year during Lent, Autofasten, or Car Fasting, encouraging people to temporarily give up driving.
North America saw more than 100 Open Streets events last year. Cities all over Central and South America routinely close off main boulevards to cars on Sundays, letting their citizens use the space as they see fit. The idea was spawned in Bogota in 1974. A good year for urbanist ideas, it would seem.
Gurgaon, a financial center south of New Delhi, is going further, making every Tuesday car-free from 7 am to 7 pm. Momentum is growing.
It’s not hard to figure out why. Cities weren’t designed for cars, and there are too many of them in every urban center on the planet. I don’t fancy the “car-free” label myself. Cars will be around for a while. Private automobiles, however—largely single-occupant—are the dinosaurs of our age and reducing their numbers is incredibly important. I’m not anti-car. I’m just pro-city.
When Copenhagen closed off its city center to cars in 2012 in order to host the World Championships in road cycling, it registered a 30 percent drop in pollution across the city. The World Health Organization estimates that kind of pollution killed 7 million people in 2012. Research shows emissions from diesel vehicles causes 9,500 premature deaths each year in London. There is more than enough data to support the case.
Before you get all excited about electric cars, remember they only solve a part of the problem. They still hog precious urban space. They still kill and injure people, and make cities unsafe. Over a million people are killed each year in car crashes.
We have lived together in cities for 7,000 years. You’d think we would have figured out by now how to make a city livable. We’re getting there. It’s time for us to stop ignoring the bull in society’s china shop—the automobile—and turn around to face it and implement plans to tame it, castrate it, cage it.
Across Europe the tide is turning. Over 120 cities now have 30 km/h (20 mph) zones in their centers. Hundreds of cities have started bike share schemes. Trams are making a comeback. Paris gets it. They get it more than most cities on the planet. They are, at the moment, the looking glass into which we see the future of our cities.
It’s no longer about how many cars can fit down a street, it’s about how many people can, using all the transport forms at our disposal. All the cool stuff we’ve invented ages ago. It’s time to go back to the future and plan our cities for the next 100 years.
