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Carfree city


A carfree city or car free city is a population center that relies primarily on public transport, walking, or cycling for transport within the urban area. Carfree cities greatly reduce petroleum dependency, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, automobile crashes, noise pollution, and traffic congestion. Some cities have one or more districts where motorized vehicles are prohibited, referred to as car-free zones. Many older cities in Europe, Asia, and Africa were founded centuries before the advent of the automobile, and some continue to have carfree areas in the oldest parts of the city -- especially in areas where it is impossible for cars to fit, e.g. in narrow alleys.

A theoretical design for a carfree city of one million people was first proposed by J.H. Crawford in 1996 and further refined in his books, Carfree Cities and Carfree Design Manual.

Some proposed car free cities are government planned and funded, such as Masdar city and The "Great City" in China, while others are planned privately such as The Venus Project designs. In cities that are free of roads there is not a need for taxation to pay for the roads.

Braess' paradox states that "for each point of a road network, let there be given the number of cars starting from it, and the destination of the cars. Under these conditions one wishes to estimate the distribution of traffic flow. Whether one street is preferable to another depends not only on the quality of the road, but also on the density of the flow. If every driver takes the path that looks most favorable to him, the resultant running times need not be minimal. Furthermore, it is indicated by an example that an extension of the road network may cause a redistribution of the traffic that results in longer individual running times."


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