Inner-City Neighbourhoods Without Cars

What will happen when a neighbourhood in busy Taipei suddenly bans all motorised vehicles from its streets? During the "Smart and Sustainable Urban Mobility" Workshop held in Taipei in the middle of march local politicians, city planners and scientists discussed this vision and other ideas for three days. The Wuppertal Institute has also been invited and was represented by Santhosh Kodukula, Project Co-ordinator at the department for Energy, Transportation and Climate Policy and member of the Research Unit for Mobility and International Cooperation.

In his presentation Santhosh Kodukula described experiences from experiments with car-free city centres in Korea and South Africa. He also emphasised the importance of stakeholder involvement and political will in transforming urban mobility.

Whether and how the transformation of a Taipei neighbourhood into a car-free area would be possible was explored by the 30 participants during a stakeholder discussion role-play. The exercise enabled the participants to take various roles of everyday residents in the neighbourhood and voice their concerns and scepticism in removing personal motorised vehicles from their district. The workshop has been held by the National University of Taiwan in cooperation with the "Intelligent Transportation Society Taiwan" and the network "Local Governments for Sustainability"