The demand for pedestrian-only places is increasingly being met. A few of the latest examples where the crowd and the powers that be are finding common ground…

The Plaza de Panama in Balboa Park, San Diego is returning to its pedestrian-only plaza roots, rather than keep it as a parking lot.

Residents in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York worked with the City to get a car-free street on Sundays in July and August in 2008, then successfully expanded it to become permanent in all of July and

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What are the latest signs of a growing market for developing neighborhoods that focus on living rather than transporting?

- Gen Yers are giving cars a pass according to a Kiplinger article. Drivers aged 21 to 30 now account for 14% of miles driven, down from 21% in 1995, choosing mass transit, Zipcar and smartphones instead.

- The rise of mixed-use development means less car use, according to a report by the Journal of the American Planning Association, “The best way to minimize driving

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It’s a simple idea and the demand is certainly there, but why aren’t there any car-free neighborhoods in the U.S… yet?

First, overcoming either of these two reasons would have resulted in a car-free neighborhood:

1. No developer has the guts. Honestly, it really does only take one person with money to make it happen. It’s amazing, but no one in the last 80 years has stepped up. Until Joe Mellett of Bicycle City in Columbia, South Carolina. He’ll soon receive recognition for being one of the

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So, you’re South Africa and hosting the biggest event in the world, throwing the biggest party in the world via its Fan Fest... what kind of destination do you provide to embrace it all? That’s the Fan Walk, a 1.6 mile/2.6 km pedestrian promenade linking downtown Cape Town to its Green Point Stadium (pictured). In fact, it’s so successful, city leaders are looking to make it permanent.

You can’t ask for a more entertaining walk, or rather, experience. What’s more, it’ll be a cultural showcase

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One of the most dangerous cities for pedestrians will soon become one of the safest.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif commissioned the country’s housing ministry in the fall of 2009 to choose an international firm via competition that to work with a local one in planning the transformation of a noisy, car-congested downtown (where residents refer to crossing streets as a sport, or for nostalgists, a video game) into a pedestrian-only district. See rendering of their proposal above. The

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What will our cities look like in 2030 when we’ve run out of oil? The Our Cities Ourselves exhibition (June 24-Sept 11, 2010), a program of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy provides an intriguing answer to that question by matching ten of the world’s top urban designers with ten of the world’s most dynamic cities. The general theme? From the exhibition…

“In the middle of the 20th century, cities across the U.S. were redesigned to accommodate the car. As people

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It’s official, as Mayor Bloomberg of New York City announced on February 11, 2010 that Times Square (and Herald Square) are permanently car free, almost a year after first announcing the plan. See the press release here.

Mayor Bloomberg, “In this day and age if you go around the world, all the other great cities have already tried to reduce the number of cars on their streets and convert some of the open spaces into space for other people.“

“Three-fourths (76%) of New Yorkers surveyed think

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What would a car free city be like? DC residents got a taste of that when the city experienced record snowfalls in early February of nearly five feet, the most since 1898. Just about the only thing shut down were the cars. Instead, the city was alive with people in the streets like no other day.

As you can see below, the local coffeehouse was packed, and the buzz of conversation was a few notches higher than usual. Now you may be wondering, what about other cities that have significant

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As creatives are increasingly preferring a world beyond cars in natural cultural districts that function more like Wikipedia than Encyclopedia Britannica, bureaucracies both corporate and government are largely stuck in management models of the industrial age that will slow the transition on their end.

Enter the government of Geneva, Switzerland and a tri-partisan 2-1 City Council vote to close 200 streets to cars. Or as Geneva’s council member Fabienne Fischer states, “It’s not really to

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The attitude among creatives is increasingly becoming aligned with the notion that Cars are the new smoking (the article lists ten reasons why). What’s more interesting is the growing evidence...

New York City’s Department of Transportation Commissioner is featured in Forbes magazine, Taking Back the Streets, on the city’s progressive investments in prioritizing people over cars, featured throughout this site’s Pedestrian Only/Car Free section.

Seasonal street closings have rapidly become

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