Holy schmoly!! I discovered today that this carfreerambles website totally has a carfree internet soulmate–and it’s French!
My mom sent me a link today to a site that one of her friends apparently administrates: Carfree–La vie sans voiture(s). For you non-French-speakers, that’s Carfree: life without car(s).
(A preview of what it looks like. Notice that the second article is about Mackinac Island in Michigan!:)
It’s in French, but there’s a Google drop-down menu on the side that will let you translate it to English, Spanish, German, Italian, or Portuguese. Of course, who knows about the caliber of Google translate, but it might be worth a try.
I’m pretty into this site, thought. The best thing so far is that it even has a post about the history of cargo bikes. Which makes me super happy–it’s not only here in Portland that people are thinking of such things! :) And it runs the whole stretch of content, from local news articles about carfree things happening in France (kind of like a French BikePortland.org) to thoughts about peripherals, like road speed, pedestrian safety, and tongue-in-cheek guidelines about putting disparaging stickers on cars that park illegally on the sidewalk. Just to name a few.
Check it out if you speak French or want to try out ye old translate-a-website trick! I don’t know exactly how to put this in words, but it’s really exciting to me to discover that this realm of thinking–alternative transportation, human-scale cities, making places livable, whatever you want to call it–is happening in parallel in places far away.
Yay for internet soulmates! :)