Germany's "Green" City (with more bikes than cars!)

this is fryberg in bcow a city in the Black Forest it's often referred to as Germany's Green City it's a city with more than twice as many bicycles as cars and over 400 km of bicycle Lanes it's a city with a lot of trams and amazing pedestrianized streets over the past few decades fryberg has become a leader in modern sustainable Urban Development and they're building an absolutely amazing City in the process Germany is well known for its car industry and autobond but fryberg is different this is a city where cars do not rule fryberg is a university town and around 10% of the population attends the university so obviously you see a lot of students cycling to and from school and a lot of bicycles parked outside the university but you also see a lot of car cargo bikes and families a key indicator that fryberg has a very Advanced bicycle culture the old town in the center of fryberg is a wonderful place to be there's old architecture alongside the new and the streets are beautiful too isn't this amazing I even managed to film two trams going through here at once appreciate my patience and good timing everywhere you look there are trams people cycling and lots of people of all ages out andoy in themselves there are nice narrow streets and lots of outdoor patios the city center is almost entirely pedestrianized so of course it's very [Music] quiet yet another reminder that cities aren't loud cars are loud and when you do see the occasional car it looks comically out of place with so many people around the city center has these Open Water channels and it said if you fall in one you're destined to marry someone from fryberg but the best part is that kids actually make boats to sail on the water isn't this just one of the most wholesome things you've ever seen this is so much fun I was lucky enough to meet up with Ashton from the YouTube channel type Ashton while I was in town she and her family are from the US but they loved fryberg so much that they decided to stay in Germany permanently Ashton has great videos on her Channel about everything from macroeconomic to micro urbanism and she talks a lot about the differences between the US and Germany I'll leave a link to her Channel below and of course she's also an expert in fryberg which was great for my first trip here to this amazing City seriously the fryberg Oldtown is one of the nicest places I've ever been to so you might be thinking okay okay okay this is an old medeval city but actually it's not what you might think sure fryberg was originally founded in the year 1120 but but most of fryberg was leveled in World War II which was the case for many cities in Europe of course but what was truly unique about fryberg is that when they rebuilt it they made it similar to what it used to be instead of being rebuilt for cars so remarkably pretty much everything you see here is less than 75 years old unfortunately the rest of the city was not so lucky it's commonly said in fryberg that the war destroyed 80% of the city and cars destroyed the other 20% outside of the city center neighborhoods were built with that car Centric vision of modity that was common across the world in the 1960s this road just outside of the city center used to be a narrow Street just like the rest with several popular beer gardens and restaurants but they were all destroyed to build the Ring Road the 1960s really were the decade of destroy stuff to build roads and we're still paying for those decisions today it was only very recently that activists were finally successful in getting a car Lane removed to build this totally insufficient bicycle lane this area will likely never return to its original Beauty and it's entirely because of car infrastructure ironically the center of fryberg though rebuilt in the style of the original city was completely overrun by cars and asphalt look at this difference between this footage from 1973 and how it looks today this pedestrian Square used to be a parking lot now parking for the city center is in garages on the periphery there were several key decisions that put fryberg on the right path and avoided the destruction that comes from making a place carf friendly in 1972 the city voted to keep its tram Network this had a massive impact on the fryberg we see today there's one consistent thing I've seen in cities all over the world every city that retained its tram network has better urbanism than any nearby City that didn't but fryberg went a step further and actually expanded its tram Network through the 80s and 90s while other European cities were removing theirs the first part of the city center was pedestrianized in 1973 and once the cars were removed the city center became a successful business district with a popular Market that is still active to today the market surrounds this beautiful cathedral and it's one of the genuine highlights of the city center and of course this used to be a parking lot too in the 1970s there was a growing environmental movement that protested any developments that would destroy the neighboring Black Forest this kept the city more compact than most cities that were built or rebuilt for the automobile after the war in 2002 fryberg elected the first green party mayor in Germany and since then fryberg has become the model for sustainable City development in Europe one great example of this is Von a suburb completed in the early 2000s that was designed to be environmentally friendly from the start the buildings here were built to a very high Energy Efficiency standard and you see solar panels on roofs and balconies all over the neighborhood some of these buildings even generate more energy than they consume the neighborhood was built on the location of a former military base and some of the apartments were built from the original Barracks one really unique element is that many of these apartment buildings are collectively owned a group of people would come together and build an apartment building themselves instead of buying units from a developer today the majority of residents in foban live in housing cooperatives or social housing developments when foban was first built only about half of households owned a car but remarkably that number has actually decreased especially after the tram line was completed in 2006 today the vast majority of households in faan do not have a car and there are only about 170 Motor Vehicles per thousand inhabitants I wonder if these old Clunkers count towards that number you don't have to walk around very long to realize that a lot of people get around here by cycling even though this is a suburb on the edge of the city the neighborhood makes extensive use of modal filters allowing people walking or cycling to pass through while being off limits to cars this is exactly the same method that the Netherlands uses to discourage car traffic especially through traffic in residential neighborhoods this makes the streets of foban very safe for children and you see lots of kids out on their own and some of the streets here are designated as play Streets this neighborhood has one of the highest percentage of children in all of Germany which isn't that surprising because places without cars are better for kids faan is also very well served by transit on the west side is a transit station with tram and bus stops connecting residents to other parts of the city but the tram line also runs along the whole side of the neighborhood making it easily accessible to everyone who lives here this should be the model used to design new suburbs everywhere unfortunately not all neighborhoods in fryberg are as well designed as foban so you'll see other districts with streets lined with parked cars and it always annoys me when cars are supposed to be parked on the sidewalk because while fryberg spent only a few decades building car Centric infrastructure those places still remain as it takes many decades to repair that kind of damage but you can see some of those repairs taking place with extra space being given back to people who walk and cycle there is of course a lot of bicycle infrastructure in fryberg including many curb protected bicycle paths unfortunately even major intersections are totally unprotected designed in the Copenhagen style as opposed to using much safer Dutch designs and there are still many painted bicycle gutters and dangerous merge lanes on busy roads so clearly there are still opportunities for improvement but many of the streets in fryberg have so little car traffic that dedicated bicycle infrastructure is not required and some of these have been designated as bicycle streets where people cycling can use the whole street and drivers need to yield to bikes and it's always great to see parking spaces converted to outdoor seating for local restaurants now there's a lot that's been written about the cycling infrastructure in fryberg but I actually think the tram network is one of the city's best features fryberg refers to its tram system as a St Bond instead of a Sten Bond the usual German word for tram this is because they consider it to be better with separated tracks traffic light priority and a higher average speed than most tram systems the trams in fryberg are very modern with level boarding at tram stops making the system very accessible though there are still some older trams that have yet to be replaced the tram Network covers most of the city and even goes out to several suburbs and the current planning rules state that new housing cannot be built unless it's within walking distance of a tram line I didn't even cycle while I was in fryberg because if I have a choice between cycling and taking a tram I will take a tram I was able to get everywhere I wanted to go and I never had to wait very long for a tram either because the trams have a signal priority and a dedicated Lane for most of their routes getting around by tram is extremely quick and efficient and there are so many grassy tram tracks here I love grassy tram tracks also I like the new tram and bus station at Europa plots with chargers for the electric buses and the roof of this station is covered in solar panels in fact the entire tram Network as well as all of these electric buses are run off of renewable energy because of course they are fryberg is not a sprawling City so it's very easy to get out into the black forest we heard there was a great view from a cable car nearby so we set off to visit we took tram 2 out to the end of the line in the South where we picked up a bus we had to walk all the way from the tram right here this is so great I know this is just a silly trivial trip to a tourist attraction and this trip doesn't really matter at all but this is the way public transit should be everywhere not just for the center of the city not just for commuting but for all kinds of trips that someone might want to take now the weather wasn't the best but the view from the gondola was nice and when we got back the tram was waiting for us friberg's train station is centrally located though not very pretty we got here by Train by the way and while the road directly outside of the station is not as nice as it should be there is a separate area above the station where you can board a tra and go into the Oldtown without interacting with any cars at all or you can pick up a bike share bike to continue your journey into the City and there are clearly a lot of people who cycle here and if you need to access the other side of the city this walking and cycling bridge will take you over the train tracks which also used to be a carbridge until 1996 because of course it was I prefer it like this and now it leads directly to this bicycle parking garage for the train station fryberg is a highly desirable city that is sustainable both environmentally and financially and with great public transport it's a beautiful place that safe for children accessible to all kinds of people and enjoyable to be in and yet it's not thousand thousand of years old every one of us probably knows someone who is older than the fryberg city center which really does make you wonder why can't we build more places like this it's not like it's lost knowledge we know how to build like this and we know people like being in places like this this is what the sustainable city of the future should look like not a place with wide roads and self-driving cars but a humanized city with clean and efficient public transportation and streets that are safe enough for everyone over the past few years fryberg has become very well known by urban planners in Europe and many planners and politicians come here to learn about sustainable Urban Development which is great because as far as I'm concerned the more cities that copy fryberg the better if you're a fan of car-free places you might enjoy my video about zermat a car-free town in the Swiss Alps I'll put a link to that video down below which you can watch now but only on nebula nebula is the subscription streaming service that was built by creators it's not an ad driven platform that has to answer to advertisers it's a platform that's funded by people like you and managed by the creators themselves on nebula you can watch all of my videos completely adree and sponsor free and every video I make is released on nebula first before it gets posted to YouTube nebula is the best way to support this channel as well as is over 150 other nebula creators including City and Transit channels like City beautiful City nerd and RM Transit City beautiful has a whole series of videos about the world's greatest cities that are only available on nebula with a nebula subscription you'll also get access to nebula classes online classes from your favorite creators legal eagle will even teach you how to sue like a lawyer if that sounds interesting to you then you can sign up for 40% off the annual price by going to the link go. nebula.com tv/ just bikes that comes 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Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 964,565

Keywords: urban planning, germany, freiburg, freiburg im breisgau

Id: 6Vil5KC7Bl0

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023