With many Auckland’s political and bureaucratic leaders leaning on vocal minorities and consistently failing to relocate space for people in our city, recent news abroad led me to point out something important.
That’s it extremely Popular to make cities dominated by cars more pleasant, freeing up space for people.
Of Paris, with love
Yesterday, the Parisians voted on the 500 (more) pedestrian streets in their city, replacing 10,000 parking lots, roads and gray asphalt with walking, cycling and green vegetation. More significantly, this went with 66% approval.
In the years since 2020, the sudden interruption Covid, Paris, unlike Auckland, accelerated his existing plans to move away from driving such as standard mode, and for sustainability, clean air and a more friendly city of people.
It was a paradigm change built from previous decades of work, giving residents and visitors a city that puts with the sound of people, not for vehicles.
It didn’t get out of nowhere. He was started and maintained by the courage of the city’s leadership, especially his mayor Anne Hidalgo. Like any large -scale change, it is clear that it takes time and effort to turn a busy urban environment, but when done with vision and purpose, it quickly leads to a better city for everyone.
Across the ditch, a mayor six times continues to continue
Closer to home, the city of Sydney has seen similar changes in recent decades. Sydney mayor since 2004, Clover Moore, has been consistently reelected on a streets exchange platform for prioritizing cars to people.
This was not an easy journey, in the face of hostile state governments, and some public resistance or direct opposition to things like facilitating walking. But persistence was worth it, with more cycling than ever, and transformational projects like Sydney Light Rail changed not only the city, but also hearts and minds, expanding the horizon of possibilities and imagination.
The city that never sleeps is constantly awake to the potential
Supported by the mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, at the 2010 Transport Tsar, Janette Sadik-Khan, defended a high profile and a successful transformation of New York City streets, including Times Square’s transformation from a bustling, noisy and noisy, traffic sewage in a bright and welcoming zone for people.
In particular, the expansion of bike lanes, along with the arrival of bicycle sharing, saw a dramatic increase in cycling, with support growing even more after changes.
“There is no doubt that having a strong leader helps to establish this vision and support change when the status quo blowback begins,” she said. “But in New York we rewrite the street operational code fundamentally, not with mega-projects and billions of dollars, but adapting the space that was already there.
“This is a really important lesson in many, many cities: you don’t have to have the most visionary mayor, you don’t have to have a billion dollar budget, you don’t have to have years and years of modeling. Just adapting the space that is there, you can make a huge difference.
More recently, the implementation of congestion collection in a large Manhattan range has been extremely effective in reducing traffic, and improving public transport and bicycle … and reducing the amount of horns for a much more stressless metropolis in general.
Things are looking up in the south!
These waves of change are also washing on our backs. As Jessica de Heij noted last year, Dunedin’s George Street was updated to be more suitable for pedestrians and, the city center of Wintergill is a more focused place in people.
Despite the virulent vocal opposition of some in Dunedin, anterior mayor Aaron Hawkins advanced with plans to transform George Street. Now that the work is completed, some of the most vocal opponents have changed their music, now vocally supporting the changes in the urban landscape. Surprise!
(How many of these people with such confidence and aloud the update of Mile Golden Mile de Wellington, will they exalt their virtues once done?)
Auckland is good at this too … So why do our leaders drag their feet?
Tāmaki Makauau is full of great public places that attracted the headlines in formation, but were wild, once finished and full of people. Occasionally, the spaces we changed in Auckland demonstrate that Aucklanders love places for people and love alternatives to get around by car.
Despite the still disconnected bicycle network, cycling continues to grow throughout the city, leaps and bounds wherever improvements occur. And public places for pedestrians help companies grow.
So why aren’t we folding, tripling, quadrupling this proven recipe for success?
How many times do we have to consult with pedestrinsioning Queen Street or High Street, before it really happens? How many post-construction hits do we need to see?
How many ‘open street’ events we need to keep, to prove that it works well enough to be routine, every weekend and/or all summer?
How many studies we need, showing once again that bike lanes, pedestrians and traffic reduction leads to more money to companies, less congestion, healthier environments, happier citizens and a better city for people?
How many other cities do we need to see changes, to believe that we can do this alone?
Next time you travel through the city center, or any of the centers of the city of Auckland in this town of scope to yourself: which parts are busiest with people?
On your journey of and for work, school, shopping, leisure – ask yourself which streets you would like to live the most?
Probabilities are, in both cases, you will land in our pedestrian squares and residential streets with little traffic. It is an acosphalo.
So ask yourself – what keeps us from sharing love and changing more places to match vibration?
From where I sit down, it seems mainly a lack of confident and courageous leadership. Something to reflect, with local elections coming.
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