In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars!
I love it! Vauban is an upper middle class German suburb designed without cars! The
5,500 residents [who live] 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…
Suburbs are responsible for
emissions from an increasing number of private cars owned by the burgeoning middle class are choking cities.
…the [US] 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.
A community in the Oakland California is also developing a community that is less dependent on the car.
The Hayward Area Planning Association 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.
in Britain
“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. Dozens of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants and housing compounds have been refused planning permits based on the new British regulations.
NyTimes Article: In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars
Note: The comments to this article are also quite good! There is none of the dribble I have been reading in the Globe’s comments and comment authors include their real names.
