Settlement patterns and their social drivers in Vienna over the past 34 years: Implications for sustainability transformations

Abstract

The way urban settlement patterns have been laid out and are used shapes an entry point for realizing more systemic changes toward sustainability Yet, little is known about how urban settlement patterns vary across a city and how the different patterns have evolved over a longer period. Even less is known about the regulative, demographic, and economic drivers that have shaped this very evolution.

Against this backdrop, we have applied an integrated reflexive mixed-method approach to investigate both, the evolution of urban settlement patterns between 1984 and 2018 and their regulative, demographic, and economic drivers. The point of departure of this highly interdisciplinary endeavor is that we can only identify drivers of change and persistence in Vienna´s urban settlement patterns if we have first identified how they have been laid out and used over time. We first applied quantitative geostatistical analysis, i.e., we used high-resolution building, population, and job data for Vienna between 1984-2018 to conduct the weighted urban proliferation metric and then used the annual results to perform a spatio-temporal cluster analysis. Second, we integrated and reflexively adapted the mapped results in desk research and explorative experts´ interviews and elucidated potential regulative, demographic, and economic drivers.

We find that decisions made about the building stock more than 100 years ago shape until today how intensively particular areas in the city can be used. Urban renewal schemes can, in this regard, be helpful to shape an optimized but also more livable use of the existing building stock before new urban areas are developed against the backdrop of urban population growth. Our empirical findings show unrestrained demand for single-family housing and respective zoning as well as changes in the allotment garden act, now allowing for all-year living and solid housing construction substantially solidified existing sprawled settlement patterns. Especially because it drives further fragmentation of land ownership, thus, limiting the option space for deliberate attempts at development. Additionally, we observed very few new sprawling areas over the 34 years, indicating that even though powerful vested interests are in place, existing regulations have largely prevented the large-scale rezoning of urban green space into single-family housing areas.