Inspired by Bogotá’s Ciclovia, Open Streets events that temporarily close streets to motor vehicle traffic while opening them to myriad other uses are now regularly held in more than 100 cities worldwide. The City of Vienna’s Department for Urban Development and Planning (MA18) commissioned* this feasibility study about a transformative Open Streets initiative in Vienna. The goal of the initiative would be to regularly open up streets in Vienna to create new public space for physical, cultural, and social activities.
As a basis for the development of a "Vienna Active Mile" (Wiener Aktivmeile), local and international reference projects were researched and three prospective routes identified. Each was examined in regards to peculiarities in its urban and public space context as well as the conditions within the street spaces to be opened for non-traffic activities. The organizational, logistical, and traffic feasibility of each route was also evaluated.
Detailed implementation plans including temporary traffic organization schemes, programming scenarios, and a rough cost estimate were developed. Based on this, recommendations for a possible implementation of the initiative were formulated including logistics, programming, and communications of the initiative.
An Open Streets initiative for Vienna has not materialized yet, but we have sinec continued to advocate for this idea by creating an exhibition contribution for MAK Vienna and by providing a comprehensive article about Open Streets initiatives’ history, worldwide applications, and urbanistic potential for derive magazine.
*This project was conducted by Florian Lorenz as consortium member and the work executed collaboratively by the co-founders of studio LAUT.
Location: Vienna
Client: City of Vienna, Municipal Department 18 Urban Development and Planning
Year: 2019
Project type: Feasibility Study
Scale: Urban City
Status: Feasibility Study finished
Team: Florian Lorenz, Georg Wieser
Collaborators: consense Verkehrsplanung (traffic planning), LKTRT (lectorate)
