The Netherlands Almere is a Dutch new town of slightly under 200,000 standing on reclaimed land thirty minutes from Amsterdam. The site also contains Europe’s largest self-build programme consisting of a 350 acre site to the south west of the town. Master planned into a number of districts, each of which has around 720 self-build plots, with over 1000 homes already built, and an eventual 3,000 self built homes planned. This self-build city was announced The Almere Principles, a strategic policy shift in 2006, and is being closely watched by other European housing policy ministries, including the current UK Coalition administration. This local government document can be found here.
A Guardian article on the Almere phenomenon in the British context can be found here.
Vauban is one of the earliest continental eco-districts, which developed in the 1990s and early 2000s into one of the most ambitious housing project on the continent. Vauban was originally a response to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power disaster in 1986, with its early stages of creation driven by a community of environmentalists working to develop sustainable approaches to living.
Today Vauban, on the site of a one time French military barracks at the edge of South West city, Freiburg, is one of Germany’s prime examples of a leading edge eco-district and is known across the housing and planning world. With over 5000 residents, Vauban is one of the few eco-districts which demonstrates, showcases and provides an exemplar of large-scale low energy living, while retaining a strong community ethos. The main central part of the eco-district, with a tram line running down its central spine, is car-free, with interlinking pedestrian and cycle paths connecting much of the housing, significant tree cover, and natural features (including boulders and large stones) acting as nature playgrounds for children, and gardening areas for adults. Schools, health-centres, whole and organic food stores are part of the wider eco-district.
Vauban is a pioneering example of how eco-district and community can be co-created for the ecological future.
The second major Swedish eco-district project is Hammarby Sjostad in Stockholm. When first initiated in 1990 the aim of this large eco-district (planned 25 000 inhabitants in 2015) was to cut overall impacts by half, to be delivered using the Eco-Cycle or Hammarby model. A set of current objectives, for instance 80% of travel by public transport, are set to be reached by next year.
Bo01 – Malmo. Those watching the Danish-Swedish TV thriller ‘The Bridge will likely know where Malmo is, (the other side of the Bridge from Copenhagen.) What isn’t apparent from tv is the Bo01 eco-district along Malmo’s old dockland harbour front.
Opened in 1998, and showcased in a housing fair in 2001, Bo01 has grown in the intervening decade. Bo01 is a showcase for integrating many aspects of sustainable building culture on a large scale, and has become a major influence on the development of green cities world-wide. On this wider agenda see here.
Svartlamon is a district in Norway’s second city, Trondheim. Squatted and lived in by a mixture of punks and alternative lifestyle greens, the Svartlamon community initiated an architectural programme in the early 2000’s involving local Trondheim architecture students, Geir Brendeland and Olav Kristofferson, to design a student housing block within the Svartlamon district.
The resulting Svartlamoen four-storey timber student-housing block became a highly popular and influential contemporary timber building in the late 2000’s within the international sustainable architecture world. The community has since continued with several further re-build projects, including a kindergarten built and designed within an old motor showroom http://www.bkark.no/projects/svartlamoen-nursery, a recording studio and flats for musicians to stay in while recording and a pioneering recycling culture education centre. More recently Husly, a house made completely from wood pallets, was completed. Further alternative housing projects continue this marriage of alt.culture and architectural adventurism.
For its advocates Svartlamon demonstrates the marriage of alternative culture and forward-looking architectural vision integrating the built environment in ways, which work with, rather than replacing local communities.