Europe
The term "pedestrianised zone" is used in British English, and most other European countries use a similar term (French: zone piétonne, German: Fußgängerzone, Spanish: zona peatonal).
The first purpose-built pedestrian street in Europe is the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam, opened in 1953. The first pedestrianised shopping centre in the United Kingdom was in Stevenage in 1959.
A large number of European towns and cities have made part of their centres car-free since the early 1960s. These are often accompanied by car parks on the edge of the pedestrianised zone, and, in the larger cases, park and ride schemes. Central Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest: It was converted from car traffic into pedestrian zone in 1962 on November 17 as an experiment and is centered on Strøget, a pedestrian shopping street, which is in fact not a single street but a series of interconnected avenues which create a very large pedestrian zone, although it is crossed in places by streets with vehicular traffic. Most of these zones allow delivery trucks to service the businesses located there during the early morning, and street-cleaning vehicles will usually go through these streets after most shops have closed for the night.
Read more about this topic: Pedestrian Zone
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“riding flatcars to Fresno,
Across the whole country
Steep towns, flat towns, even New York,
And oceans and Europe & libraries & galleries
And the factories they make rubbers in”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“The Federated Republic of Europe—the United States of Europe—that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“It is not unkind to say, from the standpoint of scenery alone, that if many, and indeed most, of our American national parks were to be set down on the continent of Europe thousands of Americans would journey all the way across the ocean in order to see their beauties.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)