Pontevedra, a Spanish City That Picked Pedestrians Over Cars |For two decades the mayor reclaimed space for people and limited vehicles in the city center, which reduced traffic & improved air quality
My wife and I visited last summer! It was an absolutely delightful city. The whole time we were there, I was thinking about how much I'd love to live in a place like that. It was so cool to pop down from the hotel, walk to a nearby cafe for coffee and a light breakfast, and then figure out what we wanted to walk to next. People would buy a bag or two of groceries (including freshly baked bread) and walk home with it. That place was like a goddamn fairy tale lol.
Bordeaux did something similar. They had parking garages on the riverside in the 1950s.
One of their Mayor's had them demolished and turned into pedestrian space. He also limited the parking and built a tramway to incentivze the use of public transport.