Scene: Roadless Dutch City

The town of Giethoorn in the Netherlands is known as 'The Green Venice' because of its verdant countryside and reliance upon canals according to the BBC ().
For Giethoorn has no roads. It arose as a matter of practicality, given that the town lies below sea level.
So Giethoorn became a town of canals where every family has at least one boat, and children grow up learning to sail before they can walk (as the local legend goes).
There are, just like any system of transit, complications. But the citizens are adaptable, and when the waterways freeze over, the Dutch strap on their ice skates and run their errands that way.
There is a serenity and tranquility about the place that surely comes from the absence of car traffic and being surrounded by water.