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Vauban, Germany Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before they abandoned their cars.
Street parking, access routes and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders in the streets of Vauban are completely car except the main thoroughfare where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community car ownership is allowed, but there are only two large garages parking spaces at the edge of the development, where a car buy a space owner, to 40,000, and a home.
As a result, 70 percent of Vauban's families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here when I had a car I was always tense, I am much happier this way, said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown time remote engine in time.
Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as part of a movement called intelligent planning .
Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where families of the middle class from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes and, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gas greenhouse tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of emissions of greenhouse gases in Europe a proportion that is growing, according to the European environment Agency and up to 50 percent in some areas of intensive cars in the United States.
Although 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 reduced Vauban emissions, which houses 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life But its basic precepts are adopted around the world to try to make the suburbs more compact and more access to public transportation, with less space for parking in the new approach, stores are placed a walk on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant road.
All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car, and it must change, said David Goldberg, a transport manager for America rapidly growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States, including groups environmental, offices, mayors and the American Association of retirees who are promoting new communities that are less dependent on cars M. Goldberg added how much you drive is as important as if you have a hybrid.
Cars are banned on most streets of Vauban, and houses can not have driveways or garages.
Levittown and Scarsdale, New suburb York with spread houses 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 as, not only in developed countries but also in the developing world, where emissions from a growing number of cars belonging to the middle class growing are choking cities.
In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting small communities car, and legislators begin to act, if cautiously Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much greater role important in a new federal transportation law six years to approve this year, M. Goldberg said in previous bills, 80 percent of loans by the law gone to highways and only 20 percent of other transportation.
In California, the Hayward Planning Association is developing a Vauban community as called career Village on the outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System and the campus of California State University at Hayward.
Sherman Lewis, professor emeritus at Cal State and leader of the association, said he can not wait to move and hope the career Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to one, and potentially zero, but the current system is still stacked against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about resale value of half a million homes that have no room 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.
In addition, to convince people to give up their cars is often a running uphill people in the US are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people will not have cars, or will have less said David Ceaser , co-founder of City carfree United States who said that no draft suburbs without a car the size of Vauban had been successful in the United States.
In Europe, some governments think nationally in 2000, Britain began a comprehensive effort to reform planning, to discourage car use by requiring that new development be accessible by public transport.
Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not be located and designed on the assumption that the car will represent the only realistic means of access to the vast majority of people, said PPG 13 planning document revolutionary in 2001 the British government dozens of malls, fast food restaurants and housing compounds have been refused planning permission on the basis of new British regulations.
In Germany, a country that is home to Mercedes-Benz and the autobahn, life in a place of small car like Vauban has its own unusual gestalt The city is long and relatively narrow, so that the tram in Freiburg is an easy walk every house shops, restaurants, banks and schools are more interspersed among homes they are in a typical suburb most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts they carry behind bicycles for shopping or children's play dates.
Vauban, which was completed in 2006, has 5,500 inhabitants.
For trips to stores like IKEA or the ski slopes, families buy cars together or use common cars leased by the car sharing club Vauban Ms. Walter had previously lived with a private car in Freiburg, as well as states -United.
If you have one, you tend to use it, she said Some people move here and move quickly enough, they miss the car next.
Vauban, the site of a former base of the Nazi army, was occupied by the French army from the end of World War II until the reunification of Germany two decades ago because he was planned as a base, the grid was never designed to allow the use of the private car the roads were narrow passageways between barracks.
The original buildings have long since been demolished townhouses style that replaced them are buildings of four or five floors, designed to reduce heat loss and to maximize energy efficiency, and topped with exotic woods and elaborate balconies; free standing houses are prohibited.
By nature, people who buy homes in Vauban tend to be green guinea pigs in fact, 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, one afternoon last month was watching his three young children walking around Vauban, remembers his excitement at buying his first car now, he said, he is glad to be raising children away from cars; he does not care much for their safety on the streets.
In recent years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany but if the concept will work in California is an open question.
More than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in the area of reduced car Quarry Bay Village, and M. Lewis is still looking for about $ 2 million in seed funding to launch the project on the ground .
But if she does not work, his backup proposal is to build a development on the same plot which allows free use of car barriers, it would be called Village of Italia.
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In the German suburban life continues without cars, German, suburban life.