Doing Thursday World Car Free Day
Photography: David Gregory
Photograph by David Gregory
According to the World Car-Free Network, “World Car-Free Day is an annual celebration of cities and public life, free from the noise, stress and pollution of cars.” The aim in taking cars off the streets for all or part of a day is to give residents a chance to consider how their city might look and work without cars.
A Short History Of Car-Free Days
A long history of car-free days would, of course, take us back to the late nineteenth century, before which every day was car-free. But if we consider the current situation of cities designed for the movement and storage of cars as a starting point, the history begins in the early 1970s.
It was then, precipitated by the oil crisis, that some of the first car-free days took place, mainly in Europe, and continued sporadically until the mid-1990s.
In 1994, American sustainability activist Eric Britton, issued a call to systematize and co-ordinate these projects in a keynote address at the International Ciudades Accesibles (Accessible Cities) Conference in Toledo, Spain.
In his presentation, entitled “Thursday: A Breakthrough Strategy for Reducing Car Dependence in Cities,” Britton declared us all addicts and noted that since “you cannot usefully engage in meaningful dialogue with addicts, what you have to do is start treating them in some way.”
His prescription? A carefully administered dose of car-free days. Specifically:
Taking up Britton’s challenge, Reykjavik, Iceland, and the city of Bath, UK both staged car-free days in 1996. A Europe-wide initiative was piloted in France in 1998 under the slogan “En ville, sans ma voiture?” (“In town, without my car?”). The slogan, ending with a question mark, leaves the impression that even the organizers weren’t too sure about the idea. With time came a change in punctuation – and perhaps in attitude – to the more assertive “In town without a car!”
In 1999, campaigns were run in more than 150 French and Italian towns and the canton of Geneva in Switzerland. Other cities around the world (Fremantle, Australia; Bogotá, Colombia; Chengdu City, China) participated in 2000. In 2001, Toronto became the first North American city to take part. Meanwhile, European Car-free Day expanded in 2002 to include a full “mobility week.” More than 1,300 cities participated in 2006.
Pedestrian Zones
Since the ultimate goal of such events is to encourage more car-free urban spaces, it is interesting to look at the ones currently in existence.
The term “pedestrian zone” hardly rolls off the North American tongue. It’s not common parlance on this continent, and – not coincidentally – it’s not a concept we see much in practice. But while there aren’t many places in North America where cars are turned away, some do exist.
Mackinac (pronounced Ma-ki-naw) Island, Michigan (population approximately 600), has the distinction of having the only state route in the United States that doesn’t allow motorized vehicle traffic. M-185 is a 13 kilometre long road that circumscribes the island (located in Lake Huron). The only recorded traffic accident occurred when the fire truck grazed the ambulance as they both reported to a medical emergency on an incoming ferry.
Another car-free Great Lake island is the former hippy colony on Toronto Island, a short ferry ride south of Toronto in Lake Ontario. At the other extreme, the yuppie Resort Municipality of Whistler is one of the only North American towns with a car-free central core.
Outdoor pedestrian malls can also be found in a handful of Canadian cities. Sparks Street in Ottawa is one of the earliest North American examples, having been pedestrianized in 1966. Calgary’s Stephen Avenue Mall, with its restored turn-of-the-century buildings, is a pedestrian area and a National Historic District. Granville Mall in Halifax is another historic centre that has been converted into a pedestrian space. Similarly, Toronto’s Distillery District – the former home of Hiram Walker distillers – is now a pedestrian-oriented centre for arts, culture, and entertainment.
Doing Thursday
Sadly, our lack of pedestrian zones leaves us with very few opportunities to envision our urban spaces without cars. As Britton notes, our welcome-anywhere-anytime attitude toward cars in North America is a sign of our addiction, and, given the size of our dealers’ advertising budgets, the odds for societal recovery are stacked against us.
So how do we overcome our collective habit? Britton suggests we do it by thrusting ourselves cold-turkey into a no-choice situation. Or, more accurately, into an “any-choice-but-one” situation, the hope being that drivers will get out of their cars long enough for us to determine what needs to happen to make a car-free urban transport paradigm work.
In his paper, Britton claims that the key is to hold a car-free day on a Thursday so that people see their city under normal circumstances, but with different eyes.
Thursday allows people time to deal with mundane chores early in the week and to plan how they’ll manage their work day without a car. Doing a Thursday on, say, a Sunday doesn’t teach us all we need to know.
In keeping with Britton’s recommendation, in 1998 the European Union effectively decided to “do Thursday” by establishing a fixed date – September 22 – for European Car-free Day. That way, commuter traffic and daily mobility could be factored in, people could plan for it, and there was an opportunity to learn what structural changes are needed to make the goal of a car-free city possible.
“Doing Thursday” allows us to find out how people like the way their city feels on a regular workday done irregularly, how (in)convenient it is, and what might be done to make it better the next time.
When seen in this light, Car-free Day becomes a grand public experiment wherein we all agree to accept a bit of chaos for a day and to report back on it until, with some luck and perseverance, we perhaps find a way to kick our habit.
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