depave

present singular third person depaves · participle present depaving · participle past depaved · past depaved

1. transitiveTo undo the act of paving; to remove pavement (especially if it is in the form of asphalt, concrete or the like) so as to restore the land to a more natural state.

   Then the town depaved part of a city street and closed another to cars.

   2000 March–April, Laird Harrison, "Depaving Paradise", Audubon Magazine https://web.archive.org/web/20060815221845/http://magazine.audubon.org/profile/profile0003.html

   5 more examples

   Environmental programs: Depaving; auto free city centers; closure of roads...

   1995 September, Susan Cohn, Green at Work, Island Press, page 223

   Hand out a bonus for building on wasted brownfields and depaving asphalt ones; penalize building on greenfields.

   1998 October, Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, University of California Press, page 356

   They depaved their driveway to grow food, and they are proud to own no car, TV or refrigerator

   2002, Jan Lundberg, "Gasoline Prices and Food: in Context", Culture Change, at www.culturechange.org http://www.culturechange.org/press_release3.html

   The city has a requirement to provide off-street parking.... UA Homes had real difficulty persuading City Hall to allow us to depave about six places for a garden.

   2003, Richard Register, "Depaving the World", Culture Change, at www.culturechange.org http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/rregister.html

   This afternoon, we started depaving the driveway to make room for another garden bed.

   2006 May 28, Paul Cooley of Santa Fe, "Miscellaneous Stuff", Carfree Family, at carfreefamily.blogspot.com https://archive.is/20121203103059/carfreefamily.blogspot.com/2006/05/miscellaneous-stuff.html

   Synonyms: unpave