Car-free movement

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(Redirected from Carlight)

The Car-free movement is composed of people who believe that it is important to reduce both the number of cars in the world, and the usage of them in urban environments. It comprises:

those promoting alternatives to car dependence and car culture, including alternative transport methods such as cycling, walking and public transport;
those promoting car-free lifestyle choices, within either a "car-dependent", "car-light" or "carfree" local context;
those promoting the building of (usually mixed-use) carfree environments preferably on brownfield but also on greenfield sites;
those promoting Car Free Days, using the events as tools to bring about long-term on-the-ground change in infrastructure and priorities (example: Bogotá); and
those promoting the transformation of existing villages, towns and cities or parts of them into car-free environments, where this is not already the case.
those promoting planning methods (like New Urbanism or ABC town planning) to reduce or remove the need for car usage.

Several terms have been coined, and have gained some currency within the movement:

Car-light - Either a person or place that is not completely carfree, but uses or allows for a variety of alternative transport modes in addition to the car. On a small scale, this is exemplified by the Living street or Woonerf, now widespread in Northern Europe. In the United States and Canada the term Transit-oriented development is applied to "car-light" districts. The New Urbanists are a group of Canadian and US architects, developers and planners who promote and build environments that are somewhat car-light, expressly stating that the automobile must be accommodated. One increasingly popular tool for cutting back on the number of cars in any place is carsharing, by which in a well run scheme anywhere from 5 to 20 cars can be replaced by a single shared vehicle..

Car-free environments - Places that do not accommodate (permit the entry of) automobiles. Some car-free environments allow motorised vehicles for deliveries and emergency services; other such places use non-motorised alternatives for some or all of these purposes, which is preferable if feasible. Some car-free environments have peripheral parking, and are thus still somewhat car-dependent. Large areas of the world are simply inaccessible by car, and have always been so. Some people take things a step further and work to encourage local use of local products, thus reducing the dependence of their car-free environment on long-distance goods transport and allegedly supporting the local economy over the transnational economy.

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