An entire town tries going car-free living in Germany
While Katie Rogers tries to live Carless in L.A., an entire town in Germany is ditching cars wherever possible. The town, Vauban (near Freiburg) is built on a closed military base and has been in the car-free conversion process for 13 years. The city-wide development project was completed this year, and the mostly–young inhabitants of Vauban now often walk, bike and take public transportation through town. Driving a car isn't outlawed in Vauban, but there are serious (I mean serious) rules in place to encourage alternatives to driving. For example, an annual pass for the tram is free, while a parking space costs $23,000 (yes, twenty-three thousand U.S. dollars). Are the incentives and dis-incentives working? The Christian Science Monitor reports that there are an average of 150 cars per 1,000 residents in Vauban versus 430 per 1,000 in Freiburg (and 640 per 1,000 in the U.S.).
The green lifestlye goes beyond cars in Vauban, with a wood-chip energy plant operating since 2002 and solar collectors and photovoltaic cells quite common in the town.
[Source: World Changing]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John 4:58PM (12/27/2006)
The World Changing article calls it a town....its not. Its simply a district or neighbourhood in Freiburg. Also, there is allocated parking outside the border of the neighbourhood, but none in the neigbourhood itself, a car sharing program is also promoted. Its an interesting experiment in residential land development within a city, but calling it a car free town is not accurate.
More info at http://www.vauban.de/info/abstract.html
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