Wish-for-Happiness

What do these examples show? It is certain that the limited availability of resources (e.g. crude oil), air pollution, noise pollution or the high consumption of space for car parks (i.e. for unused cars) require a change of thinking. The actual aim of car-free Sundays is the promotion of sustainable mobility – along with a reduction in the consumption of resources. Especially in cities with a high volume of road traffic such as Milan, Italy, or Bogotá, Columbia, they support health and environmental relief. In Brussels, Belgium, there is six to eight times less noise on car-free Sundays and the air in the city centre contains three to four times less nitrogen. In fact, in some streets, a nitrogen monoxide concentration ten times lower than on normal workdays was measured.

The popularity of car-free Sundays can hardly be explained by the environmental awareness of the population. The social and psychological side effects, however, are crucial. Especially in a car-friendly city, the suspension of motorised traffic has dramatic effects on the environment. The areas for cars and public transport become public space and create an area in which people’s longing for community, creative development, and alternative lifestyles are projected. This longing is also the result of progressive privatisation and commercialisation of the urban environment within the last few decades. Economic growth, mass consumption and faster cars no longer represent freedom, dynamism, and wealth, but they stand for blockage, traffic congestion and stress. Considering this background, abstinence is a form of self-protection, a requirement for being happy. Car-free Sundays offer – at least for a brief moment - the opportunity to escape the ‘mega-machine society’ as the American architecture critic Lewis Mumford († 1990) called it.

In Germany, the popularity of car-free Sundays is a paradox in contrast to the high status of cars themselves. When the idea of the ‘Day of Good Life’ was presented to the meeting of a regional representation in Cologne, the reaction of the borough mayor, a member of The Greens, was as follows: “We shouldn’t ask too much of the citizens with visionary plans as such. A car-free street would be more realistic than a whole district.” Since nothing was sold and car-free days are considered to be bad for business, the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the city marketing had not supported the project, but even the ADAC, a German automobile club, approved the initiative. While abstinence is considered highly unpopular in political and administrative sectors, the success of car-free Sundays shows that most citizens are sometimes smarter than their political representatives.

Since social development is not determined by the citizens’ understanding of happiness, car-free Sundays remain a marginal phenomenon. In other words, happiness needs a strengthened democracy. According to the theory created by Elinor Ostrom, a US American political scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, common property is managed sustainably if its users cooperate and form small communities that act in a self-determined and autonomous manner. A project based on precisely these principles was organised in Cologne under the name Tag des guten Lebens (day of the good life). All neighbourhoods were allowed to ‘rule’ their own street for one day. Duties and responsibilities like cordoning off and cleaning the streets were assigned to the residents. The sharing strategy did not only lead to a significant decline of costs, but even made the project possible which was not within the financial means of the heavily indebted city. Residents stated that the assignment of responsibilities made them feel appreciated and that they enjoyed the volunteer work as a possibility for participation as well as a sign of equality in their neighbourhood.

Happiness is one of the rare goods that grow if you share them. “Since the Day of the Good Life,, it takes me 15 minutes longer to go to the bakery because I am constantly greeted by neighbours or because I stop to talk to them,” explains a resident of Cologne. The neighbourhoods that used to meet regularly to prepare that day have continued to meet, for example, to autonomously reorganise the nearby playground. Many people want to repeat the Day of the Good Life in their neighbourhood and are willing to take even more responsibility for organising it.

Anyone who has ever organised a car-free Sunday comes to the important conclusion that it is not essentially resources that are needed to organise a good life and sustainable alternatives, but open spaces for their realisation. The greatest challenges are the diversion of traffic, cordoning off and controlling the boundaries of car-free areas and the fulfilling of the numerous regulations concerning the use of public space by citizens. As soon as there is an open space, sustainability, community and the good life arise almost naturally. That was the impressive experience of 15 September in Cologne.