Carless in Germany

The Christian Science Monitor profiles the German city of Vauban, which is full of children, but not full of cars:

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.

With gas prices well above $6 per gallon across much of the continent, Vauban is striking a chord in Western Europe as communities encourage people to be less car-dependent...

"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."

I live in Germany without a car, and enjoy it. But I confess, it's not just because I'm morally virtuous. Like many positive aspects of European life, government policy nudges people in the direction of responsible decisionmaking. Bad choices aren't banned outright (you can still buy a Hummer in Germany if you really want one), but better choices are encouraged. Discouragements: $6 a gallon gas, and special taxes on extremely inefficient vehicles. Encouragements: An efficient public-transport system, and compact, diverse neighborhoods.

Vauban's streets, the article notes, are too narrow for cars, but it's been specifically designed so that you don't need a car in order to get to the places you need to get to on a daily basis. My neighborhood is exactly the same way. It's also worth noting that Vauban's design was created by a grassroots process: a group of citizens persuaded the local government to provide them with the land after a French military base was closed, and designed a city with the specific goal of making it car-unfriendly.

Germany's environmental movement catches grief for its occasional excesses and hysterical rhetoric. However, as this article shows, Germany's far-sighted environmental policies also earn positive press internationally. Someday soon all of us are going to have to pay a great deal of money for gasoline. That's going to be a much nastier shock to some people than to the residents of Vauban.

Comments

[chris]

Is this debate still going?

To the people who complain that public transport does not go exactly where they want to go and when they want to go- this is the case because of those people driving cars and not creating more patronage for public transport thereby making it more frequent and creating a largernetwork.
Vauban is not costing more than the cost of the prolific use of cars. the true cost to society of the way we use cars can only be estimated but air quality, road accidents, obesity and infrastructure(wide highways ,traffic lights ,land taken and sealed over for parking must be counted.
Chris New Zealand

[chris]

Is this debate still going?

To the people who complain that public transport does not go exactly where they want to go and when they want to go- this is the case because of those people driving cars and not creating more patronage for public transport thereby making it more frequent and creating a largernetwork.
Vauban is not costing more than the cost of the prolific use of cars. the true cost to society of the way we use cars can only be estimated but air quality, road accidents, obesity and infrastructure(wide highways ,traffic lights ,land taken and sealed over for parking must be counted.
Chris New Zealand

[Don]

I don't get it. Why do car-lovers have to cheap-shot places like Vauban?

Conversely, why do eco-enthusiasts constantly hype places like Vauban as being a general solution for the world's problems when they are at best a good solution for people who can arrange their lives in a certain way?

I think the 'solution' (if there is one) rests in all of the above. A certain amount of social engineering, public transport improvements making entire cities swiftly accessible to the entire citizenry, etc. And clean, efficient autos several times as efficient as today's best. Sorry folks - trains don't work for a lot of things because they simply aren't flexible enough - they don't go close enough to where you go faxt enough. When I worked in Washington DC I lived in Maryland and commuted to Northern Virginia. The Metro went fairly close to where I worked - but there was a problem. It took 2.5 hours one way, but I could drive it in 45 minutes. Guess what I did?

Living in London I don't have a car. Mostly I don't need it and when I do I hire a cab. Nothign virtuous about it - I just do what mankes financial sense!

[Scot W. Stevenson]

@Jon: I didn't say there was anything wrong with Waldorf. What I was saying is that it shows a certain mind-set of the people involved.

@Nee Du: Andrew's software blocked my reply as "Comment Spam", so I'm sending it to you via email.

[Jon]

What is wrong with Waldorf Schools?

[Nee Du]

Scot: "I think what is also ticking me off is that the article makes it perfectly clear how much the taxpayer hat to bleed to fund this nice clean little town."

Where does the article make that clear? And even if it were the case that the development of the place as an "ecocity" cost the city a lot more than "normal" development (which I have not been able to read from the article), would one not have to factor in the long-term benefits of such a project? Also, you should bear in mind that this a "model" project - if it works, it could be a model for other cities, if it does not, it's not the end of the world, especially given that Freiburg is one of the wealthier cities in Germany.

From the top of my head I can think of benefits such as:
1) People living in Vauban seem to have more kids than elsewhere (the biggest benefit for society I can think of).
2) Less cars mean less time lost in traffic jams and thus, more productivity (of course less cars also hurt the economy as there are less profits).
3) Less cars mean less pollution.
4) If the place is a newly developed area like Vauban, less cars also mean less area occupied by driving and parked cars, thus, more space to live - a benefit particularly valid in densely populated areas.

You are right that for the pregnant, sick and old people, to have a car is indispensable, but even if the car-pooling is not sufficient, you could still call a taxi, no?

[Ligia]

Well, as Andrew said , at least in most part of germany people have the CHOICE of not having a car.And they fight for it. I think it´s wonderful but sometimes sad too. Because I cannot think about a policy like that in some othet countries. Loving cars and being "Umweltbewusst" is something that the germans tent to balance in a extraordinary way. That´s the Christimas present I want for São Paulo. I don´t think that I am am old hippie that just purchase Weleda and wants to enroll the grandson in Waldorf Schule ;-)

[Scot W. Stevenson]

@mawa: You right, I'm probably ranting and I shouldn't be. Sorry. I think what ticked me off is a lifetime of dealing with people with an ecological holier-than-thou attitude whose message always seems to be: If only everybody could be more like me. I'm still having a hard time believing this is not one of those cases, but I should probably be giving them the benefit of doubt. Hard, though. Very hard.

I think what is also ticking me off is that the article makes it perfectly clear how much the taxpayer hat to bleed to fund this nice clean little town. Given that the Ruhrgebiet -- Essen, Bochum, etc. -- is slowly falling to pieces due to lack of funds for basic maintenance and that we still have packed dirt roads right outside Berlin in former East Germany, this pisses me off (and don't try to tell me that no federal funds were involved -- this is Germany). I can't help wondering what else you could have done with that money that would have helped a lot more people, people who have slightly more substantial problems than a lifestyle-choice of using a car or not. Pay for it yourself, pay for it with private investment programs, fine. But I have this feeling that my taxes went to fund eco-utopia while our federal funds are being cut right and left for just about everything.

Argh, there I go again. What does make me feel better is that I am having flashbacks to "The Masque of the Red Death" while thinking about this place.

[mawa]

Scot, you are being obnoxious for no good reason, and you probably know it. Nobody said anything about this lifestyle being supposed to be the only one on the planet, nobody said anything about tearing down all cities, nobody said that these people don't own cars (check the facts, there is a large collective garage AFAIK) and nobody said they are "car-haters". The point is not religiously avoiding the use of a car. The point is getting along without a car for most of the time, and avoiding the problems car-oriented residential planning tends to cause. It's a choice people should be allowed to make, and being an avid reader of your insightful, intelligent and vastly entertaining blog, I'm not going to believe that you're truly too dense to comprehend it's nothing anyone is trying to force upon anyone.

[Scot W. Stevenson]

Sorry to be cynical, but this is just another cute utopia, completely removed from real life. The fact that they only seem to have a Waldorf School really tells you all you need to know, doesn't it. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm sure they designed the place perfectly so you don't need a car if you're a healthy young idealistic well-educated upper middle-class Green. Now, for the rest of us:

My daughter just went through a bad case of bronchitis. Normally, we walk to kindergarten, since it is less than one kilometer away. But when it was raining, and windy, and cold, I drove her in our car for two weeks, because I didn't want her to catch a pneumonia. In fact, the whole kindergarten drove their children during that time, because everybody pretty much got sick at the same time. Since we all have cars, this was not a problem.

But I guess people don't get sick in Vauban. Or just how large is that car pool?

Also, when my wife was eight months pregnant, she still wanted to go grocery shopping, even when I wasn't around to lift and carry. You don't get much in a backpack anyway, and even less when you are carrying the equivalent of a bowling ball in your tummy. You don't do jack on a bike, either.

But I guess women don't get pregnant in Vauban. Or do they have servants to carry their groceries home?

Some parts of Berlin, yes, even Berlin, are not safe in the dark, and I wouldn't want my wife or children (or me, actually) to be out on the sidewalks there at night. So we drive if we have to go there.

But I guess crime is non-existent in Vauban. Or do they just stay at home and practice their eurythmics?

And then I wonder how my late grandparents would have liked this city when they got so frail that they could hardly walk 100 meters -- two artificial knees and a hip replacement in the case of my dear grandma. Her car let her get to church, to friends, to wherever she wanted to go, when she wanted to. Her car let her have a life outside of her house.

But I guess people in Vauban don't get old. Or is there a soylent green plant around there?

I could go on -- how is this going to scale to a real city with, say, 400,000 instead of 4,000 people? What about some place like Montana where the population density is not Central European Crowded? What about a place with serious weather issues like Minnesota or Arizona? What about people who have to work at irregular times? What about people who plain just like to drive, unlike this self-selected group of car-haters? Who is going to pay to tear down and rebuild every single existing city, town and village based on these great new guidelines? Is the taxpayer going to be expected to pay for the land every time? -- but you get my idea.

This is not a model for the future except for a few very idealistic wealthy people. I'm glad they're happy, and I'm absolutely positive that you are right and that they will be the first to go nah-nahnah-nahnah-nah when gas prices do go up. But this is a distraction that keeps people from thinking of ways to solve that problem on any meaningful scale. The masses will not be giving up their cars, not in Germany, not in the U.S., not in anywhere, they will be using some different fuel. Everybody going back to horses is more realistic than this.

[martin]

I'm glad there's a token showcase housing development, a sort of Celebration, Florida, this way people will be distracted from the elephant in the living room millions of cars on real streets in real cities.