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Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

www.nytimes.com/...12suburb.html - Cached - Annotated View

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Yule Heibel's personal annotations on this page

lampertina
Lampertina bookmarked on 2009-05-17 suburbia cars green_strategies vauban germany

Discussion of Freiburg suburb, Vauban, and its "car-free" environment:
QUOTE
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.
UNQUOTE

  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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.

This link has been bookmarked by 3 people . It was first bookmarked on 12 May 2009, by David Dashiells.

  • 28 May 09
    dubuluvu
    teresa lee
  • 17 May 09
    lampertina
    Yule Heibel

    Discussion of Freiburg suburb, Vauban, and its "car-free" environment:
    QUOTE
    Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.
    UNQUOTE

    suburbia cars green_strategies vauban germany

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 1 more annotations...
  • 12 May 09
    david_dashiells
    David Dashiells