11 november 2024

SMC24: Livable cities are good for children

Leestijd: 10 minuten

Every year, the Van der Leeuwkring and AIR join forces to invite a Guest Urban Critic at the Stadmakerscongres. The Guest Critic’s role is to share insights and inspire Rotterdam’s citymakers. This year we welcome urbanist Maria Vassilakou. She spent years transforming the Austrian capital of Vienna into one of the world’s most livable cities.

Q: Who is Maria Vassilakou?

“I am currently working globally as an advisor to cities and have spent half of my life in municipal politics, of which almost ten years as Vienna’s Vice Mayor responsible for urban development and urban planning, for urban design and mobility, for energy planning, for climate protection, and for citizen involvement, which was quite a portfolio.”

“Perhaps I should also add that I am of Greek origin. So I was born and grew up in Greece, and I went to Austria when I was 18 in order to study. Hence, I am not an Austrian born person and am the first non-Austrian born person ever to enter Austrian politics in an elected position.”

Q: Vienna has been named the world’s most livable city for three years in a row. How would you define livability?

“Thank you for this question, because I think we should always ask politicians what they mean precisely when they talk about livability. For me, a livable city is a city that is good for children. What we wish for our children is what we wish for ourselves. We want them to have a happy childhood, to be able to move around freely, to play, to have access to nature, to play with water.”

“If we are able to provide this, I’d say we’re on the right track. If we don’t, young couples will move out as soon as they know the first child is coming. This is one of the main reasons why cities keep growing as endless carpets of small houses, and why we then need to spend half our lives in the car trying to go to work and bring the kids to school. The answer to suburbanization is livability combined with affordability.”

“The core of our smart city strategy is that we want to be a city that provides maximum life quality, that is affordable for everybody, and not just for the few who can afford everything, while consuming as little resources as possible through constant innovation.”

Q: You’re saying Vienna’s urban design is linked to a demographic vision for the city. Is that part of what sets it apart?

“I think it is unique in the way that it combines this goal with a focus on urban design. We realized the immense importance of placemaking. Our work is not just about public space, it’s about creating places for life to happen. Vienna is a social city, and if you add to that excellent public transport and connections, the ability to find everything you need for everyday life within a five to ten minutes walk, you start to see why Vienna is the world’s most livable city. You see these approaches in other cities, but the combination of all of that is uniquely Vienna.”

Q: What is the difference between creating public spaces and creating public places?

“Space enables different things, but is not yet defined as a place for people. As soon as you start speaking of people, you start speaking of places. A lot of spaces in our cities are used by cars, which we try to cross as quickly as possible. We don’t have a feeling that we would like to stay there to spend time and enjoy outdoor life there. Whereas places have community and people.”

“You can see that pedestrians make deviations when they are near lovely places. They would rather walk through them than through a narrow sidewalk beside a busy street. This is a sign you’ve done a good job. Another sign is when people slow down their pace of walking once they enter a place that works well, and that they may even spontaneously decide to take a break, to sit down and drink a cup of coffee, talk to friends and then continue. That shows us that they are comfortable in their surroundings.”

Q: Can you give me an example of a space like this?

“The obvious example is Mariahilfer Strasse, which is Central Europe’s longest and busiest shopping street. It had broad sidewalks, but two thirds of the space was occupied by a couple of parked cars and then 12.000 cars that were just driving through it on an average day. On weekends, we would see 70.000 pedestrians on overcrowded sidewalks.

We divided the street into three zones. We turned the middle part into a pedestrian zone and the outer parts into shared space, but we designed it in a way where you do not actually know when you’re in the pedestrian zone or not.”

Q: I’ve been there a couple of times, and cars going through it are incomprehensible to me.

“That’s the magic of it. Once you take the cars out, about one year later, nobody can remember what it used to look like and why on earth anybody ever wanted it to be another way.”

Q: Any smaller-scale examples?

“The city has introduced the first superblock in the 10th district, right in front of a public school. When you’re trying to transform a city, one of the starting points should be schools.”

“We want to create a polycentric city, where every neighborhood has a center that is also a place as we defined it earlier. Connecting these local centers to a network of green and open spaces that are optimally connected not only by public transport, but also by walking and cycling connections, is what creates real impact.”

Q: How does Vienna use green transport to connect its neighborhoods?

“We are already in the very privileged position of having one of the world’s most dense public transport networks for a city of this size. This is due to a very smart decision that was made in the 70s, when they introduced the metro system, not to abandon the tram. As a result, you never have to walk for longer than about three minutes to reach the next station, and in rush hour the average waiting time is three to five minutes, which is wonderful.”

“We also wanted to stimulate cycling but most of all radically increase walking, because we think that walking is an indicator of livability. The magic of all of this is that there are different approaches that more or less lead to the same results, if you approach the design process holistically. You can embark on a walkability strategy as a city, but this will inevitably lead you to rethinking places and their connections.”

Q: Did you get any inspiration for your cycling strategy from the Netherlands?

“We took inspiration back when we introduced the first cycling sharing scheme that was not only free floating, but was entirely for free. So you could just take the bike, ride it, and leave it somewhere. Somebody else would take it.”

Q: We don’t even have free bike sharing.

“Well, the inspiration came from the Netherlands because there are so many bikes everywhere and because back then, many of them were not actually tied down, right? So we thought, what a wonderful idea! We introduced it, and as a social experiment it was lovely. It made people happy. But after a couple of months, the bikes started getting stolen and vandalized. Around the millennium, we switched to a proper bicycle sharing scheme that we take pride in saying was the first of its kind and continues to influence similar programs in other cities.”

Q: Vienna is often praised for its large and accessible subsidized housing sector. Do you think the Viennese housing approach could be transplanted to other cities that might not have a 100-year-old social tradition?

“I think several parts of the Viennese system can be replicated elsewhere, especially in the Netherlands, that also has quite a number of housing corporations. Vienna’s social housing system has two special ingredients. First, the land needs to be affordable, so you need an active land policy. You also require a subsidy, which every city can implement by creating a revolving fund. The subsidy is not given as a grant. It is a low interest long-term loan that needs to be paid back. You get the money back to reuse it for the same purpose. You will probably also want to invest money from the budget into this fund. This way you can provide a subsidy per square meter of construction and create a double support: the land is cheap, and construction is subsidized.”

“Another element is that the resulting rent is real cost rent. This is very important, because it makes housing highly affordable. It might still be too high for vulnerable groups, but you can help them with personal grants or other means. In the end, we provide social housing for the middle class, without any sort of stigma. 75 percent of the Viennese population qualifies for social housing.”

“Everyone wants to use it, and that is the real secret. The director of a bank can live in the same building as his employees, together with perhaps a refugee family that pays their rent with additional support. This is where we are in Vienna right now, and these are elements that can be transplanted anywhere. It’s a matter of policy.”

Q: Apart from design, Vienna is also using its social housing system to create the demographics that you say make the city more livable.

“Yes. Community life is extremely important in Vienna, and the city supports community-driven action. We have so-called urban renewal offices in neighborhoods that provide organizational and financial support to community initiatives.”

“Anybody can apply for a grant of 4000 euro to transform a part of their neighborhood, on the condition that it stays freely accessible to all. Among the realized ideas are little parks, playgrounds, vegetable gardens and a neighborhood brunch. I think this is the last piece of the puzzle in Vienna.”

 

The Keynote lecture by Guest Urban Critic Maria Vassilakou at the Stadmakerscongres 2024 will start at 4.30 PM at the Grote Zaal, Theater Zuidplein.

De Nederlandse versie van dit interview is te lezen via de website van Vers Beton.