Vienna – an invisible city?

Contemporary Vienna is – from an Italian perspective – paradoxical, almost an unknown city. Unknown, because most of its achievements are at first sight invisible. While in other European capitals, recent transformations took the form of a spectacle of architecture, Vienna remained relatively normal and unspectacular. And yet changes were massive. Too much of the perception of contemporary Vienna is overlaid with the perception of its past: the notion of Vienna is dotted with cliches of its imperial splendor, the unrepeatable cultural moment of the decline of the Empire, an undefined concept of “Mitteleuropa“, the legend of the “Red Vienna“. Behind all this, even the revolutionary character of its fascinating, recent housing politics remains hidden. Vienna is in a surprising position compared to other contemporary European cities. Thanks to the massive amount of public housing accumulated starting with the period of the “Red Vienna“, the city is in fact capable of limiting the housing price dynamics that are making life in London, Paris, Milan and Berlin more and more difficult for large swaths of the population. In Vienna, most of the houses are public owned and/or public managed and this considerable asset also influences the private market, contributing to the overall price dynamic. This remarkable success (combined with the significant growth that has taken place in the last 30 years) would seem to make Vienna the ideal field for experiments in contemporary architecture and (even more) in urban planning strategies.

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