Kigali Car Free Zone. Kigali’s Imbuga City Walk
For every visitor travelling to Kigali, the Kigali car free zone, known as Imbuga city walk centre, has caught the eye of many city visitors, with the monument, standing out to show that someone has been in Kigali.
Located in the city centre of Kigali, Road KN4 Avenue, between Kigali city headquarter’s building, commercial buildings like Makuza Peace Plaza, Bank of Kigali, Ecobank Rwanda and Cogebanque, Imbuga City Walk, a 520 metre corridor, is Kigali’s largest car-free zone. Developed by the city government, and managed by a private company, the street is breathing life into public space.
The Imbuga City Walk is a car-free zone in Kigali’s central business district that was transformed into ‘a recreational and green space’, whose implementation was completed in December 2021. The project is characterised by pedestrian and cycling-friendly pavements, green corridor landscaping, kiosks for food and other items, an exhibition space, and a playground. Several support facilities such as street benches, free WiFi, a city lounge, an arcade, pedestrian-friendly street lamps, and public lavatories will complete the City Walk.
Within the last two years alone, Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, has implemented various projects towards a more pedestrian and cycling-friendly cityscape. Next to the Imbuga City Walk, located in the central business district, the Biryogo green tea corridor located in the oldest and most vibrant neighbourhood of Kigali enjoys great popularity not least because of its complementing streets for children and car-free zone on the weekends located in the most densely populated residential neighbourhood of Kigali.
Besides the physical locations described above, Rwanda has also adopted car-free days twice a month and periodic night runs, further morphing streets into 24-hour urban public spaces that significantly contribute to improving conviviality in cities.
However, next to the aforementioned advantages, equitable access to cities can be considered the biggest accomplishment of car-free zones. It can be observed that the Imbuga City Walk is attracting more people from more varied backgrounds than it did previously. Visitors from different economic levels are drawn to the common space, which makes everybody feel welcome. Families are using the space, especially on the weekends, and considering the absence of vehicular traffic, various differently-abled people use it as a safe space.
Therefore, the process of converting cities at least partly into car-free spaces hopefully will be transformational and irreversible, especially in encouraging us to rethink the entire basis of city life as social rather than economic togetherness.
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