| on 22-09-2006 08:18
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Published in : , Politics |
 Experience a Different City
On the week of September 16-22, you will be witnesses to a city inspired by art, culture, cyclists and expert professionals all moving in a collective mass towards one goal: imagining a city without cars. Life in the city moves in order to facilitate traffic movement. Pedestrians scurry across zebra crossings lest they be splattered to a pulp.
Shopping malls are built with hundreds of parking spots above ground, below ground, not on the city peripheries anymore, but in the centre. The dead and buried in Olsanske cemetery are fed up with the underground parking lot fantasies of the Flora shopping mall.
Under the banner of European Mobility Week, September 16-22, the power will be in your two feet to take you where you need to go. Forgo the motor for the umbrella and a pair of sharp walking shoes! Pour water into the city’s gasoline tank, shove bananas up its tailpipe, use its hood as a table for tea.
The transformation begins on Saturday evening September 16, continuing on Sunday, when Smetana’s bank of the river becomes a boulevard free of cars and full of impromptu street cafes, performance art from Goat Island, Luna Nera, and PlanB, puppet dramas, and music all day long.
The richness of the program on the bank is the result of the collective collaboration of Auto*Mat and the Alfred ve Dvore theatre group. The movement to imagine a different kind of city extends beyond the realm of environmentalists, and into the domains of artists, architects, philosophers and angels.
By the end of the week on September 22, World Carfree Day , your traffic angel awaits you at Prague crossings, intersections and busy streets, to ensure the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, the most vulnerable to the clumsy and violent rush of automobile traffic. Then, at 6 pm the Celebratory Critical Mass begins at Nam. Jiriho z podebrad and finishes at Pražan, the garden restaurant (formerly Stromovka music garden). Traffic does not mean only the motorized variety, but the traffic of the critical mobile cycle-mass. Tut, tut, goes the engine stuck in its perpetual jam, as the cyclists and pedestrians wave to their dis-abled counterparts on the road.
The celebration at Pražan (open to all) brings the Carbusters Press launch of the Czech translation of CARtoons – KarikAUTury – by Andy Singer and the music of Richie Success. Finally, a book in the Czech language which dismantles car culture, page by page, graphic by graphic.
Get out of your car, get out of your car! The dream is a hoax, exposed by each and every person who experiences a different kind of city.
Program details at www.automat.ecn.cz and www.alfredvedvore.cz.
Steven Logan is Publications Editor at World Carfree Network, based in Prague.
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