ABSTRACT
Freiburg has come to represent some lonely pinnacle of European urban excellence: the city that took on every challenge — economy, housing, transport, environment — and did best at it. In 2008, the Department of Communities and Local Government's Eco-Towns Challenge Panel thought that Freiburg represented some kind of yardstick, some universally-applicable measure, of what a sustainable twenty-first-century community should be. Subsequently the Academy of Urbanism voted it best European City in 2009, beating Valencia and Bordeaux. Its Freiburg Charter, first published in 2010 and in a new edition in 2012, has become some kind of holy grail for believers in sustainable urbanism (Academy of Urbanism and Stadt Freiburg, 2012). Though it is not unique — other German university cities such as Tübingen and Kassel are also producing exemplary development — what stands out in Freiburg is the role that visionary leadership can play in changing a city's direction. So though visitors tend to flock to Vauban as the city's model neighbourhood, it is only an expression of a concept that animates everything the city does, from power generation to building codes. And, though some other European cities can also claim to be trying to do the same, Freiburg has been doing so for longer, with single-minded consistency, than any other place on the planet.
