Automotive-free streets are popping up in cities around the globe

Once an space of soulless parking heaps and bygone delivery yards, San Francisco’s latest neighborhood, Mission Rock, simply south of downtown, is now a waterfront work-live-play district. Here, open views of the Bay Bridge and Oracle Park are solely outshined by pedestrian plazas, extensive streets, and eight acres of inexperienced area, providing one thing hardly ever present in city facilities: respiration room. The 28-acre locale is a results of a years-long, multi-phase partnership between the San Francisco Giants, the Port of San Francisco, Tishman Speyer, and CMG Landscape Architecture. The purpose? To reimagine what an city neighborhood may really feel like.

With the San Francisco Bay Trail curving round waterfront China Basin Park, car-free thoroughfares speckled with “street rooms”(usable avenue artwork for consuming, climbing, or chilling), and outposts of a number of the metropolis’s hottest eateries ( you, Arsicault Bakery), the roughly 500 new residences in two eye-catching buildings crammed shortly, with residents desirous to plug in to communal work areas, or benefit from the straightforward entry to buses, trains, trams, and ferries connecting to Silicon Valley and the broader Bay Area.

(You can stroll throughout San Francisco in a day. Here’s how.)

“COVID made us reassess what we value in open space and what the idea of city life can mean,” says Corbett Belcher at CMG. “We created a structure for a lively neighborhood that focuses on social and ecological well-being, a place where cars don’t dominate, people do.”

The want for diminished emissions and want for enhanced high quality of life in city settings isn’t distinctive to this West Coast metropolis. Across the nation and around the globe, car-free is having a second.

Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius was named European Green Capital for 2025, thanks partially to town’s funding in an eco-friendly public transportation system, which incorporates electrical buses and trollies. Several new routes can be added by 2028 to widen car-free entry, whereas roughly 62 miles of recent bike lanes have been added since 2016.

The sustainability-minded metropolis makes it simple for guests to discover miles of pedestrian paths and designated routes resulting in gardens, monuments, and museums on foot. Vilnius has additionally diminished pedestrian wait occasions at visitors lights to make foot-friendly commutes extra environment friendly for residents.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia may be America’s most walkable city, nevertheless it’s additionally residence to one of many nation’s largest trail networks, spanning greater than 400 miles (and rising), and connecting parks, job facilities, suburbs, and rural communities. Visitors can roll or stroll alongside the Schuylkill River Trail (SRT) to beloved spots just like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Valley Forge National Historical Park.

Indego Bike Share operates 250 stations and has 2,000-plus bikes throughout town, with 40 new stations being added in 2025. Earlier this yr, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker reclassified greater than 35 miles of curbside lanes and all bike lanes as no-stopping or parking zones.

Paris, France

In March, Parisians voted in favor of the “garden roads” mission, which is able to pedestrianize 500 streets over the subsequent a number of years. Previous initiatives, championed by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, have rerouted visitors to primary avenues, leaving aspect streets car-free and extra nice for strolling and eating al fresco.

Visitors may also discover automobiles are absent alongside the Seine River quays, turning them right into a haven for walkers, joggers, picnickers, and apéro hour pop-ups. Bike lanes are ubiquitous, well-marked, and closely used, and with 1,480 docking factors on town’s Vélib bike share system—and extra on the way in which—two-wheeling across the City of Light is secure, economical, and satisfying.

Dubai, UAE

Approved by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 2024, the Dubai Walk grasp plan has massive pedestrian plans for town of 4 million, together with an built-in community of greater than 4,000 miles of walkways that includes air con, shaded areas, and interactive digital screens, permitting for year-round use.

(Welcome to the journey hub of the United Arab Emirates, the place mountains, sea and desert collide)

Among the primary being created are the 9.3-mile Al Ras Historical Route in Ras Al Khaimah and Al Souk Al Kabeer, and the Future Loop mission, an elevated, climate-controlled pedestrian path that can join 10 key landmarks together with the Dubai World Trade Centre, Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Museum of the Future, and close by metro stations.

Tampa, Florida

“Our goal was to bring people closer to what matters: Their home, offices, parks, restaurants, and entertainment,” says Josh Taube, CEO of Strategic Property Partners, the developer behind Water Street Tampa. Residents and guests get pleasure from outside eating, concert events, and farmers’ markets in shady parks, yoga studios and gyms, and stylish inns, just like the Tampa EDITION, residence to one of many metropolis’s first Michelin-starred restaurants.

Adding to Water Street’s simple dwelling is the free TECO Streetcar that makes stops at Amalie Arena, Ybor City, Tampa’s busy cruise ship port, and different well-liked downtown locations.

Bogotá, Columbia

Bogotá is residence to what may be the unique pedestrian-friendly occasion, the perennial Ciclovía, which celebrated 50 years in December. What began as a citizen protest of the takeover of automobiles within the metropolis has changed into an every-Sunday affair, when roughly 75 miles of streets are closed to automobiles and opened to an estimated 1.7 million individuals who stroll, cycle, skate, and jog across the Colombian capital. Not solely is it extra well-liked than ever, Ciclovía has turn into a mannequin for related occasions around the globe, akin to CicLAvia in Los Angeles. 

New York City, New York

Bryant Park is commonly cited as a catalyst for New York City’s pedestrian-focused renaissance, revitalized to award-winning standing within the Nineteen Eighties by the Bryant Park Corporation and CEO Dan Biederman. Biederman can be concerned in New York’s Future of Fifth, a pedestrianization plan to start in 2028 that can take away two lanes of visitors and widen sidewalks alongside Fifth Avenue between Bryant Park and Central Park.

No one appreciates an city repurpose like a New Yorker, together with The High Line, the previous elevated railway reworked right into a 1.45-mile greenbelt on Manhattan’s West Side that pulls an estimated eight million guests annually. Little Island, the two.4-acre park constructed on stilts over the Hudson River, opened in 2021 and attracts a couple of million annual guests (70 percent from outside the city) to its lush strolling paths and strong summer time efficiency calendar. “People leave with a more favorable impression of a place if they have a pedestrian experience,” says Biederman.