One resident's idea to ban cars turned into a monthly street festival
Pedestrian Sundays
Since 2003, Kensington Market has closed its streets to cars on select summer Sundays, turning the neighbourhood into an impromptu street festival that helped define its counterculture identity.
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Pedestrian Sundays began in Kensington Market in 2003, when local residents and business owners organized to close the neighbourhood's narrow streets to car traffic on selected Sunday afternoons through the warmer months. The idea grew out of longstanding tension between the market's dense mix of shops, restaurants and residences and the volume of car traffic passing through its narrow, informally laid-out streets, which had never been designed for the amount of vehicle traffic the neighbourhood attracted by the early 2000s.
A recurring street festival
What started as a car-free experiment grew into an informal monthly street festival, with musicians, artists and vendors setting up in the newly open street space and the market's countercultural, DIY character on full display. Pedestrian Sundays became one of the clearest expressions of Kensington Market's identity as a neighbourhood that valued street life and community space over car access, and the event has continued for years since, drawing both regular market-goers and visitors specifically for the car-free atmosphere.
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