THE CITY THAT’S BEEN CAR-FREE FOR A DECADE
In 2007, Zoran Janković was slapped in the face by a protester outside Ljubljana’s town hall. It had been just months since he’d won a landslide victory to become the city’s mayor, and already he was in trouble with local residents.
His crime? An ambitious plan to make the centre of the Slovenian capital completely car-free.
The idea was part of Janković’s “Ljubljana 2025” plan: a strategy for making the city a more liveable, sustainable and pleasant place to live. Back in 2007, it was an astonishingly forward-thinking proposition.
“I’m not sure if Ljubljana was the first in the world to do something like this, but it was certainly the first in this part of the world, in former Yugoslavian countries,” explains Saša Poljak Istenič, an academic who has researched the impact of pedestrianisation on Ljubljana.
