THIS German suburb is already well-known for being eco-friendly.

Now Vauban is going one step further - it will go car-less.

According to The International Herald Tribune (IHT), cars are forbidden on most of Vauban's streets, and houses cannot have driveways or garages.

The new district, near the French and Swiss borders and 4km south of the town centre in Freiburg, has also forbidden street parking.

Its streets are free of cars, save for the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.

Car ownership is allowed but there are only two parking spaces - at two large garages in the outskirts, where a car owner buys a space for US$40,000 ($59,000), along with a home.

Seventy per cent of Vauban's families do not own cars, and 57 per cent sold their cars to move there.

Mr Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, said: "When I had a car I was always tense. I'm much happier this way."

Scientist Henk Schulz was watching his three young children wander around the suburb last month.

He said: "I remember my excitement at buying my first car. Now, I am glad to be raising my children away from cars.

"I do not worry much about their safety in the street."

In the past few years, Vauban has become a well-known niche community, and is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the US and other places to separate suburban life from car use.

Cars are the main aspect of life in suburbs and experts say that is a huge obstacle to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions from tailpipes, and thus reduce global warming.

Passenger cars are responsible for 12 per cent of greenhouse emissions in Europe. The European Environment Agency said it is still growing, and up to 50 per cent in some parts of the US.

Vauban which has 5,500 residents per square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life.

Its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in an attempt to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public transportation, with less space for parking, reported IHT.

The new approach involves placing shops a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.

Vauban's adjustment is made easier by the fact that it was the site of a former Nazi army base, and its grid was never meant to accommodate private car use: the "roads" were narrow passageways between barracks.

Mr David Goldberg of Transportation for America, a coalition of transportation-based focus groups, said: "All of our development since World War II has been centred on the car, and that will have to change. How much you drive is as important as whether you have a hybrid."

Harder in US?

He said the US Environmental Protection Agency is promoting "car reduced" communities, and many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year US federal transportation bill to be approved this year.

California's Hayward Area Planning Association is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village, which is accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and to the California State University (CSU) campus in Hayward.

But Dr Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at CSU, said mortgage lenders worry about resale value of US$500,000 homes that have no place for cars, and most US zoning laws still require two parking spaces per residential unit.

He added that convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run.

Mr David Ceaser, co-founder of CarFree City USA, said: "People in the US are suspicious of any idea where people are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer. No car-free suburban project the size of Vauban has been successful in the US."

Vauban-like communities in the US may be a long shot. Dr Lewis said more than 100 would-be owners have signed up to buy in Quarry Village, and he is still looking for about US$2 million in seed financing to get the project off the ground.

This article was first published in The New Paper.