Urban rehabilitation and sustainable mobility options for residents - an example from social housing in Vienna

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The City of Vienna, a very important owner of social housing complexes built from the 1920ies onwards, has for some years carried out several renovation projects with a focus on thermal-energetic redevelopment measures. Presently the renovation and modernization of social housing blocks originating from the 1950ies to 1970ies is a challenging task for Vienna, as for many other European metropolises, too. Considering the expected population increase, technological progress and lifestyle changes, and responding to ecological goals it will be necessary to adapt municipal housing rehabilitation procedures and to exploit potentials unused until now. A recent co-operative exploratory project (Smart City im Gemeindebau, 2016), aiming at the initialization of a smart modernization process, dealt with a wide range of themes: How to provide high-quality and affordable living conditions? How to integrate the residents in planning procedures? How to consider new accommodation needs due to demographic and societal changes? How to make use of new technologies? How to improve the residents’ mobility options, the traffic situation and the quality of the urban environment? Although mobility and traffic are important topics for the concept of smart and sustainable cities, until now they have scarcely been considered in social housing rehabilitation projects in Vienna. During such projects people living in social housing complexes could be supported with various measures to improve their daily mobility. This paper presents selected results from the above-mentioned project, concerning mobility and traffic themes.Published versio