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Vienna’s Seestadt Aspern district is getting an innovative sustainable office complex that will not need a heating system. Instead, the building will make use of thick brick walls to retain natural bo..
Vienna’s energy authorities announced the launch of a new power-to-heat plant near the Hundertwasser incinerator. The plant will use excess renewable energy as a sustainable supply for district heatin..
Cities are particularly deadly in a heat wave— but fatalities are not inevitable.
As temperature records tumble across the Continent, the death toll from the extreme heat is starting to become apparent. Last Friday, for example, a municipal street cleaner in Madrid died of heat stroke while working outdoors in temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius. On Saturday another worker died after spending several hours in a warehouse where temperatures surpassed 46C.
Solidarity City is a media project of Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project aims at mapping initiatives that focus on social inclusion, fair employment, participation, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and responsible tourism, and exploring their achievements and challenges, as well as telling their stories and helping them gain visibility.
This week, authorities in Vienna announced that Wien Energie, the city’s energy company, has set up heat pumps in one of the natural thermal water pools in the Austrian capital. Said pumps will collect heat from wastewater and feed it back to the district heating system, providing green energy for 1,900 households in the Oberlaa district.
The cities of Munich and Vienna partner on sustainable and climate friendly energy sources with a particularly look at geothermal for heating.
Depuis les années 1990, la capitale autrichienne multiplie les projets de développement urbain pour que femmes et hommes puissent profiter équitablement de l’espace public. Une démarche plus inclusive qui, certes, suscite encore des réticences, mais fait des émules au niveau européen.
The time has come: 90 sheep have arrived in the Schafflerhofstrasse PV plant in Vienna - Donaustadt, the largest such in Austria. The area of more than 12 hectares is perfectly suited for grazing and in a bid to maximise the green efforts of the city, they decided to get eco-friendly lawnmowers. “They go together wonderfully,” said Climate Protection City Councilor Jürgen Czernohorszky.
Women are more likely to live in energy poverty, something that needs to be reflected in EU policy as it rolls out its renovation wave, writes Michaela Kauer. Michaela Kauer is the director of the Brussels office of the City of Vienna, linking Vienna with EU policy and global sustainability goals. Currently, the European Union is undertaking significant efforts to improve the energy efficiency of the built environment, with a huge renovation wave strategy brought forward. The aspiration is to make this initiative in the framework of the EU’s Green Deal a participatory and inclusive one. However, the Commission still fails to clarify whether this approach will be gender-sensitive in vision and process, not the least in delivery. The first issue at stake is to increase the visibility of gender inequalities in energy poverty and participatory actions. This will allow informing policymakers at the EU level to better account for gender justice in the field of housing and urban renewal. Women are more likely to live in energy poverty, something that needs to be reflected in EU policy as it rolls out its renovation wave, writes Michaela Kauer.
With the dedication process for the Semmelweis area in the 18th district of Vienna, which is currently underway, local authorities are legally securing the historic park for the future. The city is set to receive a 4.7-hectare green area, which fulfils an important recreational function for the entire district and to which public access is guaranteed. Throughout the process, areas currently designated as building land will become grassland and will be granted special park protection area status upon the task’s completion.
By repairing their items instead of throwing them away, citizens of Vienna are actively contributing to the fight against climate change
Repairing and reusing one’s items is crucial in the fight against climate change. Instead of throwing stuff away and generating more and more waste, citizens of Vienna have had an opportunity to have them once again made usable thanks to the city’s repair vouchers and receipts.
A massive success, both saving money and protecting the environment
The Vienna repair voucher is a one-of-a-kind platform that brings together consumers, vendors and repair shops. The network created by the city allows for citizens who purchase from specific venues to have their items repaired at one of the Austrian capital’s many repair shops at a significantly reduced price by simply downloading the repair voucher on their phones.
"Repairing instead of throwing it away, that is an active contribution to climate protection and I am pleased that the Viennese are taking our offer so well," said Environment City Councilor Ulli Sima
From next year on, the vast majority of all new buildings in Vienna will be located in climate protection areas. In these areas, heating, cooling, and hot water must be provided either by renewable energy such as ambient heat (heat pumps) or biomass or by district heating. The requirement does not differentiate between building types: residential buildings, offices, shops, but also public buildings such as schools or kindergartens. In the long term, fossil fuel will be a thing of the past.
Both citizens and city officials can benefit from the platform’s web services that facilitate daily activities, ranging from urban mobility to environmental monitoring. The platform gives access to readily organised and visualised information, without the need to go through raw data. This provides the city with unparalleled transparency across policy areas for monitoring and benchmarking, while promoting citizen participation in shaping the future of the city.
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Vienna will construct a climate-friendly district with affordable housing mixed with a public park. The new development will have rainwater capture abilities and also feature unsealed soil as a holist..
Much of Europe is suffering or still reeling from the scorching effects of the heatwave.
These extreme weather events are becoming fiercer and more frequent as a result of climate change, and for western nations especially, it has been a frightening glimpse into the future.
Record-breaking days have exposed how ill-equipped our cities are to handle plus 40°C plus temperatures. Conversely, they’ve also made us more appreciative of the parts that provide relief: the tree-lined streets, leafy parks, lidos and air-conditioned public venues.
The tour aims to act as an ambassador to Vienna’s comprehensive climate plan, with the goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2040. In that sense, according to the city, the tour would function as a multifunctional information carrier, that wants to draw attention. They want citizens to be enticed by the presentation and discover the climate measures for themselves.
The experts, that will staff the bikes, on the other hand, will provide all the necessary information about the city’s plans to tackle the issue and what individuals can do to help themselves. Also, people would be able to try out the e-cargo bikes as an alternative to personal cars.
Wien Gusto’, as the brand is called, will source its produce from the nearly 2,000 hectares of farm land owned by the city
Yesterday, the city of Vienna announced that it will launch its own line of organic produce, which will be sold on the retail markets. The city owns around 2,000 hectares of arable land and vineyards, making it one of the largest organic farms in Austria.
Viennese authorities have said that they will invest over 1 billion euros in sustainable energy in the next five years. The funds will go towards renewable projects with an increased focus on hydrogen and especially geothermal energy.
Vienna received the European City of Trees award (ECOT) from the European Arboricultural Council, acknowledging the Austrian capital as a model for care in the domain of urban greenery. The Arboricultural Council also pointed to the city’s innovative knowledge-based approach for the improved adaptability of the urban environment in the face of climate change. They also held up Vienna as an outstanding example of good practices that other European cities can emulate.
Renewable energy will be produced on-site and it will power the entire facility
Vienna is opening a new educational campus called Lieselotte Nahsen-Schmidt in Seestadt. Said campus will have a comprehensive renewable electrical and heating system, making it a showcase project for the whole sector of educational architecture in the carbon-neutral future of Europe.
The goal of the city is to house two million bees on Wiener Linien's green spaces by 2022, which means around 80 bee colonies. "Public transport is an ideal place for bees. Along the rails, there are often unused areas where countless flowering plants can settle," said Alexandra Reinagl from Wiener Linien.
In a context where digital giants are increasingly influencing the actions decided by public policies, smart data platforms are a tool for collecting a great deal of information on the territory and a means of producing effective public policies to meet contemporary challenges, improve the quality of the city, and create new services. Within the framework of the Smarter Together project, the cities of Lyon (France), Munich (Germany), and Vienna (Austria) have integrated this tool into their city’s metabolism and use it at different scales. Nevertheless, the principle remains the same: the collection (or even dissemination) of internal and external data to the administration will enable the communities, companies, not-for-profit organizations, and civic administrations to “measure” the city and identify areas for improvement in the territory. Furthermore, through open data logics, public authorities can encourage external partners to become actors in territorial action by using findings from the data to produce services that will contribute to the development of the territory and increase the quality of the city and its infrastructure. Nevertheless, based on data that is relatively complex to extract and process, public data platforms raise many legal, technical, economic, and social issues. The cities either avoided collecting personal data or when dealing with sensitive data, use anonymized aggregated data. Cocreation activities with municipal, commercial, civil society stakeholders, and citizens adopted the strategies and tools of the intelligent data platforms to develop new urban mobility and government informational services for both citizens and public authorities. The data platforms are evolving for transparent alignment with 2030 climate-neutrality objectives while municipalities strive for greater agility to respond to disruptive events like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Red Vienna undertook one of the most ambitious public housing programmes ever. That effort is still credited with maintaining affordability today.
After several years of consultations with locals, Vienna’s Praterstraße will begin its transformation into the city’s climate boulevard. The shopping street located Leopoldstadt will soon boast a third row of trees in the middle, wide footpaths and bike paths with improved crossings and shady areas.
By the autumn of 2020, a total of 4,000 square metres between Spittelau Station and Wien Energie Welt will undergo greening, while special photovoltaic modules will also be installed in order to save on energy and provide even more cooling.
Construction is scheduled to begin sometime in June and will be complemented by other changes to the local public transport network that are meant to promote the use of buses and cycling.
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