The City of Vienna is rolling out the positive results achieved with the “Smarter Together” project in Simmering to further urban neighbourhoods. The main focus of the initiative is on implementing social and ecological innovations to drive improvements in local housing, jobs, education and mobility. The first neighbourhood, in Vienna’s 10th municipal district (Favoriten), was selected back in April 2020. The overall goal is to make everyday life in all the designated neighbourhoods more resource efficient by 2030 and to ensure an even higher quality of life for future generations. To this end, buildings need to be upgraded and the urban infrastructure adapted to contemporary standards.
Participation and regional value creation
The programme embraces an array of different projects, from eco-friendly refurbishment of buildings, clean energy production and management, neighbourhood development and regeneration of ground-floor zones to energy-efficient cooling systems, vertical greening and circular building. The important thing is that local people and stakeholders from all sectors of the population are involved and have a say (e.g. through participatory budgeting).
Vienna’s local businesses also have a key role to play here: building refurbishment, in particular, is very conducive to regional value creation because the work is often small scale, labour intensive and not highly standardised, so it safeguards a large number of local jobs. Digital tools are also creating opportunities for innovative business models and services. Just as in Simmering, the public space as an outdoor living-room for local people and eco-friendly mobility options both play a prominent role in the programme. Among other objectives, WieNeu+ aims to help Vienna position itself as a model city for EU initiatives such as 100 Climate-Neutral Cities.
Integrated 10-year programme
WieNeu+ is an integrated programme that serves as an umbrella for a large number of individual projects. It contributes to achieving the goals of the Smart City Wien Framework Strategy by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fostering innovation in local urban neighbourhoods. As a headline project of the strategy “Vienna 2030 – Economy and Innovation” (in German), WieNeu+ has a time horizon of ten years.
The aim is that all neighbourhoods will be fit for the future by 2030. This will require incentives for investment in order to bring innovative products and services developed by regional businesses to market. In 2020, the City of Vienna used the Deep Demonstration – Climate-KIC programme to co-finance the preparatory phase with EU funding. Under the leadership of the Municipal Department for Technical Urban Renewal (MA 25) a number of municipal departments and numerous other local partners are working together to implement the programme.
Source: https://smartcity.wien.gv.at/en/wieneu/
Author: Stephan Hartmann
Date of publication: 27 August 2021
