City for Walking
The city of Pontevedra in the northwest of Spain has been transformed over the past 20 years by policies prioritising pedestrians over cars.
Miguel Anxo Fernández, the mayor of Pontevedra, said that people changed the paradigm – giving 70 per cent of public space to the people and 27–30 per cent to the cars.
City streets have radically changed and there have been zero fatal road accidents since 2011 as well as a 67 per cent drop in CO2 emissions since the 1990s.
Most cars are banned from the medieval city centre and 73 per cent of journeys in the city are made on foot or by bike.
Difficult words: pedestrian (a person who is walking), paradigm (a typical model of how something is done), fatal (deadly).
