Next year, most probably on the last Sunday of September, Copenhagen will follow in the footsteps of Paris with its very own car-free day, Berlingske reports.

City Hall’s municipal council voted on Thursday evening to organise the day as part of the EU’s annual European Mobility Week initiative.

Morten Kabell, the city’s deputy mayor for technical and environmental affairs, expects the event will allow Copenhageners to see the city in a new light.

“The goal is to show how the city could look and how its spaces could be used if we didn’t have the cars taking up so much space,” he said.

Inspired by the French
Paris had a car-free day in parts of the city on September 27 and the Guardian reported a 40 percent drop in the levels of nitrogen dioxide in some places. Kabell said that Copenhagen has been inspired by the French example.

“In Paris they found that people suddenly noticed how fantastic the boulevards are and what lovely urban spaces Paris has when they aren’t filled with cars. We can do the same in Copenhagen,” he said.

“At the same time we will get concrete figures on what air pollution would be like in a large city like Copenhagen if the cars weren’t there.”