Living Unlarge
This month, Azure magazine is featuring a story on Vauban - a nifty little community in Germany. I thought it was super-interesting and so I'm sharing it with you, my loyal blog readers.Basically, it's a carefully-planned sustainable suburb designed to house 5,000 people. A few features:
- The project's structure integrates legal, political, social and economical actors from grassroot-level up to the city administration.
- All houses are built at least with improved low energy standard (65 kWh/m2a, calculated similar to the Swiss SIA 380/1 standard) plus at least 100 units with "passive house" (15 kWh/m2a) or "plus energy" standard (houses which produce more energy than they need, another 100 plus energy houses are planned).
- A highly efficient co-generation plant (CHP) operating on wood-chips is operating since 2002 and connected to the district's heating grid.
- Solar collectors (about 450 m2 until 2000) and photovoltaics (about 1200 m2 until 2000) will be common "ornaments" on the district's roofs.
- An ecological traffic / mobility concept is implemented with a reduced number of private cars to be parked in the periphery (about 40% of the households agreed to live without an own car), good public transport, a convenient car sharing system and a higher quality of living.
- Streets and other public spaces are playground for kids and places for social interaction.
This project is having a big impact. Already, participation is higher than anticipated. More than 50% of households have decided to go car-free. And it has sparked a friendly 'competition' with neighbouring Freiburg to see which community can come up with better new ideas.
You can read more about it here - or in Azure.
Labels: Stuff I Read, Stuff I'm Thinking About, Sustainability
posted by Lindsay @ 9:16 AM
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