{"id":18559,"date":"2011-02-16T18:18:44","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecolocalizer.com\/?p=18559"},"modified":"2011-02-16T18:18:44","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:18:44","slug":"world-leading-sustainable-community-in-germany-vauban-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/world-leading-sustainable-community-in-germany-vauban-district\/","title":{"rendered":"World-Leading Sustainable Community in Germany: Vauban District"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Vauban district is a green, planned community in the city of Freiburg in southern Germany. Construction of this community began in the mid-1990s and opened in 2000. By 2001, it had 2,000 inhabitants living in a greener, more sustainable way. Now, the Vauban district is said to have 5,000 inhabitants and 600 jobs. A recently article I ran across highlights the green features of this community and I thought I’d share some of that here.<\/p>\n

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“The Vauban district was created through cooperative decision-making, becoming a model of holistic\u00a0environmental planning<\/strong> and\u00a0eco-friendly living<\/strong>,” Louise Abellard of The Cereplast Blog writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Green Transportation<\/h3>\n

The Vauban district was planned around green transportation. While the district includes some local streets and is surrounded by a couple collector streets, cars hardly ever go through the community. There is no car parking within the community. For residents who own cars, they can park those in a community parking lot on the edge of the district, which is not subsidized by the car-free households like it would be anywhere else. Vauban is reportedly the “biggest car-free project” in Germany.<\/p>\n

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Pedestrian and bicycle paths form a highly-connected, efficient, green transportation network (see image below). Every home is within walking distance of a tram stop,\u00a0and all schools, businesses, and shopping centers are located within walking distance.<\/p>\n

“When moving into Vauban, 57% of the households that previously owned a car<\/strong> decided to let their car go. All in all, 70% of the inhabitants\u00a0live without a car<\/strong> in Vauban,” Abellard reports.<\/p>\n

The main mode of transportation for most trips and activities according to two studies on the matter.<\/p>\n

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"A diagramatic depiction of the transportation network in Vauban, Freiburg, Germany. It shows the departure from the traditional simple grid and the adoption of a complex combination grid. The drawing shows the threetypes of connectors: roads in red, local streets in orange and pedestrian bicycle paths in green."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Green Building and Energy<\/h3>\n

The community also focused a ton on best practices in green building and energy technologies and usage:<\/p>\n

Special attention has been brought to minimizing buildings\u2019\u00a0carbon dioxide emissions<\/strong>. Locally-produced and\u00a0sustainable materials<\/strong> were given priority during\u00a0sustainable housing<\/strong> construction; roofs are commonly equipped with solar and\u00a0photovoltaic panels<\/strong>, and make Vauban one of the largest\u00a0home solar energy<\/strong>districts in Europe. To encourage\u00a0carbon reduction<\/strong>, a program supports\u00a0tree conversation<\/strong> and planting. As far as water is concerned, a system for rainwater infiltration into the ground covers 80% of the residential area. A new ecological sewage system has been invented too, that reuses organic household waste and\u00a0generates energy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

All buildings have to meet minimum low energy consumption standards of 65 kWh\/m2<\/sup>a \u00a0(i.e., at least half the average German energy standards). Public energy and heat are generated by a highly efficient power station operating on wood chips, which is connected to the district\u2019s heating grid. 42 building units are \u201cpassive\u201d energetically speaking: a\u00a0passive solar house<\/strong> consumes 15 kWh\/m2<\/sup>a or less. Heat is produced by the house itself equipped with\u00a0solar roofs<\/strong> and\u00a0heat recovery systems<\/strong>. Still better: 100 houses follow a \u201cplus-energy\u201d standard, which means they actually produce more energy than they use. Energy surpluses are then sold back to the city grid, and profits are split between each household.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Included within Vauban is a 59-PlusEnergy-home housing community<\/a> that lays claim to being “the first housing community world wide in which all the homes produce a positive energy balance.”<\/p>\n

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Community<\/h3>\n

Beyond these logistical and environmental issues, the community has put a lot of emphasis on social interaction, enhancing that through design, and cooperative decision-making.<\/p>\n

For more on the Vauban district, check out Louise Abellard’s post<\/a>, its Wikipedia page<\/a>, a noncommercial website on the district<\/a>, or the blog of a resident<\/a>, which includes information about guided tours.<\/p>\n

Image and Caption Credits: mattwyn<\/a>; alopecosa<\/a>;\u00a0Fgrammen<\/a>; Payton Chung<\/a>; Alex Ely\/CABE<\/a>;\u00a0carnotzet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Vauban district is a green, planned community in the city of Freiburg in southern Germany. Construction of this community began in the mid-1990s and opened in 2000. By 2001, it had 2,000 inhabitants living in a greener, more sustainable way. Now, the Vauban district is said to have 5,000 inhabitants and 600 jobs. A …<\/p>\n

World-Leading Sustainable Community in Germany: Vauban District<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[350],"tags":[55,56,70,57,58,72,84,815,816,817,486,294,434,818,819,151,351,820,74,821,191,571,422,423,424,822,426,427,114,65,356,823,824],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Zach","author_link":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/author\/zshahan\/"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"The Vauban district is a green, planned community in the city of Freiburg in southern Germany. Construction of this community began in the mid-1990s and opened in 2000. By 2001, it had 2,000 inhabitants living in a greener, more sustainable way. Now, the Vauban district is said to have 5,000 inhabitants and 600 jobs. A…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikocity.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}