Viennese Praterstern: Social meeting point and urban heat island became a green breather.
What used to be a grey and sealed transit point, mostly occupied by fringe groups is now a high quality place for everyone: The Praterstern Vienna is crossed and visited by up to 150,000 people every day. Plenty of new trees, a water feature and lush greenery add to the visual improvement, and an underground sponge city stores fresh water for heat periods. Together with KENH Architekten, social workers and other experts we created an inclusive, green breather amidst the urban hustle and bustle.
Local
Austria
City of Vienna
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
REACT, 2022
No
Yes
2022-08-23
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): DnD Landschaftsplanung ZT GmbH Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Sabine Last name of representative: Dessovic Gender: Female Nationality: Austria Function: CEO Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Lindengasse 56/2/20 Town: Vienna Postal code: 1070 Country: Austria Direct Tel:+43 1 523321215 E-mail:office@dnd.at Website:https://www.dnd.at/
The Praterstern is a space of various social groups in an extremely urban environment. Placed in the middle of a rotary interchange of four lanes it is a complex transit point where also metro and suburban trains, busses and trams, cycle lanes and footpaths meet. It has always been an area of different problems, especially regarding fringe groups and police interactions. The built environment used to enforce a segregation of social groups and created an overall unpleasant feeling. A number of design-interventions were therefore necessary. The goal was a greener, cooler and all in all more appealing surrounding for this heavily used urban space. The planning process included various stakeholders of the City of Vienna as well as architects, social worker and experts of different ingeneering fields.
The project set itself not only environmental but also social goals. As a hot spot for fringe groups it was a clear aim to create an environment that does not banish these groups from the area but provide a number of different areas that can be used and visited by all social groups alike. Therefore a close cooperation with local social workers has been followed throughout the planning process.
Climate change requires adaptation – especially in heavily sealed areas like the Praterstern in Vienna. Urban heat islands need to become cool places not only in the coming years but as soon as possible. Large-scale greening, water features with mist or fountains as well as the sponge city principle under ground enhance the quality of stay for humans as well as the durability of city trees.
Blue-green infrastructure, climate-active design and a close cooperation with architects (KENH Architekten ZT GmbH) social workers and experts of various fields brought solutions for a cool, inclusive and functioning urban space that works well in a increasingly hot future.
maximum greening and cooling
de-sealing & tackling urban heat islands
sponge city (applied research)
large climate trees
diverse social mix
The redesign of the Praterstern did not require a complete reconstruction but needed specific interventions in various parts of the area. Urban mining + circularity: Large parts of the needed material was being reused from the existing site, big stones and underground substrate from the area has been re-implemented e.g. after the installation of the sponge city underground.
The large plane trees came from a tree nursery that could not sell the big trees but needed to empty the concerning field, so they were urgently looking for a place to transplant them. Transplanting large, almost adult trees comes with difficulties, therefore the trees would have been dumped. For the Praterstern this situation provided a great benefit: The plane trees have already grown big enough to provide shade and effective cooling for the already-hot summers in Vienna.
City trees face extreme conditions of heat, drought and exhaust fumes. So far, the city of Vienna sets the requirement of only 15 cubic of root space per tree - far too little for a tree to be able to live in increasingly difficult conditions. As a result, it fails to reach its full potential, fails to grow to full size, or even dies in extreme cases. The sponge city albeit are areas that offer the trees 35 cubic meters of root space, which can supply them better with water and air due to a special substrate structure in the subsoil. The soil layers at the very top are permeable to water and air, so that the sponge city body can save fresh water for drought periods. The principle has been successfully used in northern Europe for a long time, in Vienna the technology is at its beginning and is therefore scientifically supported.
For sustainable knowledge-transfer the findings have been monitored during an FFG-research-project. Also, the project was officially certified by GreenPass in order to optimize and confirm the climate-related quality of stay and impact of the project.
Aesthetically we aimed to create an easily legible environment with different areas and qualities of stay. Therefore we removed unnecessary design elements and created usage elements instead. The aim was to provide multi-usage infrastructure for a high level of appropriation of urban spaces. A main factor in the planning is the roundabout around the Praterstern. A ring-shaped greening around the center of the public spaces hides the city-highway and moves the traffic away from the field of vision. Lawns are made walkable and usable for people to take advantage of the urban spaces. A consistent lighting concept was implemented to provide a high subjective feeling of safety. The new concept included soft lighting without any gaps. That way, the lighting provides a high feeling of safety but does not appear like surveillance.
As a transit point the Praterstern is being crossed hundreds of thousands of times a day. Naturally, passability played a central role in the planning process. At the same time the problem of the Praterstern being an urban heat island needed to be met: That required the installation of several large trees for maximum shading as well as the implementation of a water feature for additional evaporation. Bringing together the needs for passability with the needs for shading and cooling were main topics throughout the planning process. We kept direct ways free but placed trees and the water elements in close vicinity of these connections in order to provide maximum shading and cooling along the way.
As an urban transit point the Praterstern offers easy-to-access and all-year-round-open infrastructure such as public toilets, supermarkets, restaurants and cheap inns as well as generally heated indoor facilities. At the same time, the outdoor areas used to be heavily sealed and unattractive for a place of stay. These and other factors made it a popular gathering point for fringe groups, which resulted in frequent collisions of needs between the various social groups.
Until its redesign, the Praterstern was quickly crossed or even avoided by pedestrians, commuters, tourists and the local inhabitants. We worked closely in accordance with local social workers to make the space more inclusive. The social workers have known the Praterstern very well and have already been involved in various changes of the whole area, which by then did not bring the desired improvement. For the most recent conversion it was a main aim to make the space not only more attractive but especially more inclusive – that explicitly included fringe groups and aimed to keep the Praterstern attractive for them as a gathering point, but to create enough space for all social groups to co-exist in a peaceful way.
The Praterstern is a transit point for up to 150,000 people every day and it has always been frequented by people of all different social groups. Due to its vicinity to the biggest green area of Vienna, the Viennese Prater, and the leisure park Würstelprater, it is also highly frequented by the Viennese population and by tourists. In the past, the Praterstern has had the reputation of being occupied by fringe groups. Police operations happened regularly and pedestrians tried to cross the square quickly.
After its reopening the Praterstern received a new character: Pedestrians use the square for a short break, kids play at the water feature, groups of people meet and gather under the trees or at the green areas, people don't avoid the square anymore and can cross it without any fear. There are still enough spaces for fringe groups to gather without getting in the way of other users of the space. As a transit point the Praterstern is still a place of quick passing-by, people need to reach a sub, train or tram or simply cross the place to continue to the Prater.
As the Praterstern includes a various number of people we collaborated with stakeholders on behalf of the future users: police officers, social workers, deputies of the district and municipality have contributed to the planning process.
In order to answer all questions in the best and inclusive way possible, we collaborated with various municipal departments of the City of Vienna:
City of Vienna, municipal department 19 (Architecture and urban design)
City of Vienna, municipal department 28 (Streets and construction of streets)
City of Vienna, municipal department 42 (Vienna city gardens)
City of Vienna, municipal department 48 (Waste management, street cleaning and vehicle fleet)
City of Vienna, municipal department 33 (Public lighting)
City of Vienna, municipal department 11 (Social Vienna, child and youth welfare)
Further we were closely engaged with the Wiener Linien (transport services of Vienna) and the ÖBB (railway company of Austria) due to the various public transport lines that cross the place.
Social workers
Cultural technique
Traffic planning
Architecture
Since its reopening in the end of August 2022 the quality of stay has significantly increased. You can see many social classes staying here now, the many different places to sit are used in different ways as intended.
The social problems have noticeable decreased. Eliminating them completely is a matter of dreams, but they've gotten much better overall. During the nights the smart and comforting light concept increased the subjective security, during the days the various outdoor spaces and furniture islands made it easy for different social groups to co-exist. This refers not only to interaction on site but also to residents who live nearby and have until now mostly avoided the Praterstern.
The large shaded areas attract people, fog fountains provide cooling on hot days and the different seating areas provide solitude or space for gatherings, just as needed. The green belt around the place, close to the roundabout, provides a well-accepted barrier and even the seating areas closer to the traffic are being accepted very well. The idea of separating the traffic from the urban life through a green belt has worked out great and we were positively surprised how quickly the area has been used in the intended ways.
A technological innovation at this moment is certainly the implementation of huge areas of the sponge city. When we started planning at the Praterstern, many explanations and presentations of the technology were necessary to convince all the partners involved. This has already changed in recent years. For this particular project, we invented a partial percolation pipe that can deal with varying amounts of water to counteract both droughts and floods. The project was accompanied not only by experts, but also by FFG science funding to monitor the results.
Socially, an innovative approach is to include fringe groups into the planning process. Whether liked or disliked, fringe groups are part of the urban (sub-)culture and are a part of the city picture. Providing various functional and open spaces creates a generous overall picture. Banishing them to the outskirts of the city or to another less attractive spot of the city would simply shift the focus and would create higher costs for social workers and police by needing to establish new places for social support.
First, all partners identified about 50 interventions that the Praterstern could need. In a second step, we filtered them and boiled them down to 10 concrete interventions with feasible points. The specific interventions would enhance the space in different ways: e.g. lighting, shading, cooling, passing and passability, social matters, providing of different qualities of stay for different needs, etc.
We documented the Praterstern before (images by DnD Landschaftsplanung) and after its completion (images by Johannes Hloch).
As mentioned before, the sponge city has been widely researched and applied in this project. This technology will play a vital role in future city planning and will be adapted to various circumstances.
Also the way fringe groups have been taken into consideration can serve as an example. Fringe groups are a natural part of every city's (sub-)culture and therefore need to be considered in city planning. Leaving them out or banishing them from their places by exclusive planning for only privileged social groups would lead to their withdrawal, by which the problems only shift and where social infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch. It is therefore cheaper for institutions to include all social groups from the beginning on and provide inclusive ideas into the city environment.
Most obviously, we tackled climate change challenges of the specific urban area by establishing blue-green infrastructure above and underneath the ground. Further we created a big-scale best-practice example for belated installation of sponge city bodies in order to establish sustainable city drainage and water storage systems. Since the reopening of the Praterstern, international collaborators have already contacted us with the aim of knowledge transfer. The sponge city not only enhances the quality of stay around it, but also tackles city safety issues regarding flooding and heavy rain events.
Right now, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, by 2050 this part is expected to reach two-thirds. Managing urban spaces is therefore a central part of a sustainable, global future. As a place heavily visited by tourists from all around the world the Praterstern also functions as an example. Showing the world how to include people from all social classes and how to positively deal with differences among the population was a main goal.
Reducing emissions and fossil fuel consumption is in big parts a matter of individual car usage versus the use of public transport. A future aim for cities must therefore be to enhance the experience of using public transport. In order to get people away from their cars and into subs, trains and busses, the built environment of public transport stations must become a more comfortable, safer and more pleasant experience.
