Street-Level Environment, Vienna // StadtParterre© Wien
Vienna’s urban street-level environment crisis is a key focal point of the city’s urban research and for its administration: Although rapid population growth has created an urgent need for additional (living) space, ground floor vacancies are still spreading; furthermore the environmental impact generated by individual motorized traffic has reached a critical level.
Since urban maps usually end at the building perimeter, little is known about the interrelations between built-up structures, ground floor use, and street use. Urban planning spares little thought for what really takes place inside the buildings lining a street.
The street-level environment concept refers to the city’s “parterre” as a holistic urban system: it covers both built-up and non-built-up areas. Thus street, ground floor and courtyard are treated as entity, so that interrelations will come to light. Because we perfectly know that the potentials of ground floor use and the structure of the correlating public street space are directly related to each other.
Given this perspective the proposed study will therefore address the following issues:
- What are the (historical) interrelations between public space and the life inside buildings? This approach will include an elaborate structural analysis of how public and private parterre-spaces are actually and have formerly been used.
- How attractive and how functional—from an urbanistic point of view—is a street-level environment that does meet the visual requirements set up by city scape protection laws, but that on the other hand does no longer serve any vital function—where storage facilities, supply rooms, garbage collecting areas, garages and parked cars are taking over? In which way does the current mono-structural form of street space use affect the city’s parterre?
- Which architectural and structural interventions have a positive impact on the street-level environment? Should the historically documented semi-public character of the Viennese ground floor be secured by regulation?
The objective of the study is to both retrieve and generate data by applying the 3D-ZPA three-dimensional comprehensive street-level model —a method developed in a preliminary two-years pilot study. Based on the morphological analysis of the urban street level environment, the study intends to provide a strong argument towards a—possible radical—rethinking of street space use and ground floor use. The 3D-ZPA will provide an effective tool for verifying and responding to the research results, while offering a concrete instrument of urban planning.
Thus, the causes of the current street-level environment crisis in Vienna will be examined from a historic and systemic perspective with the aim of making successful contributions of architectural and urban research toward identifying and understanding the current urban space problems.
