Az W Akut: Ring-Zone

When Henri Lefebvre called for ‘le droit à la ville’ in 1968 it was clear what he was talking about: the lack of development possibilities for the underprivileged sectors of society who live in the infrastructural deserts of the suburbs. The catalyst of this disfranchisement of city dwellers is, however, the ‘upgrading’ of the centre – little different in Paris in the 1960s to Vienna in 2013. A luxury problem?

In concrete terms an image appears to emerge, whose existence must be verified, but which calls for action: the exploitation of the existing city’s most prestigious ‘potential’, which urban policy-makers generally justify with the argument about encouraging diversity and urbanity but also with the unanswerable imperative of ‘densification’ and which creates archipelagos of luxury while driving out socially marginal groups and entire broad sectors of the population. Is this picture of Vienna exaggerated? The most recent developments in the areas around the Ringstraße in Vienna show the extent to which the pressure created by Vienna’s increased strategic economic importance and by the expected population growth has mounted over the last two decades. The acquisitive focus on certain areas of the city exposes the failure of past decades to conduct a public debate about what the centre of Vienna means for us above and beyond its relevance for tourism.

In the framework of a new programme “The Business of the City” The ÖGFA raises the question about this centre – the Ring zone – and about possible collective visions of the future and the special interests of development. The immediate , concrete reason for this enquiry is provided two real estate developments, a project by Wien-Holding on Rathausstraße and the widely discussed and sharply criticized intentions of the WertInvest-Immobiliengruppe for the Eislaufverein (public ice-skating rink) in Vienna, and the debate sparked off by these projects about a master plan for the entire Ring zone which might possibly represent an opportunity, but could also harbour the danger that, under the auspices of “increased density”, the interests of developers will be catered to and a great disservice done to the residents of the city. The goal of this event is to bring this debate before the public.

Welcome address: Dietmar Steiner, director of the Az W
in German!

Panel discussion:

Maria Vassilakou, Executive City Councillor for Urban Planning, Traffic & Transport, Climate Protection, Energy and Public Participation
Otto Kapfinger, architecture journalist
Lilli Licka, landscape architect, head of the Institute for Landscape Architecture of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna
Erich Raith, architect, associate professor at the Institute of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, TU Vienna
Reinhard Seiss, urban planner and writer on themes of architecture and urban planning
Presentation: Andreas Vass, ÖGFA

Admission free!