Giving Compass' Take:

• Adele Peters discusses the successful shift Oslo, Norway made to an essentially car-free downtown and pedestrianized streets. 

• How will an increasingly pedestrian-focused city affect the economy? How would this change compare in larger cities? 

• Read about cities becoming pedestrian-friendly and pedestrian normal.

If you decide to drive in downtown Oslo, be forewarned: You won’t be able to park on the street. By the beginning of this year, the city finished removing more than 700 parking spots–replacing them with bike lanes, plants, tiny parks, and benches–as a major step toward a vision of a car-free city center.

Without those parking spots, and with cars banned completely on some streets, few people are driving in the area. “There are basically no cars,” says Axel Bentsen, CEO of Urban Sharing, the company that runs Oslo City Bike, the local bike-share system. The city’s changes are designed, in part, to help improve air quality and fight climate change, but the difference in the quality of life is more immediate. “The city feels different faster than you can feel the difference in [cleaner air],” he says. “You can see that you’re actually reclaiming the space and can use it for other purposes than parking cars.”

Read the full article about Oslo's new downtown by Adele Peters at Fast Company.