The Good Life

Found a fantastic article today about the island of Hydra in Greece.

The islands of Greece are some of the few remaining places in the world where you can experience modern life entirely free from cars. One widely held misconception is that modern life cannot exist without cars. Hydra and other places show us that this does not always need to be the case. Many towns and cities around the world shut a street or two on Sundays, or perhaps even for a month in Summer like in Paris, or have their town centres car free, but there is almost no-where in the world these days, where you can live and go about your business from morning to night without needing cars and without interruption from them - where even the roads are designed for pedestrians, not cars.

Particularly in the "new world" these days you would have to go climb a mountain, or go kayaking into the wilderness to experience an entire day without cars, but of course in the wilderness you have to go without running water, toilets, beds and many other things also. It is no surprise that we North Americans and Australians think that life without cars is somehow backward !! Hydra reminds us that it does not need to be this way.

Interestingly, the website (Project for Public Spaces) also mentions that the mayor of Paris has announced plans to pedestrianize the highways along the Seine, riding on the success of Paris Plage.

Good news all around.