[amiga386]

> I don't really understand why first cities allow private vehicles in general.

Because people of all capabilities need to get to the businesses in the cities. If you're proposing prohibiting private transportation, you first need adequate public transportation, which is expensive and often lacking.

The alternative, where _nobody_ has easy access to the city's businesses, tends to result in the businesses moving out of the city to somewhere else, taking their tax payments with them, often places that are _even harder_ to get to for people who don't have cars... because businesses need customers. If you won't support them (by providing affordable and convenient means for the customers to reach the businesses), they won't wait to die, they will solve the problem themselves.

Only cities which have well-developed public transport networks, and have very popular city centres (to the point of congestion) are even thinking of banning cars from them. The rest of the cities need all the help they can get to fend off financial ruin from e-commerce.

[klingoff]

Obviously emergency vehicles are needed and similar access for commercial and handicap vehicles makes sense.

Popular cities don't really need to compete to fill a bunch of commercial real estate. They have people who commute every day by public transport and residents who are competing for real estate with this property.

It's enough now with the cars, there are mall towns and cities happily lose 'business' to them because it is not worth wasting 30% of all land to attract a bunch of people who may never actually get out of their car in your city and then at most to a business that probably pays less in property tax than a correspondingly sized residence.

These businesses can't vote and if they aren't in town to complain the noise from them stops. There were also a lot of angry horse cart drivers once.