Okay, so I haven't been (yet). But if you're an urbanist in search of a new city to check out, consider Pontevedra in northwestern Spain. Pontevedra is famous for its car-free city center. Starting in 1999, then-mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores began making some radical changes to prioritize pedestrians and turnaround a city in decline. They'd still be considered radical today, so I can only imagine what they felt like back in the 90s.

The historic center of the city, which covers an area of about 300,000 m2 (or about 74 acres), was fully pedestrianized. The area surrounding it was also converted to a low-traffic zone, bringing the total size of the pedestrian-oriented area to more than 1.3 million m2 (or about 321 acres). To put this into perspective, High Park in Toronto is just under 400 acres.

The result is that vehicular traffic dropped by ~92% in the historic center and ~53% in the city as a whole. Today, walking accounts for over 65% of all trips and the average resident walks about 5 km per day (roughly equivalent to 6,000 to 7,500 steps). On top of this, over two-thirds of children now walk to school. And the city hasn't reported a single pedestrian death from cars in over a decade!

But how has the city performed economically since the change? Some 15,000 people have moved to the city since it became car-free and the total inventory of shops and restaurants has increased. It has also been reported that foot traffic went up (possibly by as much as 30%) and that retail vacancies dropped significantly. This is supported by research showing that well-designed pedestrianized areas do often drive higher retail sales.

Did you hear that Kensington Market?