The Meadow City
Attempted Approach through Urban Design to the Themes of Climate Change Adaptation and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Introduction
Cities like Vienna are growing, and the guidelines and tools for urban planning come from a time when the issues of the climate crisis and the current COVID-19 pandemic were not considered. This raises the question of how well-equipped we are to move in a forward-looking direction with these guidelines. Are there approaches in urban planning, as well as in object planning, where the traditional and predetermined planning steps and solutions need to be changed? The climatological scenarios for Eastern Austria urgently advise us to question the impact on the existing and foreseeable local climate before each planning step. Unfortunately, this is not yet common practice in planning. Additionally, various economic aspects, such as property ownership, assumed needs, and system-conservative decision-making processes, hinder the establishment of a planning culture that is forward-looking.
The Approach
We wanted to initiate a didactic experiment with our architecture students to address this complex task and engage with the location. Landscape architecture alone is not a panacea, but it is a crucial support in adapting our settlements and cities to the consequences of climate change. This can only be achieved through close, simultaneous, and integrative collaboration with other planning disciplines and all stakeholders. Due to the lack of interdisciplinary collaboration, the need for integrated cooperation among disciplines to combat the effects of climate change was consistently emphasized during the design process. The university setting lays the groundwork for this type of collaborative work and learning. Expert lectures on microclimatology and spatial planning showed us a way.
The specific tasks were to understand the complex topics of landscape and open-space planning in terms of densification and urban expansion, reflect on them, and consider them as an entire thematic complex for design. The acquired skills and insights, along with the sociopolitical issues induced by COVID-19, were expected to culminate in a professionally sound, creatively appropriate, and ideally visionary design.
Didactic Working Hypotheses
What requirements must a crisis-resistant urban public space expansion strategy meet to sustainably ensure the quality of life at the neighborhood level under the premise of climate and societal change?
What planning instruments are suitable in Vienna, and where is there a need for catch-up regarding climate change adaptation and the pandemic?
The Assignment
Students were tasked with showing, developing, and discussing possible approaches collaboratively, including with representatives of urban planning. The focus was on climate change adaptation in urban planning and the impact of pandemic safety rules on the use, structure, and quality of public space.
Concrete Location
The climate crisis is here and has an increasingly profound impact on our daily lives, especially in cities and urban areas. In response to this, there are numerous declarations, commitments, expert concepts, and explanations in Austria and the city of Vienna that address perceptible climatic changes both globally and locally. Nevertheless, Vienna continues to grow unabated, with a strong tendency towards densification in the city's development axes based on the 2025 City Development Plan. The main political concern is creating affordable housing, not addressing the climate crisis.
The expansion area – In der Wiesen – south of Wohnpark Alt Erlaa is at the heart of the Liesing Mitte development area in the south of Vienna. Located directly on the U6 subway line, approximately 3,500 new apartments are planned to be built in the coming years on the former nurseries and agricultural areas. The lands are already extensively divided among various developers. In the north, the area borders Wiesenstadt Nord, built in the 1990s, and in the south, it borders the expansion area in Wiesen Süd / Carlbergergasse, developed and built by various housing developers in recent years.