Leanna Garfield
Business Insider
On Tuesday, Germany’s highest administrative court ruled that, in an effort to improve urban air quality, cities can ban cars from some streets.
As The New York Times notes, the ruling could open the floodgates for cities around the country to go car-free.
Stuttgart and Düsseldorf — German cities with high pollution levels — will likely enact the first bans in the fall. Stuttgart, home to Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, has recently favored such bans. In 2017, Stuttgart announced that starting this year, it will keep diesel vehicles that don’t meet emissions standards from entering the city on high-pollution days.
But German cities are not the only ones getting ready to take the car-free plunge. Urban planners and policy makers around the world have started to brainstorm ways that cities can create more space for pedestrians and lower CO2 emissions from diesel.
Here are 13 cities leading the car-free movement.
