Car-Free Movement

The car-free movement is a social movement advocating for car-free cities, seeking to establish places where motorized vehicle use is greatly reduced or eliminated in favor of walking, cycling and public transit. Its roots reach back to the early twentieth-century resistance to automobile expansion: Los Angeles became the first American city to legally subordinate pedestrians to motor vehicles in 1925, and organized opposition followed, including the 1922 Walkers' League in Los Angeles and mid-twentieth-century baby carriage blockades, protests by mothers demanding safer streets for children. The movement today draws together social activists, urban planners, transportation engineers and environmentalists working to reshape urban design against traffic congestion and sprawl and toward environmental sustainability and community vitality, with visible expressions including Critical Mass group bicycle rides, begun in San Francisco in 1992, and car-free days now held in cities worldwide.