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Many communities have come to recognize that it is desirable to have areas that are not dominated by the automobile. Converting a street or an area to car-free use is called pedestrianization. Some examples of this are:

• A large number, perhaps the majority, of European towns and cities have made part of their historic centers carfree since the early 1960's. Central Copenhagen is one of the largest and oldest examples: the auto-free zone is centered on Strøget, a pedestrian shopping street, but it is in fact not a single street but a series of interconnected avenues which create a very large auto-free zone, although it is crossed in places by streets with vehicular traffic.

• Venice on the Adriatic sea offers one of the largest auto-free zones in any urban area in the world. Though its canals are filled with motorized boats of all sizes which offer many of the inconveniences (and conveniences) of automobiles, the number of boats is appreciably smaller than the number of cars, trucks, and buses that would be typical of other wealthy cities based on motorized road transport.

• There are a great many auto-free zones in Southern European hill towns and villages, such as the Cinque Terre in Italy, since many, if not most of the streets are too steep and/or narrow for automobile circulation.

• A number of islands, including the islands of Borkum in the North Sea, Sark in the Channel Islands, and Paquetá Island in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, enforce a ban on motor vehicles.

• Several dozen new carfree neighborhoods have been built in recent decades, mostly in Europe. An example is Vauban, a neighborhood of 5,000 in Freiburg, Germany.

• North AfricaNorth Africa is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert, comprising the Maghreb, including Libya and Egypt, and also by some definitions the Sudan. North Africa is vastly more uniform ethnically than anywhere in Africa south of th contains some of the largest carfree areas in the world. Fes-al-Bali, a medina of FesThis article is about the city Fez in Morocco. For information about the hat, please see fez (clothing). Fez or Fes ( Arabic , French Fes) is the third largest city in Morocco, after Casablanca and Rabat, with a population of 940,000. It is one of the fou, MoroccoAl Mamlakah al-Maghribiyah In Detail( Full size) Official language Arabic Capital Rabat Largest City Casablanca King Mohammed VI Prime Minister Driss Jettou Area Total Ranked 56th 446,550 km² Population Total (2003) Density31,689,267 70/km² Ranked 36th In, with its population of 156,000, may be the world's largest contiguous carfree area, and the medinasA medina quarter is a distinct city section found in many North African cities. The medina is typically walled, contains many narrow and mazelike streets, and was built by Arabs as far back as the 9th century CE. Medinas often contain historical fountains of CairoCairo ( Arabic: ; romanized: al-Qāhirah is the capital city of Egypt and has an estimated metropolitan area population of 15 million. It is the largest city in both Africa and the Middle East and is currently the thirteenth most populous city in the, CasablancaFor the 1942 film, see Casablanca (movie . For the famous Cuban chess player, see Jose Raul Capablanca . Casablanca ( Arabic: , pronounced Dar-al-Baida is a city in western Morocco with an estimated population of 3. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Casablan, MeknesMeknes is a city in northern Morocco about halfway between Rabat and Fes. Meknes started its life in the 8th century as a Kasbah or fort. In the 10th century, a town grew around the fortress with the settlement of a Berber tribe called Maknassa. Meknes sa, EssaouiraEssaouira is a city and tourist resort in Morocco, near Marrakesh. The Medina of Essaouira (formerly "Mogador") is a UNESCO World Heritage Listed city, its history goes back to a small settlement, in the 15th century occupied by the Portuguese. Morocco., and Tangier are quite extensive.

• Towns in many low-income countries are effectively largely carfree simply because cars are uncommon in those countries. As cars become more common, however, many of these towns are suffering from the ill effects that accompany motorization. The most serious instances can be found in Africa, where road death rates, expressed in terms of fatalities per vehicle, reach extreme values.

• Auto-free zones are fewer in North America. Some examples are the residential areas of the Toronto Islands, part of Prince Arthur street in Montreal and the Sparks Street Mall area of Ottawa, Canada. Mackinac Island, between the upper and lower peninsula of Michigan, prohibits motorised vehicles on the island, except for emergency vehicles. Travel on the island is largely by foot, bicycle, or horse-drawn carriage. An 8.5 mile road, M-185, rings the island, and numerous roads cover the interior. M-185 is one of the only highways in the United States without motorized vehicles.

Auto-free zones have a great variety of attitudes or rules towards human powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards and push scooters. Some have a total ban on anything with wheels, others ban certain categories, others segregate the human-powered wheels from foot traffic, and others still have no rules at all. Many of the Middle Eastern examples have no wheeled traffic, but use donkeys for freight transport.