Friday, August 10, 2007

Building a Carfree Neighborhood in Cologne, Germany



Stellwerk 60 is the (nearly) carfree neighborhood of the future. Built around the needs of children.

Our friends at autofrei wohnen (carfree living) explain the project's timeline in english. The rest is here in german.

Summary
("Stellwerk 60") developed as carfree quarter in the middle of the 90s. About 400-450 carfree housing units are planned.

March 2007:
the first 130 carfree residents moved in.

June 2006:
Neighbourhood committee "Neighbours 60" established. First carfree residents will move in Dec 2006. Finding carfree residents is no problem, and a small share of solar-buildings was sold first.

December 12, 2005:
Start of building, expectation of first finished houses in Dec 2006.

Many members of the initiating club are longer with the project, because it is no longer 100% carfree, but some want to move in.

There is still the possibility to live carfree (with a key of 0.2 parking places per housing unit, and confirming the carfreedom by contract), but at the rim of the property will be enough parking places provided for car-owners, so the project will be probably only optically carfree.

March 2005:
Marketing has started.

June 2004:
Development going on with good chances: support by city administration, and an investor for 400-500 carfree residential units has be found.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amazing!
I've heard of a very similar thing in Denmark, which started 10 years ago. It was not 100% carfree, but a neighborhood that was planned in such a way, that you could walk from every house to the schools without crossing a road.