cars and the city – forum stadtwildnis

satellite image of the Stadtwildnis-area with the street surface in white

In Vienna, approximately 20% of the journeys are made by car – public transport, bikes and walking together make up the rest.
Nevertheless, cars take up 65% of the space in the city of Vienna and are only being used 2% of the time. Cars take up most of the (public) space, the streets, in our cities.

So how can we re-invent what a street means to us? How can we use all this space to get a more safe, healthy and lively city?

To imagine alternatives to busy and loud car-filled cities, we can look to Barcelona for example. Here they have closed parts of their city, the blocks, to traffic, called Superilla Blocks. [1]

„What seems to be very persis- tent in this fantasy or ideal (meant to change urban reality) is the idea of complete separation of movement flows. The pedestrians were to be completely separated from the vehicles.“
Common Space, The City as Commons – Stavros Stavrides

The level of noise is of course linked to the speed of the motorized vehicles. In this map we looked at the different transport modes and their different levels of speed.