Pedestrianisation - is it good for cities and towns?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english/ep-171102
Norwich was the first city in the UK to ban cars from parts of the city centre. Planners wanted to protect pedestrians from cars and to reduce pollution in its old and narrow streets. That was 50 years ago. There’s a fresh interest in keeping cars out of cities now for the same reasons.
A pedestrian is someone who walks around rather than travelling by car or bus.
Pedestrianisation means changing a street into an area that can only be used by pedestrians.
In 1970 we had 20 million cars in this country. Now we have over 30 million cars in such a short period. So that creates three big problems. One is space – because we’ve still got the same street structures in our towns and cities, causing congestion. It causes pollution, which people are concerned about more and more. And actually, it’s kind of engineering walking out of our lives. So we’re actually not getting enough exercise, which is a cause of a health crisis. Smart cities are looking at pedestrianisation – in Glasgow, in Birmingham, in London for example, Manchester – as a way of not only making their places, cities better and more attractive, actually, building their local economy.
It would be great if we could go shopping or walk to work without breathing in fumes or worrying about getting knocked down by a car. But banning all motorised traffic from town centres might make life difficult for people to get around.
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