Portland’s ‘Sunday Parkways’ sans cars

As a follow up to the previous entry, Portland Striving to be the U.S. Bike Capital”, the city held its Sunday Parkways on one day, June 22, 2008, where six miles of streets are closed to auto traffic on Sunday from 8 am to 2 pm. It’s Portland’s version of Bogota, Colombia’s weekly Ciclovia.

The video, produced by Streetfilms, and the imagery of the event, reminds me of a Simpsons episode where the childrens’ cartoon show (Krusty the Clown) went off the air and suddenly the kids had nothing they wanted to watch on TV. So there they were, playing outside, filling the playgrounds, the streets, the sidewalks, playing games, riding bikes, laughing, having fun. Of course, the show came back on the air and the playgrounds were once again desolate, which leads to this closing quote from the video…

“This is fantastic. As you can see here, we have everybody, the young children, older people. I think it’s spectacular that Portland is doing the sunday parkways. My only problem is I think it should be every Sunday. They need to do this every week, for the rest of the summer.“

Still, Portland was the first city to do it, ahead of New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

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neilkt