Session details
Author(s)
Angelka Psenner (TU Wien)
Keywords
Motorized Individual Transport, Parking Urban Space
Abstract
The analysis of the historical development of users’ rights in the urban context reveals the following: legislation shifted away from an initial emphasis on protection of people and was soon rewritten to protect vehicle traffic. In 1938 Vienna in fact, the NS street ordinance provided the most significant shift in the hierarchy of street users. Postwar regulations called for “care, caution, and attention” but nevertheless remained primarily fixed on the protection of traffic. It was not until 1960 that the “human being” once again moved into the center, replacing traffic as the focus of attention. The current traffic ordinance, and with it the right to use public street space, is rooted in a system of values that privileged the ideal of a ‘Gesamtvolkssinn’ over the rights and the protection of individuals.
Since the glaring disadvantages of automobilization have been recognized today, we should actually stop the subsidization of motorized individual transport that has been propagated over the past eight decades. However, it remains to be seen whether the projects currently being fervently discussed at EU level and in national politics in terms of the New Green Deal, energy efficiency, emission savings, fairness and true costs in the area of mobility will really be implemented. While the latest turnaround in the debate is to be welcomed: the preference for environmentally friendly mobility, the reduction of the rail electricity levy, the alignment of paraffin and diesel taxation, the improvement of the logistical interplay of water/rail/road, as well as financial and social support structures that are supposed to provide incentives for climate-friendly mobility behavior - it must be noted that the discussions on the shift of rights of use continue to make slow progress.
Our approach can be outlined as follows: we want to understand how the distribution of rights of use and entitlements experienced today has developed and in what way forces have been steered by whom and with what goal. The ultimate aim is to recognize and be able to read the systemic play of interrelationships as such.
Papers
Changing Activities through Changing Mobility - Field Study of an Inner City Street in Budapest, Hungary
Author(s)
Viktoria Eva Lelek (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
Keywords
Motorized Individual Transport, Parking, Urban Space
Abstract
As Hungarian authorities started to define the dimensions of the built environment in the 19th century, transportation methods were merely different than today. The streets that were planned according to the first building codes were designed for traveling on a horse carriage or walking.Limited options in mobility resulted in a more compact city. People were the main users of public space and hence human scale served as the basis of urban planning. However, as car ownership became affordable for more and more households during the 20th century, the existing urban fabric had to be subordinated to motorised individual transportation. Globalization and the growing automobile industry had an effect on the development of European metropolises. They caused a higher speed of transportation, longer distances and greater dimensions in the planning of new housing development areas. At the same time, the historical cores of cities were occupied by stationary traffic. Although there were several concepts to develop a wide network of public transportation in Budapest during the era of the Hungarian People’s Republic, driving and parking of individual vehicles became primary functions in the city. As a result, the ground floor area lost it’s attractiveness as a multiple use semi-public zone. Planners were faced with problems caused by inner city decay, urban sprawl and environmental damage. The raising awareness in society of the necessity of sustainable development led to a paradigm shift in the 21st century. There are new approaches and policies that try to support alternative, environmentally friendly ways of transportation. They support methods for mixing usages, making place for local, small businesses and to create a more compact city (again). The analysis of an inner city street in Budapest throughout these three historical periods shows the development related to each period's trends in transportation. The questions are, how mobility has changed the activities that took place in the street and it’s building fabric. Furthermore, what are current policies and municipal programs and how do they affect life between buildings?
Public Space for People – Approaches to the Restitution of Parking Space
Author(s)
Susanne Tobisch (TU Wien)
Keywords
Public Space, Parking, Mobility
Abstract
The unequal distribution of both spatial and monetary resources has been favouring individual motorized transport above all other road users for several decades now. A rather significant proportion of these resources has always been dedicated to stationary traffic: private cars are parked in public space for free or at very little cost to the car owner. Parking of private vehicles in public space is not something that has slowly developed over time – on the contrary, keeping of private goods (like carriages) on the streets was uncommon and often prohibited in pre-automobile times – it was first and foremost political will that introduced a claim that changed the way streets were used quite rapidly. Since that paradigm shift, on-street parking has been considered an irrevocable right by many car owners. While individual voices have been calling for a reevaluation of a system that values cars over people since the very beginning, it was only recently that initiatives to restitute public space in urban areas to the people has gained momentum. Cities all over the world are taking different approaches to reach that goal, there are temporary measures, as well as solutions that permanently transform public space. Temporary projects i.e. pop-up residential streets or cycle tracks, usually make the start and aim to change the way public space is perceived. Permanent approaches include ones that do not require policy changes (i.e. parking spaces that do not meet the current legal requirements in size get removed), ones that do require policy changes (i.e. parking in residential streets gets prohibited), and indirect solutions that do not immediately regulate parking in public space (i.e. only a certain number of cars can be registered in the city).
This paper explores these functions and rights of use of public space and the international shift towards an understanding of public space as space for people as well as the subsequent approaches to the restitution of parking space and their effectiveness.
Urban Morphologies - Streets of the 19th Century in their Genesis
Author(s)
Daniel Loeschenbrand (TU Wien)
Keywords
Urban Morphologies, Streets, Parking
Abstract
Vienna and many other cities in the European context derive a large part of their current urban structures from the 19th century. In particular, the urban expansions and modifications in the second half of the 19th century, which resulted to a large extent from industrialization and population growth, shaped city layouts and urban patterns to this day. In the system of the city of the 19th century, the street plays an important role in the sense of a public space. Even though traffic was already the primary function at that time, streets were a diversely used space in which parking did not exist. Today, however, stationary traffic in Vienna and in many other cities occupies a considerable area of public street space and thus provokes competition for public space - and this in view of the urban planning challenges of the 21st century. In order to enable solutions for a possible redistribution and a new connotation of streets, an in-depth spatial analysis is needed, which morphologically and typologically examines the origins and different developments in the epochs.
Based on European metropolises such as Vienna, an urban morphological approach to the development of different street forms and typologies is taken. This should offer answers to the question how stationary traffic could spread so strongly in urban areas of the 19th century. In addition to the urban history and an analysis of the various street spatial components, factors such as legal frameworks and socio-spatial aspects will also be addressed. Building on the known theories and instruments in urban morphology, however, a further new morphological level must be added in order to be able to take into account topics such as parking management and the like. Only through a deeper urban morphological knowledge of the spatial genesis of those streets from the 19th century, long-term and sustainable scenarios and strategies for a transformation can be developed.