[La Vienne]Tubingen part 1

This morning (now yesterday) I woke up to another huge storm. The sky was so black it took me a long time to realize it was actually morning. Once again, the laundry was outside, but fortunately my mother had brought some of it in before it started raining very hard. Now it seems to have cleared up a little, and later it will probably be beautiful.

My mother wants to have a party tonight. I completely can’t understand this because the house is a mess and John has been sick in bed all day. Tomorrow we had planned to head to Brittany, but there are still so many things up in the air including our motivation. For one thing, my French sister, Juliette, is insisting that I come to Mallorca with her and another of her girlfriends as sort of a girls-get-away. So, I am considering that, and looking to the transportation options (ferry? flight? From where and when?). But the bottom line is that we don’t know what we are doing.

More than a week ago, Bertrand, 2 of his former coworkers (an architect and a landscape architect whose names I don’t think I ever caught), and myself went to Tubingen to see their sustainable developments. Like in Freiburg, they are former military barracks (formerly one of the largest in Germany). Like in Freiburg, it is a university town (the university was founded in 1477). This area was separated from the rest of the city by a highway, but includes basic infrastructure needed for an independent city. When the military closed their base here in 1991, the city used it as an opportunity to create an urban, small-parceled, mixed-use community.

The parcels are of various sizes, and a group who form a co-op purchases each one. An advantage to the various sizes is that they can accommodate groups with various levels of resources, thus creating a mixed-income neighborhood. The units cost about 2,000 euros per square meter inclusive and the land costs 500 euros per square meter. Public housing (or social housing, as they seem to call it) is designated for the center of this linear development, but has not yet been developed. In fact, the development process is design to create a community that includes families, seniors, non-German citizens, people with mental and physical disabilities, students and other groups. A different architect designing each building creates a diverse texture. Zone code includes a basic skeleton (height and bulk minimums and maximums, general outline, etc.). Between the buildings is a pedestrianized center designed through a community-involvement process. In fact, the entire planning process is designed to be “transparent”.

The city dedicated 15 million euros, generated by the sale of lots (they purchased the land from the military, repackaged and planned it, and the sold it to the individual co-ops), to community services including kindergartens, day-care facilities, other schools and community facilities. One of the zoning requirements is ground floor retail; however, they haven’t had much luck sustaining them. I noticed that many businesses here are architects, designers, printers and the like, whereas I think what the planners really had in mind was services for the community. Compared with other parts of Tubingen, the development is high-density, thus shortening distances to community needs.

We saw lots of children playing in the common areas. The neighborhood’s material states that the common space is designed first as “communicative spaces” and only secondly as part of the traffic network. Cars are not permitted in these areas.

Our tour began with a meeting with a city employee who works on the development. She very generously spent about an hour explaining it all to us (in German, which Bertrand then very generously translated in to French AND English. By the end of the interview, I was embarrassed by my limited language skills and acceptance of Bertrand’s generous translations.)

I know you are dying to hear more about the parking facilities. As I understand it, they are of the sophisticated stacking variety provided at one space per unit but are rarely used (65 euros/month; they think this is expensive). Residents have actually gotten stuck inside them, unable to get out. So far, the community doesn’t like them and prefers to park illegally in adjacent neighborhoods. Bertrand asked about car sharing, but apparently there hasn’t been much interest in it here.

Also, their utilities… all buildings are required to be on the heating grid unless they use some other variety of renewable/sustainable energy sources like solar.

We wandered about this neighborhood for several hours (getting over-heated and working up an appetite). Most buildings had balconies, the common areas young trees and play areas and “learning” facilities. Some of the more beautiful buildings flowed over with greens: flowers, vines, small trees. Historic buildings were tastefully and practically restored, contributing nicely to the variety of urban texture.

Our local gov’t friend recommended a nearby café, where we finally went to lunch near the end of the designed lunch period (lunch ends at 2 PM in Europe). It was a lovely beer garden, and we sat under and old tree at a picnic table. I believe it was our architect who started it, but by the end of the lunch, we had all consumed a liter of beer in addition to our food. The beer was good, the food OK.

After lunch, we walked over to another, older neighborhood of the same type. These buildings were more settled into the ground, painted lively colors, with grown trees, vines, shrubs and vegetable gardens. Again, many children played in the street. A couple dozen people waited for the bus, and as soon as I took a picture of them, the bus came and picked them up. (You can imagine my concern that maybe the transit system isn’t reliable.) The neighborhood included a huge old shelter for storing tanks, now for children to play ball (probably particularly useful in the rain but also on sunny days like this one). There was a certain odd flavor to me, maybe it is Germany, of the changing uses of this space. Let me know if you think of a better way to articulate this….

Behind the older development is another “squat” of mobile homes. I think we all agreed that it was incredibly beautiful on this perfect afternoon. The organic, humble-jumble, unplanned community of mobile homes seemed to work harmoniously together in a sort of half-agricultural (we saw farm animals, but I don’t think everyone who lives there has one), half-derelict kind of way. Maybe this is a modern version of our thousand-year-old European villages.

A special moment for all of us was, I think, when we put our heads under this fountain in one of the central courtyards. You will see the pictures, but I will tell you now that it felt pretty good.