Espaces publics : une culture de la résistance à l'automobile / Public spaces : a resistance culture to the car

Abstract

In the 1960s, public areas in European urban centres were disfigured by developments designed to 'adapt the city to the car'. Since the 1980s, restructuring programs have sought to correct these errors. This article shows how the car has progressively lost ground and has been domesticated. the only real measure of the succès of such policies. Different situations are illustrated by reference to Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Berlin and Swiss towns. In France, the return of the tram to cities is shown to accelerate the process of restructuring. However, in peri-urban locations and outside the main urban areas, without an effective policy, the car continues its destructive influence on the environment. The culture of resisting the car is now as the heart of the debate, on the definition of public space in terms of its production, conception and planning.