Debates about land use follow particular economic interests based on the logic of growth that produce numerous contradictions. Rothneusiedl has been politically contested for some time. The green district of Vienna/Favoriten stands for current territorial strategies of the city’s urban development, in which land use, sufficiency, self-sufficiency and local supply, food sovereignty, land protection and climate protection are played off as new urban challenges against affordable housing with local recreational values. Between the old Wilhelminian-style estate Haschahof, a self-harvesting community that was dissolved by the owner Wohnfond Wien in 2015 and which is still active, a snail farm, a refugees’ home and a noise protection wall laid out as a gentle hilly landscape at the newly built logistics center Wien Süd, there are divergent declinations of living, ranging from the value of nature to acquisition.

 

This contested field was the starting point for a field study with the intention to look into possibilities of how the exchange of knowledge can merge into a common space for experience. We invited experts from different disciplines and together with Urbanize! participants and the invited guests from various disciplines we made a one day field trip on site with questions: How can the layers of the visible and invisible regimes, which help to create a place, be exposed? Which spatial practices and modes of action can be attributed to the fleetingness in the sense of permeable, vulnerable spatial concepts for the design of a "city of the many"? Where can different types of relationship structures be found that contrast with planning rhetoric such as resilience, adaptation or smart? 

A project in collaboration with Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Michael Hofstätter (Aarchitecture, urban planning), Katrin Hornek (artist), Peter A. Krobath (journalism/activism) and Rosmarie de Wit (urban climate researcher).
A cooperation with URBANIZE! Festival 2016.