The recent urban developments in Tübingen, a city in south of Germany are, together with the “Quartier Vauban” in Freiburg, a landmark in the development of sustainable neighbourhoods. They were winners of various prestigious awards and are leading examples for numerous contemporary urban developments in Zurich, Berlin and other cities where building associations as well as cooperatives get more and more popular.

However, in Freiburg and Tübingen, for the first time in modern history, building associations and shared living concepts were part of legal planning requirements at an urban scale.