Here in Hong Kong, we have a whole town (well, man-made mass of tower blocks), Discovery Bay, from which cars are banned – residents who wish to be mobile are restricted to golf carts. We have several islands with large populations (ie Cheung Chau, Lamma) on which the only vehicles are customised carts used by the emergency services.
On the Gili Islands, in Indoneasia, the only public transport is horse and cart.
From where else in the world have cars been purposely excluded?
Mackinac Island (pronounced Mackinaw Island) in Lake Huron off the north end of Michigan. No motorized vehicles are allowed there (except for emergency vehicles.) You can get around by bicycle or by horse. It’s a very nice place (I’ve been there twice.) There are a million shops selling the same exact nautical knicknacks in every one, plus about a dozen fudge shoppes. The whole island smells like hay and horseshit.
I think both Dangar Island, opposite Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River, and Scotland Island in Pittwater are both car free zones here in Sydney.
Also the tiny riverfront hamlet of Wondabyne. No cars simply because there are no roads. It’s not on an island, just inaccessible. The lucky buggers who live there, commute to work by motoring across the river in a little aluminium dinghy, mooring it at the station (which is so small you have to get in the last carriage of the train to get off there), and then they are in the centre of Sydney in under an hour by train.
It’s a very, very beautiful place. There’s no way you’d ever know there was a sprawling city of four million suburbanites just over a couple of hills. I’d kill to live in Wondabyne, but as there are only about half a dozen houses, and they’d be worth zillions, it ain’t on the cards.
Sorry, missed the purposely excluded part. Still, if they could put a dual track electrified railway through, I guess they could have managed at least a dirt track. Maybe it was deliberate.
Sark in the Channel Islands.
It’s also reasonably common for the more particularly famous touristy villages in Europe to impose restrictions that effectively exclude cars from the village itself. Typically, you will be forced to park on the outskirts to keep the streets free for people to walk about.
Some of the villages on Fire Island, NY are officially car-free during the summer, and only bicycle traffic is allowed.
And of course there’s Venice, Italy.
Ward’s Island and Algonquin Island in the Toronto Islands are residential communities without cars. Access is by ferryboat.
Copenhagen, Denmark has a number of pedestrian zones. I imagine a number of other European cities do as well.