181 lines
7.8 KiB
Markdown
181 lines
7.8 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
created_at: '2010-08-06T04:03:32.000Z'
|
||
title: In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars (2009)
|
||
url: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?_r=2&em
|
||
author: organicgrant
|
||
points: 127
|
||
story_text: ''
|
||
comment_text:
|
||
num_comments: 202
|
||
story_id:
|
||
story_title:
|
||
story_url:
|
||
parent_id:
|
||
created_at_i: 1281067412
|
||
_tags:
|
||
- story
|
||
- author_organicgrant
|
||
- story_1580144
|
||
objectID: '1580144'
|
||
year: 2009
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
While there have been efforts in the past two decades to make cities
|
||
denser, and better for walking, planners are now taking the concept to
|
||
the suburbs and focusing specifically on environmental benefits like
|
||
reducing emissions. Vauban, home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular
|
||
square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban
|
||
life. But its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in
|
||
attempts to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public
|
||
transportation, with less space for parking. In this new approach,
|
||
stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls
|
||
along some distant highway.
|
||
|
||
“All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car,
|
||
and that will have to change,” said David Goldberg, an official of
|
||
[Transportation for America](http://t4america.org/ "Group’s Web site."),
|
||
a fast-growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States —
|
||
including environmental groups, mayors’ offices and the American
|
||
Association of Retired People — who are promoting new communities that
|
||
are less dependent on cars. Mr. Goldberg added: “How much you drive is
|
||
as important as whether you have a hybrid.”
|
||
|
||
Photo
|
||
|
||
Levittown and Scarsdale, New York suburbs with spread-out homes and
|
||
private garages, were the dream towns of the 1950s and still exert a
|
||
strong appeal. But some new suburbs may well look more Vauban-like, not
|
||
only in developed countries but also in the developing world, where
|
||
emissions from an increasing number of private cars owned by the
|
||
burgeoning middle class are choking cities.
|
||
|
||
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting
|
||
“car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if
|
||
cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play
|
||
a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be
|
||
approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of
|
||
appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other
|
||
transport.
|
||
|
||
In California, the [Hayward Area Planning
|
||
Association](http://www.haywardcal.us/links/links.html "Information from city’s Web site.")
|
||
is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village on the
|
||
outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid
|
||
Transit system and to the California State University’s campus in
|
||
Hayward.
|
||
|
||
Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at Cal State and a leader of the
|
||
association, says he “can’t wait to move in” and hopes that Quarry
|
||
Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to
|
||
one, and potentially to zero. But the current system is still stacked
|
||
against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about
|
||
resale value of half-million-dollar homes that have no place for cars,
|
||
and most zoning laws in the United States still require two parking
|
||
spaces per residential unit. Quarry Village has obtained an exception
|
||
from Hayward.
|
||
|
||
Besides, convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run.
|
||
“People in the U.S. are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people
|
||
are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer,” said David
|
||
Ceaser, [co-founder of CarFree City
|
||
USA](http://new.carfreecity.us/AboutUs/OrganizationandMission/tabid/104/Default.aspx "Group’s Web site."),
|
||
who said no car-free suburban project the size of Vauban had been
|
||
successful in the United States.
|
||
|
||
Advertisement
|
||
|
||
[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-4)
|
||
|
||
In Europe, some governments are thinking on a national scale. In 2000,
|
||
Britain began a comprehensive effort to reform planning, to discourage
|
||
car use by requiring that new development be accessible by public
|
||
transit.
|
||
|
||
“Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not
|
||
be designed and located on the assumption that the car will represent
|
||
the only realistic means of access for the vast majority of people,”
|
||
said PPG 13, the British government’s [revolutionary 2001 planning
|
||
document](http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/155634.pdf "From a government site, the 45-page planning document.").
|
||
Dozens of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants and housing compounds
|
||
have been refused planning permits based on the new British regulations.
|
||
|
||
In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn,
|
||
life in a car-reduced place like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt. The
|
||
town is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram into Freiburg is an
|
||
easy walk from every home. Stores, restaurants, banks and schools are
|
||
more interspersed among homes than they are in a typical suburb. Most
|
||
residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles
|
||
for shopping trips or children’s play dates.
|
||
|
||
Photo
|
||
|
||
For trips to stores like IKEA or the ski slopes, families buy cars
|
||
together or use communal cars rented out by Vauban’s car-sharing club.
|
||
Ms. Walter had previously lived — with a private car — in Freiburg as
|
||
well as the United States.
|
||
|
||
“If you have one, you tend to use it,” she said. “Some people move in
|
||
here and move out rather quickly — they miss the car next door.”
|
||
|
||
Vauban, the site of a former Nazi army base, was occupied by the French
|
||
Army from the end of World War II until the reunification of Germany two
|
||
decades ago. Because it was planned as a base, the grid was never meant
|
||
to accommodate private car use: the “roads” were narrow passageways
|
||
between barracks.
|
||
|
||
## Newsletter Sign Up
|
||
|
||
[Continue reading the main story](#continues-post-newsletter)
|
||
|
||
###
|
||
|
||
Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box.
|
||
|
||
Invalid email address. Please re-enter.
|
||
|
||
You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.
|
||
|
||
You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New
|
||
York Times's products and services.
|
||
|
||
### Thank you for subscribing.
|
||
|
||
### An error has occurred. Please try again later.
|
||
|
||
[View all New York Times newsletters.](/newsletters)
|
||
|
||
The original buildings have long since been torn down. The stylish row
|
||
houses that replaced them are buildings of four or five stories,
|
||
designed to reduce heat loss and maximize energy efficiency, and trimmed
|
||
with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free-standing homes are
|
||
forbidden.
|
||
|
||
By nature, people who buy homes in Vauban are inclined to be green
|
||
guinea pigs — indeed, more than half vote for the German Green Party.
|
||
Still, many say it is the quality of life that keeps them here.
|
||
|
||
Henk Schulz, a scientist who on one afternoon last month was watching
|
||
his three young children wander around Vauban, remembers his excitement
|
||
at buying his first car. Now, he said, he is glad to be [raising his
|
||
children away from
|
||
cars](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/europe/27bus.html "News article on Italian children walking to school.");
|
||
he does not worry much about their safety in the street.
|
||
|
||
Advertisement
|
||
|
||
[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-5)
|
||
|
||
In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community,
|
||
even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept
|
||
will work in California is an open question.
|
||
|
||
More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the Bay Area’s
|
||
“car-reduced” Quarry Village, and Mr. Lewis is still looking for about
|
||
$2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.
|
||
|
||
But if it doesn’t work, his backup proposal is to build a development on
|
||
the same plot that permits unfettered car use. It would be called
|
||
Village d’Italia.
|
||
|
||
[Continue reading the main story](#whats-next)
|