There’s an unusual amount of back-slapping at the moment in the hallowed halls of Ostfildern’s local government: the newest part of the town has been included in a video about sustainable development to be shown as part of the ‘Germany’ stand on the Expo exhibition in Beijing. Apparently it’s a ‘showcase town’. Wow, and I get to live here: well, in the next village, anyway.
Baden-Württemberg (a federal state of Germany) is desperate to look ecologically progressive, which is pretty hard to achieve when you’re landed with the main factories for Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, and Smart, so they are trying to show a different picture in Beijing, showing off their new kind of sustainable town, with wonderful high-density development, new insulation and heating with wood pellets using hyper-efficient furnaces. It’s so ecologically sound that the designers won a prize, and it’s part of a European-wide research project. Yes folks, just by living here you are green, green, green.
Until you try to go somewhere, that is.
Unfortunately no-one told the transport planners this was supposed to be a green development. Actually, no-one told them it wasn’t 1960 any more.
I know what you’re going to say: you can’t just close a road and expect people to suddenly change how they travel. Except that before 1992 this whole area was a military base used by the US Government, closed off, surrounded by barbed wire and technically part of America. Between 1951 and 1992 these roads didn’t exist, and we somehow survived.
Here’s the town centre, which has some public transport links at least.
These routes run north-south and east-west through the former base, and together they make a superb new route to drive your Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, and Smart to the Autobahn to the fast road into Stuttgart in the Neckar valley. If you’re commuting (by car) to many large employers around Stuttgart, it’s a great place to live because you’re linked into this fast, effecient road network. And you get to live in ‘sustainable’ housing where cars are controlled and you can go cycling on the weekend, because then you don’t mind wriggling around the back roads and waiting a while at pedestrian crossings.
It would have been so easy to make the town pedestrian friendly and keep cars at bay, but of course that would slow down the Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, and Smart drivers, and we can’t have that. Better to tinker around the edges with flashy technology and keep the myth of ‘business as usual’ going, than risk doing something that might upset the motorists.
8 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 26, 2010 at 12:46 pm
David Hembrow
Great post. You show how building infrastructure for driving encourages driving, just in the same way as how building infrastructure for cycling encourages cycling.
For a new development, the second photo in particular shows something very different from what you’ll see in Dutch new build.
June 26, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Andy in Germany
Hi David, thanks for dropping by: it is pretty obvious who is important here, isn’t it?
Actually, I wouldn’t mind if they were more honest. If they’d said ‘Look, we know it isn’t perfect but with the massive car lobby here, we couldn’t make it any better” or similar I’d have less problem with it, it’s the “Look how green we are” self- congratulation that gets on my nerves.
We have proper ‘dutch’ type developments in Germany as well: in fact all around us, towns are improving their cycle infrastructure at a terrific rate because the State is having a big push to fund cycling improvements at the moment- but Ostfildern isn’t interested. Perhaps I should visit these other places and report back.
There will also be further features of local so-called ‘green’ developments as well…
June 26, 2010 at 2:57 pm
oldfool
I was just wondering what “get on the sidewalk and out of my way” sounds in German.
At least there are provisions for people to walk. Even that is denied here.
June 26, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Andy in Germany
We don’t get that a lot here actually, 99% of drivers are no problem, and the ones that ae, usually fit a fairly narrow demographic (Like over sixty and driving Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, and Smart cars) Even than it’s usually more passive-agressive stuff which is more funny than dangerous. Most of the problems I have locally are on the road in the first picture: Drivers don’t realise that riding on the light grey area is 1: dangerous because of the parked cars, and 2: Impossible as it’s a gully, so they think I’m in the middle of ‘their’ road.
June 27, 2010 at 8:29 am
Zweiradler
That’s an awful kind of parking. Many drivers won’t see anything when they start to back out of their parking space.
Nico
June 27, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Andy in Germany
Hi Nico… Yes, there is that as well: That’s one reason you have to keep well away from the side of the road and risk annoying drivers.
Like I said, it shows who is considered most important here.
Do drivers actually look when coming out of any parking space?
November 20, 2010 at 7:04 am
Lost in Space « People Powered
[...] whine about Ostfildern’s apparent resistance to cycle infrastructure plenty, but I will say this for them: they’ve made sure that there’s a comprehensive [...]
September 28, 2011 at 9:02 am
Comfy Brooks « People Powered
[...] foliage in the springs isn’t a permanent feature, I had an appointment in our local ‘sustainable town‘ and whilst cars had a large underground garage, the only parking space for the Xtracycle [...]