German Suburb Goes Car Free (more acurately low car)

This story has been Everywhere, but what the hey, I'll pile on.

Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

"I’m 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 out the occasional distant motor.

Most residents, like Ms. Walter, have carts that they haul behind bicycles for shopping trips or children’s play dates.

Later the Times had a discussion about low-car suburbs in America that included urbanists, architects etc... and one of them, Christopher Leinberger, writes at length about DC

Metropolitan Washington, D.C., has more walkable urban places per capita than anywhere else in the country. Of the 30 emerging or existing walkable urban places in the region, 70 percent are in the suburbs: like downtown Bethesda, Md., Reston, Va., and the string of places along Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Va., including Ballston, Court House and Clarendon.

The monster in Virginia that is known as Tyson’s Corner, 44 million square feet of drivable-only commercial development which is universally hated, is seeing four new Metrorail stations built and has community support to increase its size to 100 million square feet … but it will evolve into a walkable urban set of places.

There are a number of steps that need to occur to give the market what it wants, including:

• More rail transit and bike and walking infrastructure
• Legal permission to build higher-density, multiuse projects (generally, walkable urban development is illegal in the U.S.)
• Management of these places to insure cleanliness and safety, and promote festivals and infrastructure
• Affordable housing programs to insure inclusiveness since these places tend to be the most expensive places to live and work on a price-per-square-foot basis.

Comments

[Eric_W.]

Thanks for posting. Great article. I assume these houses are the so-called Passive Houses that are almost CO2 neutral.