"For one month, the neighborhood suddenly got rid of every car."

It's South Korea (an organized place), it's expensive, and it would require city leaders with courage, so instead of suggesting "let's do this here," merely consider the outcome of this car-free experiment in an attitudinal sense, and compare with some of the objections aired during the Speck hearings earlier this year.

I'm not referring to the complaints of trucking magnates. Rather, residents were voicing fears not so much about two-way streets and traffic calming as elemental disquiet with any proposed change to their routines, however mundane, and even when accompanied by entire laundry lists of benefits -- including increases in value to their own properties.

Hence the value of the experiment documented here: "See, it actually can be done."

Following are excerpts, but consider clocking through and reading the entire essay. I've added bold/italic to one key passage.

Here's What Happened When A Neighborhood Decided To Ban Cars For A Month, by Adele Peters (Fast Company)

Two years ago, an average neighborhood in the South Korean city of Suwon embarked on a radical experiment: For one month, the neighborhood suddenly got rid of every car.

Called the Ecomobility Festival, it was created as a way to help the city move much more quickly to a low-carbon future by helping citizens get a visceral sense of how that future could look.

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When planning began, the neighborhood was filled with cars, and people typically drove everywhere, even pulling up on sidewalks to park in front of shops while they ran errands. "Most of the people could not envision how their neighborhood would be car-free," Otto-Zimmerman says. "They simply said it couldn't work."

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After the festival ended, the city also gathered residents for a huge meeting to ask for ideas for more permanent changes. The biggest result: The speed limit was cut nearly in half, to about 18 miles per hour. That meant that commuters no longer wanted to use the neighborhood as a shortcut, and traffic started to disappear. Neighbors also decided to eliminate side parking on some major streets—and parking on sidewalks—which helped encourage people to start walking and biking to run errands. Every month, the community also hosts a car-free day.