Laughing children, relaxed couples, hipsters on fixies, dogs with owners in tow, owners with dogs in tow — Sunday, June 22 found me pedalling down a street in North Portland, surrounded by a buzz of activity with one noticeably absent feature: cars.
I was riding in a Ciclovia, with a capital C. Ciclovia means “bike path” in Spanish, but has become the international term to describe shutting down city streets to automobile traffic and turning them into giant paved parks for self-propelled people. The concept of the Ciclovia comes from Bogotá, Colombia, where it has so grown in popularity that currently, every single Sunday of the year, 110 kilometres of city streets are closed to automobiles and opened to pedestrians and cyclists – about 2 million of them.
The idea has caught on in the Northern hemisphere. In Ottawa they have been shutting down streets for over a decade on summer Sunday mornings, and El Paso, Texas was the first American city to try it out in 2007. The event that I was lucky enough to catch during a visit to the Towards Car-Free Cities Conference was dubbed “Sunday Parkways,” and presented by the City of Portland’s Office of Transportation. Nine kilometres of streets in the north of the city were turned into a living belt of recreational bliss.
The energy of the event was contagious – not a frenzied rush, but rather a relaxed, playful, and inclusive exuberance. The very young, the very old, and everyone in between came out to play in the street. Kids were everywhere. Little children rode alongside me on little bicycles. Families passed with a kid in a trailer, one on an attached trailer bike, and one riding a tricycle out in front. Clumps of joggers punctuated the steady stream of cyclists, and stroller-pushing moms and dads wound their way through the comfortably spread-out crowd.
No one was in a hurry to get anywhere because there was nowhere to go, since the route was a giant loop and you ended up back where you started. This event was all about being outside, being together, being safe, being active, and having fun! I heard comments such as, “This is the future of civilization,” and “All cities should try something like this.”
I heartily agreed, and was apparently not alone in my enthusiastic endorsement of the event.
Other cities are catching the spirit, with New York shutting down eight kilometres of Manhattan roads for three consecutive Saturdays, August 9, 16, and 23. City planners and neighbourhood residents are experiencing how a community comes alive when you take cars out of the way. Roads that often act as barriers to connection due to the large hunks of impersonal (and lethal) steel hurtling by are transformed into avenues, perfect for exploring the ’hood and meeting your neighbours.
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