The City Council of Estepona has been honored with the ‘Cities that Walk’ 2022 honor award for the project to open the city to the sea, which includes the pedestrianization of the avenue of Spainconverted into a balcony facing the Mediterranean, as well as for the advances in the humanization of the town, an award that will be presented at the Network congress that will take place on October 6 and 7 in Palma de Mallorca, as reported by this Monday the Consistory.
As highlighted by the City Council, the ‘Network of cities that walk’ is an international association non-profit, whose main objective is that pedestrians are the main protagonists of urban mobility and the public space.
In this case, the ‘Cities that Walk’ honor award is given to municipalities that promote some outstanding action in favor of pedestrian mobility. In previous years, this award was given to Bilbao for being the first city with more than 300,000 inhabitants to decree a maximum speed of 30 kilometers per hour on all its streets, Paris for its fight against the excess of cars in its urban almond.
In the case of Estepona, the jury has valued the elimination of motorized traffic in the central segment of the Estepona coastline, 1.5 km long, which has meant a great advance in the transformation of the city and a huge step to achieve more sustainable mobilitycreating a new local icon and recovering some 15,000 square meters of public space.
From the Consistory they have explained that this interruption of linearity meant a deactivation of motor traffic along the entire coastline, with the consequent decrease in the number of cars, and that will continue with two other projects that will shortly extend this model from the Lighthouse to Calle Delfín and from there to the Juan Carlos I roundabout.
Thus, the coastal strip becomes a place of transition between the city and the seawith a more pleasant space, quiet, safe, open to pedestrians and where nature prevails.
The entity has considered that “transformations like this contribute to urban quality”, which is why he highlighted the confidence that this new dimension of its main east-west artery will be very beneficial for the tourist economy of the city and will generate new dimensions of urban vitality.