Photo story: Car free Sunday in Brussels

Every car free Sunday in Brussels brings a parallel reality on the streets of the city. This 22nd September, cars disappeared from the streets while people, bikes, rollers, skaters took over roads and squares in every part of town. Brussels literally turned into the playground and many communes organize festivities in their public areas, parks and smaller streets. Uccle for example hosted the “longest picnic table in the world”. In St Catherine’s area, kids could enjoy in so many activities that were organized in front of the Bronks theatre. These are just some of the examples but literally every commune in the region made their own local celebrations.

We run a poll on our WeLoveBrussels Facebook page and 78% of respondents answered that Brussels needs more than just one car-free day per year. Already more than 1000 people participated in the poll for less than 24 hours. Although the huge majority voted in favor of more car-free days, many commentators under the poll expressed their concern an strong opposition to such a proposal.

Belgian Interregional Environment Agency reported that air quality improved significantly during the car-free Sunday – a drop of up to 80% in the levels of car pollutants.

Below you can enjoy in some beautiful photo that our photographer Aris Setya made during this lovely day without cars!