A suburb without cars? It's happening in Vauban, Germany, an experimental community near Freiburg where there are no garages, street parking, or driveways. If you have a car and move to Vauban, you purchase a space in a parking building at the edge of town when you buy your home. Most residents do not own a car.
A few experimental car-free communities are trying to get off the ground in the US, but not many people live in them so far.
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(image credit: Martin Specht for The New York Times)
Henk Schulz, a scientist who on one afternoon last month was watching his three young children wander around Vauban, remembers his excitement at buying his first car. Now, he said, he is glad to be raising his children away from cars; he does not worry much about their safety in the street.
In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, even if it has spawned few imitators in Germany. But whether the concept will work in California is an open question.
A few experimental car-free communities are trying to get off the ground in the US, but not many people live in them so far.
Besides, convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run. “People in the U.S. are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer,” said David Ceaser, co-founder of CarFree City USA, who said no car-free suburban project the size of Vauban had been successful in the United States.
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(image credit: Martin Specht for The New York Times)
Residents, not resident.
To get to school, I walked half a mile to my bus stop, caught a bus to the West Lichteshire train station, and then took the train to a main city center. From there, I caught a subway, got onto another train, and then finally caught a bus to my school. And that was if I wasn't on the off campus building, which meant I caught 2 more buses in order to get to that one. That said, the one time I got a ride into the school it took about 35 minutes to get there.
I didn't mind the pace, but I know that many Americans just simply wouldn't have it.
Pouplation densities aren't high enough in southern California for mass transit to make any sense. There aren't high enough concentrations of people living close together, or high enough concentrations of jobs close together, for it to pay for itself. Everyone I know who uses public transportation drives their car to the Park-N-Ride.
But most of the shops and such are so spaced out and far from eachother with little to no public transport... it's almost impossible to get anywhere without a car.
The side of town I live in, it's middle-upper class.. and absolutely no public transportation in this area.
In the area we used to live in, there were bus stops, but a lot of those are being shut down due to lack of money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Streetcar_Scandal
And also Robert Moses. Toronto has a Jane Jacobs day to celebrate the champion of the walkable city.
There's a really good/depressing book about why contemporary American cities are the way they are called The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler