Can you imagine London, Paris and New York free from car dependency? Welcome to Car Free Megacities. The Rapid Transition Alliance has joined forces with Possible, the New Weather Institute, Paris sans Voiture, Brooklyn Spoke, Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy, and Glimpse, to explore the consequences of car use in these cities and discover what they could gain by going car free.
Car Free Megacities is about creating more urban space for people and nature, clearing cities of air pollution and promoting healthy, active travel like walking and cycling. The Car Free Megacities campaign, supported by the KR Foundation, and Brompton is a two-year project in London, New York and Paris to re-imagine our cities as places where private cars become obsolete, and to dramatically raise policy and public support for urban car reduction.
The campaign seeks to:
- Raise the ambitions of the Mayors and city officials in London, Paris and New York.
- Make sure that the very best international practice to make cities better is seen and quickly copied.
- Expose where change is unnecessarily slow to act as a lever for more rapid action.
- Empower the people living in these cities to re-imagine their built environment and be part of making change happen.
From the outset, let’s be clear – a “car free city” is a city which is free of the dangers, pollution and emissions caused by mass private car ownership. It’s not a city with no cars at all. We recognise there are people, including some disabled people, who cannot get around without a car, and our campaign to reduce the number of cars in these megacities will make their lives easier too.
Find out more
- Driving Cars out of our Cities by Andrew Simms, The Ecologist, 11th May 2021
- Open Letter to London, New York and Paris City Halls, The Car Free Megacities Campaign, 2021
- https://www.carfreemegacities.org/latest-news