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Originally Posted by robchalmers
where is the emoticon for a round of appaulause when you need it! A very well placed and founded counter point there. I too see you're point about attitudes either side of the pond, I've witnessed them first hand too - I just couldn't imagine a main street in the US even the size of Emden in Germany going pedestrian in a similar way, let alone ones equal to Amsterdam, Bath, Nantes. I mean if I went to one of my favourite small towns in the states East Greenwich, RI. and I said everything from the corner of Rocky hollow and main through past grille on main (love that place) to say the corner of Post and Arnold, then take it as wide a Marlborough street one way and liberty the other and say it was a carfree zone (I know thats arbourtory but I'm using the few places I know) I think they'd be up roar!!
As you say maybe its more a question of the way the town/city was build and has matured? like a 4-lane main of a US city verse the one-way streets and 'close' nature of say Paris, Rome or Oxford.(Granted Greenwich in my example is a sleepy little two-laner!)
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Actually I think it's partially because in the US it's a lot more common or at least used to be more common, to tear down and rebuild town centre's... All over Europe the town centers has to some extent remained and just evolved... That's why we have small one-way streets and they have 4 lanes... There might be old buildings in the town center of a US city, but they are spaced apart and generally not that old... All over here you can find most of the town center intact from several hundred years back, without houses having been torn down to make room inbetween buildings for a large road...
I'm not saying the European way is right or the US way is wrong... That's not anything you can judge, it's history and heritage... It's just a difference... Something I'm aware of, you are aware of and most europeans along with us... Unfortunately the general public in the US seems not to know it...
I don't know the place you are referring to, but my guess is that it would be a few square blocks... Would that be a correct assumption? If so, agreed, that's not that uncommon in Sweden as well...
Or to use an example of a town very close from where I live which I frequently visit... Lund... Most of the town center is accesible by car, but the smallest centre core is closed of, only buses and taxi's can go in there... The size of that zone is roughly a 2-3 km circle... The only traffic allowed in there is public transport, taxi's, and if the the driver is a resident using his car for loading/unloading or a contractor needing to load/unload his tools and supply or similar... Ie no, you can't drive in there and park your car every day, and besides there are no parking spaces...
Then follows a zone of one-way streets before you get to the parts that are "open" to cars... The streets in the one-way zone and closed zone is cobblestone, one car plus most usually one small sidewalk wide and more rarely two sidewalks... Some of them open up to allow cross traffic in shorter sections, but that's more rare... Getting to a specific adress without knowing the way will undoubtedly piss you off royally as you will likely pass by it without being able to go in that street...
Get on a bike though, and you can go anywhere in the zone quite easily... Many, but not all streets allow cross traffic on bikes, some are bike only, and if the two above doesn't apply, there is a specific bike lane...
If you live and work in the town or close by, using a car isn't just polluting, it's outright idiotic as you spend three times the time to get from one end of the city to the other as it takes by bike... In most cases you would arrive faster by foot than by car, and that is without cheating and using a bus, which usually beats the bike, but not always...
I'm not there that often, and the first time I was going to a specific adress in the one-way zone I damned near had a epeleptic fit, but once I figured out the system it works, and it keeps traffic to a minimum... Not because cars aren't allowed, but because they become a hindrance...