I knew I should have written this post earlier: Christoph Chorherr’s German language blog recently linked to a survey of the residents residents of Floridsdorf, a car-free section of Vienna which was built about ten years ago, to see how the place was getting along. I was going to read the report a couple of times then impress you all by telling you about it, but I’ve been busy lazy over the last week and the highly readable “Cycling is good for you” blog got there first with a great translation and summary, and a vast amount of ‘further information’ links all of which you can read by clicking on this link. Go on. I’ll still be here when you’re finished.
Welcome back. By now you’ll have worked out that Floridsdorf was planned carefully: it’s not just about not having parking, but a whole different approach to mobility and livability. It’s also good to persuade people not to get a car and park it around the corner on the sly. I especially love the idea of the shared spaces, so instead of the rich people living on top in a penthouse flat with their own pool, the pool is shared by everyone, as are the community gardens, workshops, and other facilities.
Yet whenever this sort of thing is proposed, it’s accused of ‘Social Engineering’. or worse. It seems that making public transport available or a building a walkable neighbourhood is ‘forcing’ people to live a certain way, instead of allowing people the choice of living how they want, and apparently that’s mile after mile of car-dominated sprawl, which where residents choose to be forced to own an expensive car or be sentenced to virtual imprisonment in in the suburbian gulag. Of course all those people driving require more roads: , so we “choose” to make cities car friendly, and the people who live in them have streets polluted and clogged by car traffic, because that’s What People Want: and forcing them to live otherwise would be ‘social engineering’ after all. Get off my car yer socialist.
One thing: I don’t see one of these around Floridsdorf or Vauban to keep the discontented masses or from leaving. In fact as Anna of “Cycling is good for you” attests, free apartments in Floridsdorf are almost impossible to get hold of because of the high demand. Hmm… Perhaps ‘What People Want’ is a bit more a case of ‘Not wanting to change’.
Either way those pesky socially engineered places are catching on. Vauban caused a little stir a few months ago on the Blogosphere, but very similar schemes exist or are being planned in a few places- Amsterdam has one just around the corner from Henry’s workbikes, Düsseldorf and Tübingen are planning similar and there’s a brand new one in Köln, just off our route along the Rhine. Perfect for a visit in fact, so we’re going to drop by and see what it’s really like.
I’ll let you know if they have to surround the place with Razor Wire and hunt down escapees trying to breathe the heady exhaust-tinged air of suburbia.
Watch me get scooped on this one.
5 comments
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July 24, 2009 at 7:37 pm
spiderleggreen
You have those social engineering bashers over there too! I thought we had all the wingnuts. I’m really tired of idea that only liberals social engineer. Anytime you make, pretty much any change to our living environment, you’re doing it. I think it gets down to “who’s going to do the social engineering?”. Corporations? Government in the service of business interests? How about government in the service of society as a whole? I like that one. We can certainly argue about what that looks like, but lets stop this childish idea that the way things are today, with all our roads to nowhere, wasn’t socially engineered.
July 24, 2009 at 9:18 pm
anna
Thanks for picking up the topic too and all the link-ups
. Good to see that people are interested about such projects and that it’s slowly spreading. Unfortunately – or even annoyingly -, and although this project was so successful, it’s still the only one of this kind here. Everything here changes so slow that I’m always worried that people just forget about it and simply remain in the “dark era” not seeing all the opportunities they have to create a more livable life for everyone.
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After all, nobody is forced to live car-free, but I at least want to have a fair choice to live the way I want. For me that already starts at having enough bike parking in the house and around the city. Something that would be so easy to achieve and would certainly increase bike usage, but is still not looked after. And there are many other simple steps, it doesn’t always require great bicycle infrastructure in the first place. Just people that are given the opportunity to cycle comfortably and safely
July 25, 2009 at 9:19 am
Zweiradler
I like the direction in which your blog is developing. Reading your posts makes me feel euphoric and dream of a revolution where the majority of the people use their freedom of expression and civil disobedience to make their cities more livable.
I have to admit that I am a bit jealous of the people who are already living in a car-free neighbourhood.
July 25, 2009 at 10:21 am
David Hembrow
As Andy implies and spiderleggreen says directly, everything is social engineering. People are forced to drive in many countries much of the time because conditions have been made most tolerable for those who drive.
I feel I should also point out that it’s not actually necessary to remove car parking spaces in order to socially engineer people into driving less. Most residences in NL have car parking, but also a very high level of cycle usage resulting from cycling being made a more attractive option than driving. Cycle parking spaces in residences are of course already mandated here.
The success of shared facilities depends an awful lot on their design, their quality, maintenance and the demographics of the people who share them. Most of the unsuccessful tower housing projects of the 1950s and 1960s had elements of shared facilities too. See the communal facilities artists concept vs. reality here, for instance.
July 25, 2009 at 2:22 pm
John in NH
I am linking to this in a couple days, well both the “cycling is good for you” and your bit. I feel its very important that these developments be part of the solution to livable streets. I seem to remember a bit back(like less then 3 months) an article bit on Toronto and its work to convert some of the bad 1960′s “social housing” slum like concrete tower projects into mixed use development with public transport links and more side-walks and cycle paths and cycle parking, in an attempt to reinvigorate the area and not make it another part of the suburban car based sprawl. need to go find that…
cheers again mate for making the note on social engineering, I feel its a valuable one.