CityLab Daily: A Most Ambitious Pro-Pedestrian Makeover
What We’re Following
Brussels route: It’s quiet and calm in Brussels, and that’s no accident. Cars were already absent from the wriggling little narrow streets that wind through the city’s center, but now the city has been transforming its broad boulevards into pedestrian zones, too, making permanent spaces for people, trees, and bikes in places that were once busy crossroads. The congested capital city of Belgium is nearing completion of one of the most ambitious pro-pedestrian makeovers seen this century, on a scale rivaled only by Madrid.
CityLab’s Feargus O’Sullivan writes today that the plan could well make Brussels the international role model it deserves to be. Read Feargus’s latest story: In Car-Choked Brussels, the Pedestrians are Winning.
- Over the past year, Feargus has also been charting the backlash by drivers to other European cities’ pedestrian expansions. Get the bigger picture across Europe: In Europe’s War on Cars, Drivers Fought Back
More on CityLab
What We’re Reading
The fight for the right to drive (New Yorker)
Why America hasn’t elected a mayor as president in almost 100 years (Slate)
The newest coworking space is a parking spot (Fast Company)
San Francisco could be the first U.S. city to ban facial recognition tech (Engadget)
Podcast: How squirrels came to live in cities (99 Percent Invisible)
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