The city of Hannover is planning to remove almost all its 4,000 on-street parking spaces and introduce a 12mph speed limit to discourage driving.

The Daily Telegraph reports the city’s Green mayor believes it will turn it into somewhere to “party and stroll about”, with spaces replaced by cafes and terraces.

The paper quotes Belit Onay as saying “The time for experiments is over. Now we are getting on with the job of transforming our city. With these measures, we are making our city more sustainable and more climate-friendly.”

It says those who do drive will have to obey the 20km/h limit on one-way streets, using one of eleven multi-storey car parks.

It adds that polling shows that around half of the German public favour banning cars from inner cities, but that Greens are haemorrhaging popularity at local level in Germany “partly because of plans to force cars out of inner cities”.

(Picture – Yay Images)