Importance of Public Involvement: A Look at Car-Free City Policy in The Netherlands

A car-free policy for city centers is being widely implemented in the Netherlands. Many of the downtowns have restricted vehicular access to improve the quality of life and to protect the historic city centers. This policy has been extremely popular among center-city residents, who have greatly benefited from a better quality of life and an increase in real-estate prices. The residents in the neighboring areas, however, are unhappy with the negative spillover impacts of this policy and think that, in some ways, the policy is discriminatory. One of the major problems encountered by the residents living close to the car-free centers is the acute parking shortage. The vehicle restrictions and paid-parking enforcement in the car-free downtowns have encouraged many downtown visitors, shoppers, and workers to park in the neighboring areas close to the downtown area. Increased demand for the limited on-street parking has caused major inconvenience to these residents, who believe that the car-free policy is inequitable. Furthermore, they believe that the solution (paid-permit parking) being introduced by the local governments to address the parking crisis is unsatisfactory. Representatives of some of the residential neighborhoods were interviewed, and parking-related problems and issues that these residential neighborhoods face are summarized. Solutions are offered to mitigate the problems faced by the cities.