Life goes on without cars
A small community in Germany has decided to live a nearly car-free life and are finding success doing so, according to an article in The New York Times.
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. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
There is an attempt to establish a similar community outside of Oakland that will provide car-free access to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system but won’t go so far as to ban vehicles altogether.
Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at Cal State and a leader of the association, says he “can’t wait to move in” and hopes that Quarry Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to one, and potentially to zero. But the current system is still stacked against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about resale value of half-million-dollar homes that have no place for cars, and most zoning laws in the United States still require two parking spaces per residential unit.
The key to the success of any community of this type lies in the integration of services, a return to the model in which there are neighborhood sources for food, necessities, and recreation. As the car has enabled us to do away with the corner store and as we have all become accustomed to overcoming a smaller selection of goods by simply driving to other sources, it will be quite a challenge for community planners to temper the expectations fostered by 60 years of auto-accessible suburbia.
The New York Times also has some reaction from a variety of urban planners on whether or not such communities could exist in the US.