• Breathing Sundays begin on September 26, in Montpellier.

  • Every last Sunday of the month, the city will prohibit car access to a district, and will organize festive, cultural and sporting events.

  • The idea is also to give the inhabitants a voice on the future of neighborhoods.

It exists in Paris, Lille or Bordeaux. But in Montpellier, never had a district been cleared of cars on a Sunday. This is the idea of ​​Breathing Sundays, launched by the town hall. Every last Sunday of the month, a place in the city will be returned to pedestrians, bicycles, rollerblades and scooters. And forbidden to cars. The first edition of this “convivial and festive” meeting will take place on September 26, between 10 am and 6 pm, on Avenue de la Liberté.

A very busy road, and particularly accident prone.

That day, between the rue Fontcarrade and the place du 8 mai 1945, it will be filled with a lot of activities (circus lessons, parades, brass bands, shows, sports demonstrations, etc.) or workshops to learn how to repair your bike or to try out scooters.

The only vehicles to be allowed on the avenue that day: food trucks.

"Open the debate" on neighborhoods

The places for “temporary walks” where the event will be organized will not be chosen at random: the municipality intends to explain to Montpellier residents, at each edition, what the city imagines for the future of these districts. “It interests me to know what the inhabitants think of the avenue de la Liberté, confides the mayor, Michaël Delafosse (PS). And we will be able to draw lessons from it in terms of development. This will be an opportunity to open the debate on these spaces, which are intended to calm down. "

The idea, too, is to "change the representations" that the people of Montpellier sometimes have of certain corners of the city.

"It is also a way of telling the inhabitants: Come and discover these places," continues the elected official.

When there was the ZAT [Temporary artistic zone] in Méric, I was surprised at the number of people from Montpellier who did not know!

The people of Montpellier will be invited to give their opinion, on spaces of expression.

The avenue de Toulouse, for example, to which the city has promised a vast facelift, could for example host a next edition of "Breathing Sundays".

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  • Languedoc-Roussillon

  • Party

  • Michael Delafosse

  • District

  • Car

  • Montpellier