From the NY Times, a suburb in Germany that has consciously created a car-free community.
It runs on bikes and trams (streetcars)!
From the NY Times, a suburb in Germany that has consciously created a car-free community.
It runs on bikes and trams (streetcars)!
15 responses to “Designing a Car-Free Community”
Thanks for the link. While I strongly support bike, pedestrian, and transit systems, I’ve never given any credibility to the idea of a car-free community. It’s interesting to see it being tried in a prosperous country, and will be more interesting to see what the results are (economic output, happiness, healthiness, popularity).
It’s still a mental leap for me to think this could take root anywhere in the sprawled-out, transit-poor US.
It has already taken root in close in Portland. Old neighborhoods that developed around streetcars have been re-developing for the last 30 years around good transit, reasonably safe bike access, sidewalks and revitalized retail.
Schools are a key piece of this equation as well as density increases as families discover good schools in close-in neighborhoods…Chapman in NW, Alamada in NE, etc.
There is no need to ban cars; as the quality of bike ways, transit (yes, streetcars again!), schools and retail improve, people will drive their cars less because they can. And the success of these communities (as measured in property values) will be copied further out in the city…Montevilla, St Johns, Lents as well as older suburbs…Milwaukie, Tigard, etc.
The difference between this community and any place in Portland (or anywhere else in the U.S.) is that this community is really not even allowing cars inside a certain perimeter. It would be as if downtown Portland moved all of the parking garages to be adjacent to I-405 and the river, and then prohibited cars inside Fareless Square, reserving all the room inside the boundary for the movement of bicycles, pedestrians, electric vehicles and also for increased on-street vendors (food carts, sidewalk cafe seating, open-air markets, etc.)… that’s the sort of thing that we really haven’t seen here yet.
But, obviously, it could work.
Case in point?
Venice, Italy, for one…
…you drive/take the train to the edge of the city, then inside it’s all pedestrians, bicycles & boats…
Just saying, the scale of what the NY Times is reporting that Vauban has achieved really does need to be appreciated for what it really is, and that’s a pretty large-scale former military base that has been entirely re-purposed as a car-free suburban community.
On a somewhat related note, check out the
winner of the CNU video contest.
More communities like Vauban would definitely fit within what CNU is trying to accomplish in the U.S.!
Lenny Anderson wrote: It has already taken root in close in Portland. Old neighborhoods that developed around streetcars have been re-developing for the last 30 years around good transit, reasonably safe bike access, sidewalks and revitalized retail.
I will take exception – Portland refuses to build anything like this, even when given a blank slate to do so.
The Pearl District, devoid of streets, could have been built this way – but the powers-that-be insisted on continuing the Portland street grid (and its’ associated wasted real estate on streets and on-street parking) north.
South Waterfront, also devoid of most streets (well, there were a few gravel sreets) could have been bulldozed. Heck, street access in that area already is poor…but alas we built new streets.
This ship has sailed from Portland. Even the new “Streetcar Neighborhoods” of the 21st century loves their streets. Frankly Disneyland has more to offer for the car-free environment than Portland does.
erik, portland has in fact built one place that follows your blank slate model with closed off streets and it is south auditorium district. it was widely felt to be an unsuccessful and dead model. it is not a transit, pedestrian or bike friendly neighborhood to say the least.
it is called a ‘street’car afterall. and streetcars (and transit in general) is all about urbanism, the key to urbanism is the basic street.
Portland refuses to build anything like this
The 2006 TIP disagrees. http://trimet.org/pdfs/tip/tip.pdf for more. (Thanks Bob R!)
Almost every locally funded strategy uses a local method of funding. The ‘big projects’ are federal.
Jon, the south auditorium “streets” are a failure not for lack of cars, but for lack of anything at all. No restaurants, no shops, literally no destinations whatsoever. They are lined with bushes! with a little small scale architectural rehab that area could come alive as a pedestrian district.
So, why IS South Auditorium the way it is? Given that it has streetcar running through it, possibly MAX in the future, and is conveniently located close to Keller, Waterfront, and PSU–how did this particular part of town end up so moribund?
Is it that the residents there prefer it that way?
South Auditorium has actually been improving recently … new developments, well-patronized streetcar stops, a slight increase in street cafes and shops, but it lacks things that make a neighborhood truly walkable, such as a neighborhood school or full-service grocery store. (Please correct me if that has changed recently.)
The streetcar does make it convenient to hop over to Safeway on 10th, but as for local walkability, unless you want merely to read a book in a tranquil park or watch a fountain, there isn’t a lot to walk *to* within the pedestrian-only confines of the district. That’s what makes the German suburb at the top of this post special — they’ve created a functional community where walking/biking as a sole means of transport, raising a family, shopping, etc. is entirely workable.
Why don’t you guys push for a car free downtown Portland. Sam is nutty enough to go along with it and I’m sure all the merchants that closed their bus mall doors when the bus mall started would just love a whole city full of people who cannot afford a car spending all their disposable income in their car free shops.
There is a reason that most business, jobs and retail is no longer in downtown. It is people’s choice of saving time and money and living away form congestion, pollution, panhandlers and crime.
You have the power to deliver the final blow in favor of the burbs by making downtown car free.
It will even give the city council, employees and foolish planners an opportunity to experience life without a car.
Do it!
Thanks
JK
I was walking in South Auditorium the other day. It’s still a dead zone. I sat in Lovejoy Park for a while, noticing how empty it was, and thinking about how similar squares I’ve seen in Spain or Italy (public squares accessed only by pedestrian streets) were lively places with lots of people around.
I came to the same conclusion Bob did … people don’t walk there much because there’s no reason to. In the case of Lovejoy Park, there’s Lovejoy Fountain and one struggling Chinese restaurant, and that’s it. (Pettygrove Park has even less; some grassy hills and an odd-looking modern sculpture.) There are potential business sites there, but they’re sitting empty or used by businesses that don;t address the public much — with the exception of the Chinese restaurant, a convenience store, and a liquor store.
The area definitely needs a full-service grocery. A good site would be the currently dead retail block on Harrison between First and Second. There’s a parking lot right to the south that could bring customers to the store, and there would be a huge amount of foot traffic from South Auditorium and River Place residents.
On top of that, there are a series of storefronts along Second between Lovejoy Park and Lincoln. That could make a really nice restaurant row with a lot of sidewalk dining. There are situations in which a dozen restaurants can thrive where one would fail.
Get some other businesses in there to generate foot traffic, and I bet a neighborhood coffee house could make it in one of those empty buildings on the north edge of Lovejoy Park itself. Plus, foot traffic would support food carts and other venders in Lovejoy Park itself.
Collectively, a lot of businesses would bring the whole area to life — and the lively neighborhood would support all the businesses. However, the businesses need to be geared to support pedestrians and office workers in the immediate neighborhood, rather than relying on drawing motorist traffic from outside the area.
As a South Auditorium district resident for nine hours a day – I can say that anywhere I need to walk to is along the very heavily trafficked 4th Avenue, or possibly a few blocks to the west.
I have almost no use for the Streetcar – it goes nowhere.
I do frequently use TriMet’s bus service…but apparently having bus service on 4th Avenue (which will continue for several routes) is not worth mentioning while the Streetcar which goes nowhere (and ridership at the stops I walk past does not compare with the bus stops that I use, my bus stops are heavily used at all hours of the day yet as of today the outbound stop lacks a shelter or schedule information and does not have a Transit Tracker display)
And, I enjoy that the fountain park is so under used. Gives me a good place to get away. It doesn’t help that the City of Portland and PSU owns three blocks of property between 3rd and 4th Avenues with absolutely NO access to the pedestrian mall…I would have thought that if Portland truly wanted something like this to be successful that the city would have mandated access to the pedestrian mall.
I have almost no use for the Streetcar – it goes nowhere.
Here’s a link to a printable streetcar route map, just in case there might be something useful for you along the route that you may have missed.
http://www.portlandstreetcar.org/map/map_printable1.pdf
A more accurate statement might be that it goes nowhere where you want to go. That’s OK, I have no use for the #12 bus; it, from my perspective, “goes nowhere”. Nor do I find much use for, say, NE Killingsworth, a flight from PDX to Boise, Oregon State Route 52, the MAX Yellow Line, SMART, or Amtrak Cascades.
That doesn’t mean I think any of the above are bad things, an improper diversion of my tax dollars, etc. That just means that my travels seldom if ever involve the above routes and infrastructure.
There are, of course, lots of useful destinations on the Streetcar. They may not be useful to you during your workday–you probably have little need to visit PSU or the downtown library while putting in your 40 hours–but that’s a far cry from “going nowhere”.
It’s kinda weird how much use I get out of a transit route that “goes nowhere.” Imagine how much more I could use the Streetcar if it actually went someplace.