(Mostly!) Carfree Vauban, Germany
Image by Matthew Wyneken. Some rights reserved.
The Christian Science Monitor has an introduction to Vauban, Germany - a carfree community near Freiburg, Germany.
I find two things about Vauban exciting. First, that Vauban exists at all. I enjoy imagining myself living in a carfree community. What a relief it would be.
Second, grassroots efforts, with the help of government, created Vauban. I have trouble imagining this happening in Denver.
Welcome to Germany's best-known environmentally friendly neighborhood and a successful experiment in green urban living. The Vauban development - 2,000 new homes on a former military base 10 minutes by bike from the heart of Freiburg - has put into practice many ideas that were once dismissed as eco-fantasy but which are now moving to the center of public policy.
. . .
"Vauban is clearly an offer for families with kids to live without cars," says Jan Scheurer, an Australian researcher who has studied the Vauban model extensively. "It was meant to counter urban sprawl - an offer for families not to move out to the suburbs and give them the same, if better quality of life. And it is very successful."
There are numerous incentives for Vauban's 4,700 residents to live car-free: Carpoolers get free yearly tramway passes, while parking spots - available only in a garage at the neighborhood's edge - go for €17,500 (US$23,000). Forty percent of residents have bought spaces, many just for the benefit of their visiting guests.
. . .
Little wonder then, that when the French Army closed the 94-acre base that Vauban now occupies in 1991, a group of forward-thinking citizens took the initiative to create a new form of city living for young families."We knew the city had a duty to make a plan. We wanted to get as involved as possible," says Andreas Delleske, then a physics student who led the grass-roots initiative that codesigned Vauban. "And we were accepted as a partner of the city."
. . .
In 1998, Freiburg bought land from the German government and worked with Delleske's group to lay out a master plan for the area, keeping in mind the ecological, social, economic, and cultural goals of reducing energy levels while creating healthier air and a solid infrastructure for young families. Rather than handing the area to a real estate developer, the city let small homeowner cooperatives design and build their homes from scratch.In retrospect, "It would have been much simpler to give a big developer a piece of land and say, 'Come back five years later with a plan,' " says Roland Veith, the Freiburg city official in charge of Vauban.
. . .
As more cities follow Vauban's example, some see its approach taking off. "Before you had pilot projects. Now it's like a movement," says Mr. Heck. "The idea of saving energy for our landscape is getting into the basic planning procedure of German cities."
More information:
- Wikipedia entry
- Passivehouse »Wohnen & Arbeiten«
- English Introduction to the Vauban District
- Forum Vauban was a non-profit association with more than 300 members. In having responsibility for community work, the association has been ultimately responsible for the development of social interaction in the new city district.
Comments:
Most of the cars are parked in parking garages at the edges of the area. The main street, Vaubanallee, that runs through the whole settlement also has more cars parked in it than I, for one, would prefer, although these cars usually either belong to the car-sharing club - cf. http://www.carsharing-suedbaden.de/ - or to visitors from outside of Vauban.
Still, the fact remains that many people who live here, myself included, don't own a car of their own. And what's very nice is that the residential streets away from the main axis are not lined with cars belonging to the people who live in the houses.
Oh, I've never heard about the free tramway tickets for car poolers. If anybody knows details please let me know.
I'm flattered, BTW, that you chose my picture from Flickr to illustrate your blog. :-)
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12/21/06 @ 06:24 Thanks for straightening me out. I had wondered about the "car free" part as I browsed your photos, since several show roads. I figured those on the "outside" of the place. I wondered about it enough to try to write you, but I stalled someplace in wikipedia. I should have tried harder.
Have you ever written about what it's like to live in Vauban or how you ended up there? I would really like to hear about those things. I'd also really like to know about things that are "wrong" with the place.
I am grateful that you choose to share such lovely photos. (In my search for Vauban, yours were easily the best.)
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12/21/06 @ 08:52 I was glad to share my observations. I had seen the Christian Science Monitor article just the day before and, although I was thrilled to see my neighborhood mentioned in such an illustrious publication, couldn't help but wonder whether the depiction wasn't a bit more utopian than reality actually warrants.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to cut the place down. It's just that the planners apparently had a vision and, as often happens, real life constraints chip away at turning the vision into the intended reality. I wonder whether the sources for the article might not have still been concentrating too much on the vision level.
The main reason I chose to build in Vauban is that it is one of the few areas relatively near the center of town in which building prices are somewhat affordable. The fact that it was a low-car area, that a new tram line providing direct service to downtown was going to be opened, and that the group I joined was constructing a passive solar building definitely added to the appeal, but the main criterion was financial.
We moved in six months ago. There is currently construction work going on in our vicinity and I believe there will be a number of new projects starting the next year or two, but these are all the final stages of development in Vauban. I had to look through the Vauban web site to find out exactly when the first building activity took place and it looks like that happened in around 1998. It also looks like the group of planners formed in 1996 at the latest. There seems to be quite a bit of background history for Vauban. Maybe I should look into it some time.
Re: my pictures: Only the latest two pictures on my Flickr site are of Vauban. They are of the side walkway in the project we live in. The earlier pictures taken in Freiburg that I've posted on Flickr are from the Wiehre, the neighborhood we used to live in. That probably explains all the cars you saw.
The Vauban web site has a collection of photographs at http://vauban.de/rundgang/. At the bottom right of each page is a link labeled "nächste Seite" which will take you to the next page of pictures.
I'll try to upload a few other pictures of my own to my Flickr page at http://www/flickr.com/photos/mattwyn/
It was very difficult for me to leave the Wiehre. It's an old neighborhood going back to the 1890's and I just love the architectural style. Vauban on the other hand is all ultramodern architecture. It's not my favorite style, although some of the buildings have definitely grown on me. My wife on the other hand really dislikes the modern architecture.
The other big advantage in the Wiehre is the marvelous infrastructure of stores, shops, cafes, craftsmen and banks all within a radius of a few blocks. A young district like Vauban just can't compete in that respect, but I'm confident that this will improve through the coming years.
One really great thing about Vauban, though, is the large number of play areas for children. The population of Vauban primarily consists of young families and thus there are huge numbers of children running around. It's wonderful that they have so much to do outside. And that they don't have to worry about cars except on the main street.
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12/22/06 @ 02:27 Permalink
12/22/06 @ 06:28 
