The definitive list of car free places

…is on Wikipedia’s list of car free places.

Now the first thing to keep in mind is that a true list would literally consist of thousands of entries. So to present a more meaningful register, the following two criteria are applied:
– They are unusual for their country or region (which explains why there are so many entries from the U.S. and only two from Africa)
– They make up a sizeable fraction of a city, town, or island, though this seems to be relaxed a bit when it comes to the U.S. which mainly counts streets vs other countries which measure by districts. However, this certainly provides evidence contrary to the popular belief that car-free streets don’t work in the U.S.

Below is the list by country followed by the number of car free places. The Wikipedia list provides the actual cities, location and brief description.

North America
United States – 41
Canada – 12
Mexico – 2
Costa Rica – 1
Puerto Rico – 2

Europe
Austria – 4
Belgium – 3
Denmark – 2
Finland – 1
France – 23
Germany – 33 (12 of which are on islands/resorts)
Greece – 6
Hungary – 1
Italy – 12
Netherlands – 6
Portugal – 8
Spain – 12
Sweden – 5
Switzerland – 25
UK and Channel Islands – 10
Czech Republic – 2
Croatia – 2
Lituania – 2
Bulgaria – 2
Russia, Lativia, Estonia, Turkey, Montenegro – 1 each

South America
Argentina – 9
Brazil – 3
Chile, Colombia – 1 each

Africa
Kenya, Morocco – 1 each

Middle East
Israel – 3
Lebanon – 1

Asia
China – 6
Japan – 1

Australia
Western Australia, Canberra, Sydney (pictured, Pitt Street) – 1 each

Image source: gabriel c.

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