VCÖ-Factsheet: How sustainable mobility reduces housing costs
Published
How people live and what mobility services they find in their surroundings determine the costs and the environmental balance of their daily journeys. Municipalities and companies can reduce housing costs with measures for sustainable mobility.
In Austria, a household spends an average of 5,100 euros a year on mobility, 95 percent of which is spent on the car. It pays to plan for mobility in housing construction and settlement development.
A housing location with walking distances and good infrastructure is the basis for lower transport costs. Since central plots of land are more expensive, mobility offers that help to keep the construction of underground garages or the land consumption for above-ground parking spaces low significantly reduce construction costs. At the same time, mobility offers that avoid the dependence on one's own car reduce the expenses for mobility.
From energy-saving house to transport-saving house
Significant progress has been made in the energy efficiency of residential buildings. However, climate-friendly mobility only plays a subordinate role in planning. However, residential projects need the integration of sustainable mobility concepts already in the planning stage. The concept of the energy-saving house must be further developed into a transport-saving house. The housing construction enables the right climate-friendly mobility offer for every way without the need for a car. Urban and spatial planning ensure short distances and a dense public transport network.
Every year, around 40,000 flats are built in new buildings in Austria. Eight out of ten everyday journeys begin or end at home. Where we live and what mobility services are available in the residential environment has a great influence on our mobility behaviour.
Including climate-friendly mobility in the planning of housing and settlement development reduces both construction costs and mobility costs.
"Instead of the obligation to build car parking spaces, offers for climate-friendly mobility should be created. In many places, expensively built underground car parks have a high vacancy rate."
How local initiatives and associations can be supported in the development and implementation of climate protection projects at neighbourhood level was the topic of an expert meeting on 4 February at the Pestel Institute in Hanover. The participants from science and practice discussed a new funding concept of the BMUB, which is intended to support the local implementation of climate protection within the framework of the National Climate Protection Initiative.
Climate protection and quality of life
The funding concept "Short Paths for Climate Protection" aims to promote the development of concrete offers for climate-friendly everyday activities. These can be, for example, projects that critically examine consumption, use and ownership, such as repair cafés or rental stations. Neighbourhood initiatives and participatory actions for more climate protection in everyday life are also to be promoted. The "Short Paths for Climate Protection" projects are intended to avoid greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time promote neighbourhood cohesion and improve the quality of life in neighbourhoods and communities.
Local, regional, national - expansion of the National Climate Initiative
The funding concept is supported within the framework of the National Climate Initiative (NKI, www.klimaschutz.de) of the Federal Ministry for the Environment. The funding would be a strategic expansion of the NKI's range of services by also supporting local initiatives with their ideas for direct citizen participation in the future.
Further information on the BMUB's National Climate Initiative is available at www.klimaschutz.de.
Contact person/partner:
Angelica Couple
ifeu - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Heidelberg
For the third time, the Wood Construction Award Lower Saxony competition. The aim of the state-wide competition is to strengthen the use of wood as a climate-friendly and sustainable building material, to present the current state of timber construction and to inspire future builders to build with this unique raw material. The Lower Saxony Timber Construction Award 2020 honours structures and buildings that are predominantly made of wood and wood-based materials and stand out for their high design and timber construction quality, as well as taking particular account of ecological and resource-saving aspects in the interests of sustainability.
The prize is endowed with a total of 12,000 euros and is jointly offered by the Landesmarketingfonds Holz of the 3N Kompetenzzentrum Niedersachsen Netzwerk Nachwachsende Rohstoffe und Bioökonomie e.V. and the Landesbeirat Holz Niedersachsen e.V.. An independent jury of experts will award the Lower Saxony Timber Construction Prize 2020 and present recognitions in November.
To be eligible, the projects submitted must have been completed between January 2018 and June 2020 and the structure must be located in Lower Saxony. The call for entries runs until 30 June 2020.
The exhibition marking the halfway point of the IBA Heidelberg has opened: A rich accompanying programme attracted almost 1000 visitors from Thursday to Saturday, many of whom were visiting the exhibition venue, the Mark Twain Center in Heidelberg's Südstadt, for the first time.
The IBA SUMMIT, the biennial meeting of mayors, university rectors and urban planners from international "Knowledge Pearls" in Heidelberg, heralded the opening days of the IBA interim presentation on 26 April. Prof. Dr Eckart Würzner, Lord Mayor of the City of Heidelberg welcomed the guests from Stanford, Cambridge, Lund and Leuven with an introduction to the IBA: "The IBA Heidelberg is on an excellent path. It demonstrates how various strengths of our city can be interwoven. These include, for example, promoting education, developing environmentally friendly mobility, creating new living space and promoting climate-neutral urban development. The IBA has made a significant contribution to the sense of a new beginning in Heidelberg.
The vernissage of the exhibition took place at the Mark Twain Center on the evening of 27 April. Gunther Adler, State Secretary for Building, Housing and Urban Development in the Federal Ministry of the Interior spoke on the occasion about the "IBA" format from the federal government's point of view. According to Adler, the IBA is an important piece of German building culture that enjoys international renown and is worth every effort to pursue its claim to excellence. The IBA tradition encompasses many aspects: International relevance, next-practice projects, sustainable impact on the region and building culture standards. For the IBAs currently underway, it is sometimes difficult to fully meet these claims to excellence under the given framework conditions. "Nevertheless, we are seeing overwhelming results, which encourage us as a federal government to continue the quality offensive together - also within the framework of the IBA Heidelberg," the State Secretary emphasised. "We need the IBA to show us how we can find answers to relevant questions of current urban development using new and unusual methods and means - this is more urgent today than ever. The IBA's courage to experiment and to go beyond existing boundaries is important to address the quality of living, working and living in our cities in the future."
Jürgen Odszuck, First Mayor of the City of HeidelbergThe IBA's interim presentation provides an excellent overview of what it is doing in Heidelberg: it gives important new impulses on how we can further develop Heidelberg as the knowledge city of tomorrow. It promotes excellent building projects in our city. And it offers innovative approaches on how we can design processes more effectively and lead to even better results."
Michael Braum, Managing Director of the IBA Heidelberg, was pleased about the great response to the exhibition opening and welcomed the guests: "Innovation in the knowledge society uses its intellectual and creative resources. This changes the value system of the industrial society, in which diligence stood above creativity. Today, in the knowledge society, creativity may be more important than diligence. This also has implications for the city. Our cities will change more dynamically in the 21st century than they did in the course of industrialisation. This requires a new way of thinking in urban planning and architecture. The IBA would like to make a contribution to this, which can now be seen in this exhibition."
Carl Zillich, Curatorial Director of the IBA Heidelbergexplained the exhibition concept: "Before we present realised building projects for the knowledge city of tomorrow in 2022, we have focused at the halfway point on the actors, processes and ideas of the first five years. Together with the exhibition makers from 'Stiftung Freizeit', we have developed analogue and at the same time interactive forms of presentation. Thus, for different interests, individual glimpses behind the scenes of the IBA, the urban development of international science cities, but also Heidelberg institutions and initiatives are on offer. Numerous architectural models, pictures and plans have already aroused curiosity about the construction sites, which are now marked all over the city."
The opening days closed on Saturday, 28 April with a colourful programme, during which many young families in particular got an impression of the exhibition and the IBA projects.
The exhibition of the IBA interim presentation is now open until 8 July daily from Tuesdays to Sundays from 15.00 - 20.00, including public holidays.
More information about the exhibition, guided tours, registration or booking of individual group tours at: www.iba.heidelberg.de
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