No Car Necessary
By Ian Lund
December 8, 2017
When I was living in Freiburg, Germany, I could get out of bed at 8 AM on any given day, take a short walk to the bakery, buy a coffee and a Bavarian pretzel, and eat, all with enough time to catch the 8:10 tram. After a 15 minute ride, I would get off in the city centre and finish the five minute walk to class, passing a supermarket, a drug store, a movie theatre, a yoga boutique, and at least three more bakeries. If I biked, I would get there even faster.
After several weeks of this morning routine - tramming or biking to school, jaunts through the Old City, biking to nearby hiking areas, and two minute walks to the grocery store or ice cream parlors - it dawned on me that not once had I felt the need for a car. Indeed, the ease with which one can move around the city is part of what makes Freiburg one of the greenest cities in the world. After a formal introduction to how the city was planned and the guiding Marktzentrum (Market Center) concept, I realized the quiet genius of the urban planners’ commitment to human scale.
My college town, Burlington, Vermont, and my home city, Newton, Massachusetts, are not poorly planned, but like most cities in the United States, the landscape is dominated by the automobile. In terms of travel-time, Newton residents enjoy a similar ease of access to food, school, and friends to what I experience day-to-day in Freiburg. The operative difference is the mode of transport: car in the U.S., versus bike, public transit, or walking in Freiburg.
What makes Freiburg so convenient is decades of holistically reimagining the city’s form in order to improve its functions. The Marktzentrum concept approaches urban development from two perspectives: one focuses on the city’s economy as a whole, while the other focuses on developing a hyperlocal economy within neighborhoods.
In the 1970s, homes and shopping centers were popping up around Freiburg’s periphery; suburbanization was creeping into the countryside. Concurrent with the sprawl was increased traffic in the city, since cars were the dominant mode of transportation. To counteract the depopulation and congestion of its heart, the city took action to ensure that the city centre remained the economic and cultural hub of the region. City officials closed more than a dozen streets passing through the centre to cars and bikes, creating a large pedestrian only zone. At first, the local businesses opposed the decision, fearing that loss of traffic would correspond with a loss of revenue. However, after implementation, they found the development clearly to their benefit.
Freiburg’s closure of the Altstadt (old city center) to cars closely resembles the idea behind Church Street, the pedestrian-only uncovered mall in the heart of Burlington, albeit on a larger scale. The streets became human again—alive with musicians, performers, friends chatting over a coffee, and a constant flow of shoppers moving in and out of local businesses. The plan successfully revitalized the heart of Freiburg, and the city did not stop there.
Planners made a distinction between which businesses are permitted to set up shop in the crowded city. There is a specific concept list illustrating the divide. Allowed in the city are shops with necessary wares like food, clothes, technology, accessories, and other smaller everyday things. Products less in demand, like fridges, furniture, cars, or pets, for example, are slightly less accessible. Since transporting these bulkier goods often necessitates a car, stores like IKEA are intentionally placed on the outskirts of the city, with the result that the majority of trips made by car are drawn away from the city centre, minimizing internal traffic. Additionally, industry and manufacturing is located outside of the city to reduce air and noise pollution.
Urban planners continued to improve quality of life by constructing new high-density residential neighborhoods, like the model sustainable district Vauban, which have drug stores, supermarkets, and general stores next to, beneath, or within walking distance from residences. Additionally, these neighborhoods have space built in for community members to run small businesses.
These kind of developments reflect Freiburg’s commitment to the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. New developments are designed to counter socioeconomic inequities. Mixed-income housing requirements, proximity to the robust public transportation system, and easy access to daily needs means more equitable living for residents, no matter their social class.
Economically, the Market Center plan supports and privileges small businesses by reserving prime real estate in the centre for them, while big box stores and chains persist on the periphery - not dominating the local economy. Additionally, it is worth noting that government subsidies for housing, food, public transportation, and community development contribute greatly to the Germans’ ability to create economic equity.
Environmentally, even though people make shopping trips more frequently than people in the U.S., fewer trips are made by car, because people can so easily walk, bike, or tram to meet their daily needs. By eliminating malls and outlet parks, Freiburg cut down on environmental problems like asphalt runoff and heat islands in parking lots.
Although most U.S. cities will have a hard time mirroring Freiburg in every way, Marktzentrum is a design strategy that should be used as a guiding ideal for urban planners everywhere. By maximizing access to businesses that meet people’s daily needs, the Market Center concept promotes socioeconomic equity and decreases emissions by increasing walkability. There are feasible long-term goals to which cities can adhere that will foster community development and sustainable practices. In cities already characterized by sprawl, local governments can invest in accessible and active town centers, improve bike travel corridors, and phase out parking to revitalize the human dimension of city life.
