And Vitoria-Gasteiz makes a big point of this in promoting itself. 'Green livability and sustainable mobility' is very much its 'thing', its hallmark.

Some would argue that it's small enough to make that easy to implement. But I would say to that (i) there are plenty of similarly sized cities that haven't done so - what's their excuse?, and (ii) that's the size a city should be.

A nation with a network of relatively small, regional 'capitals', like Spain, or Germany, each with their own cultural and administrative critical mass, is far healthier in every single way that the vast, all-absorbing black hole of a megacapital as in the UK and many other states.

As Catatonia sang: London doesn't breathe, it just sucks.