Podcast: Zukunft Stadt - Beyond Asphalt

Susann Ahn (Research Area Landscape, TU Vienna) and
Sabine Knierbein (Research Area Urban, TU Vienna) in conversation with:

Cordula Loidl-Reisch (TU Berlin, emeritus),
Markus Reiter (7th District, Neubau, Vienna),
Eva Schwab (TU Graz), and
Daniel Zimmermann (3:0 Landscape Architecture)

Public spaces are a central vehicle of urban planning to advance a common good-oriented and ecological transformation of our cities in the face of the climate, care, and biodiversity crises. However, this requires questioning and rethinking the attributions of public spaces as hard, sealed, predominantly anthropocentric spaces.

With the event “Beyond Asphalt” at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning of the Vienna University of Technology, urban planning, landscape architecture, political, administrative, technical, cultural, and journalistic perspectives are brought into dialogue to discuss the potential and hurdles of climate-resilient, socio-ecological public spaces in urban expansions and redevelopments.

The discussion focuses on the questions: Why do large-scale unsealing measures in the urban fabric remain a utopia, and how can an unsealed socio-ecological transformation in urban development and implementation be achieved? Can a change in thinking, planning, communication, and construction be promoted through co-productive and co-creative approaches? What kind of decision-making capacity and planning-technical knowledge are essential for such a transformation?

Speakers from landscape architecture, politics, administration, academia, culture, and journalism address current and future developments in public spaces to turn change into action for an unsealed city.

This is the third of four events in the ZUKUNFT STADT series on the topic “Transformation of the Existing” (all other topics can be found here). Referring to the annual theme of the faculty “Transformation of the Existing,” experts from planning, practice, administration, and research discuss various issues. They focus on important topics around urban planning, urban development, architecture, and spatial planning that influence our coexistence.

This event will also appear as a podcast in the series “ZUKUNFT STADT” as Season 1 “Transformation of the Existing” and will be published by the Faculty of Architecture and Planning. The podcast will be available on all major channels. The lecture series and podcast are a collaboration between the ifoer (Local Spatial Planning) and the future.lab of TU Vienna.