German city to remove thousands of parking spaces and impose 12mph speed limit
Thousands of parking spaces are to be torn up in a German city, in a bid to make drivers stay away.
Hanover’s Green Party mayor Belit Onay has proudly defended the plans to make the city a place where people can “party and stroll about”.
In total, 4,000 parking spaces will be removed, with drivers who do venture into the city forced to use one-way roads, ending up in one of a number of multi-story car parks.
A 12mph speed limit will also be imposed.
The Green party in Hanover say the extra space will be used to expand cafes and plant more trees.
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Mr Onay said: “The time for experiments is over. Now we are getting on with the job of transforming our city.
“With these measures, we are making our city more sustainable and more climate-friendly.”
According to the Telegraph, the plans have been met with anger from Hanover’s centre-right Christian Democrats, with councillor Felix Semper saying: “In the long run, this will result in more empty shops in the city centre.”
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Hanover is the capital of the state of Lower Saxony. It has a population of just over 500,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in northern Germany.
The city has seen its urban planners adopt controversial designs in the past.
Following the destruction of over 90 per cent of its historic centre by Allied bombers during World War II, Hanover rebuilt its narrow mediaeval alleyways with wide boulevards designed to accommodate cars.
The city’s planning administration controversially razed beautiful 19th-century palaces with its goal of redesigning the city to coincide with what was then viewed as the future of transport.
This current project comes at a time when Germany’s Green Party is losing ground at municipal level, owing in part to its efforts to minimise car presence in cities.
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Earlier this year, the environmental party received disappointing results in local elections in Berlin and Bremen after proposing to convert central streets into pedestrian zones and raise parking rates.
For the first time in two decades, conservatives took control of city hall in Berlin, running on a pro-car platform.
Despite the fact that traffic congestion plagues many major urban areas, polls show that only around half of the German people support the idea of banning cars from inner cities.
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