Emerging forms of sustainable urbanism: Case studies of vauban freiburg and solarcity linz

Journal of Green Building

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 67-76

  Schroepfer, Thomas ^a   Hee, Limin ^b  

^a HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN   (United States)

^b NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE   (Singapore)

Author keywords

Emergent forms of urbanism; Renewable energy; Sustainable cities

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953331251     PISSN: 15526100     EISSN: 19434618     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3992/jgb.3.2.65     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. This paper is the result of the collaborative interdisciplinary research project titled TransUrban that is funded by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
2. Gauzin-Müller, D., 2002. Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism. Basel: Birkhäuser 2002.
3. European Union-LIFE, 2005. Building for LIFE Case Study: Vauban Freiburg [online]. Available from: http://ec.europa. eu/environment/life/home.htm [cited 10 July 2006]
4. Forum Vauban. Das LIFE-Projekt, in: Forum Vauban June 2006 [online]. Available from: http://forumvauban.de/life.shtml [cited 10 July 2006]
5. Sperling, C., 2003. Sustainable Urban District Freiburg-Vauban, in: Forum Vauban, October 2003 [online]. Available from: http://forum-vauban.de/overview.shtml [cited 10 July 2006]
6. Jehle, S., 1999. Quartier Vauban: Vom Planen undEntstehen neuen Wohnbaulandes auf 38 Hektar ehemals französischem Kasernengeländes. Freiburg: Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg und Bauverwaltungsamt der Stadt Freiburg.
7. Schubert, M. (Stadtteilverein Vauban). Personal interview with the authors 6 July 2006.
8. Fabian, T. (Stadtplanungsamt Freiburg, Projektgruppe Vauban). Personal interview with the authors 5 July 2006.
9. Glatz, B. (Stadtteilverein Vauban). Personal interview with the authors 6 July 2006.
10. There were three main project actors in the Vauban project: Projektgruppe Vauban (Project Group Vauban), responsible for the administrative coordination of all involved local authorities
11. Gemeinderätliche AG, a committee of the City Council; and Forum Vauban, a local citizen's association.
12. Fabian, T. (Stadtplanungsamt Freiburg, Projektgruppe Vauban). Personal interview with the authors 5 July 2006.
13. The building regulations of the federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg made it necessary to invent a legal framework to realize this concept. The Verein für Autofreies Wohnen (Association for Car-free Living) in Vauban was founded as a legal body for its implementation. With more than 140 households within the first developing section alone, Vauban is one of the biggest projects of this kind in Germany.
14. There is a stream of cold air coming from the declined slopes of open land uphill of Vauban. Barriers against this stream, which has a very good impact on the local climate conditions, were reduced to a minimum.
15. 2 per year.
16. 50% of the electricity for Vauban is produced by the onsite co-generation plant, 10% by photovoltaic devices.
17. Solar PV and other renewable energies still only provide 2% of the power that Freiburg needs. The city currently generates 50% of its electricity from natural gas CHP plants. The rest is imported, including 30% from nuclear. Freiburg's goal is to decrease nuclear influence and increase the energy from renewable sources to 10% by 2010.
18. Disch, R. (Architect of Solarsiedlung). Personal interview with the authors 5 July 2006.
19. 2-equivalent reduction, 1600 t mineral resources savings. This is the first time that a complete urban neighborhood is analyzed with respect to all its components.
20. Schroepfer T., Hee L., Werthmann C. (2007). transUrban: Vauban. Conference proceedings: Sustainable Development III. Wessex: WIT Press 2007.
21. City of Linz (2007) [Online]. Available: www.linz.at/solarcity
22. Reinthaler, E. (Magistrat der Stadt Linz, Projektkoordination solarCity). Personal interview with the authors 13 June 2007.
23. Generally, the passive solar design includes strategies to maximize solar gains and minimize heat loss and overshadowing.
24. E.g. the Kindergarten is largely built out of timber. Facades in solarCity include passive solar energy recovery systems, decentralized wall-integrated ventilation devices, wood, aluminum or synthetic material high-quality windows.
25. It was planned that the development would not be supplied by the city's electricity grid but co-generate its own energy which would make the neighborhood completely independent and even allow it to return part of its energy surplus.
26. The project attempts to demonstrate how a city development and nature can be brought together and how its inhabitants can be offered a high standard of living without having the natural environment suffer a result. The project includes preservation of surrounding marshland in its entirety, avoidance of ecological barriers and divisions, preservation of valuable biotopes, re-admittance of flood-water to restore the natural ground water level of flooded marshland, natural forest cultivation, and reduction of noise and emission levels.
27. Like Vauban, solarCity is designed to reduce the need for car-use and to cut overall journey distance.
28. Hyde et al. argues for an environmental brief that could address the exiting limitations of measurement tools.
29. See Hyde R. et al. The Environmental Brief-Pathways for Green Design, Oxon: Taylor and Francis, p. 28.
30. Mathis Wackernagel et al developed the measure of the ecological footprint (EF), defined as the land area necessary to provide for a given lifestyle of a population, and is measure in hectares. It includes the amount of arable land, grazing land, fishing grounds and built-up land to support that population and lifestyle. Added to this is the amount of forest that would have been required to absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by the fossil fuels used by the population. All types of land are then converted to land of average biological productivity (ability of the land to produce biomass), based on a scaling factor.
31. See Wackernagel, M. et al., 1999, "National Natural Capital Accounting with the Ecological Footprint Concept," Ecological Economics 29, pp. 375-390.