PlaceCity

PlaceCity is a European cooperation project dealing with the variety and diversity of urban centres in Oslo and Vienna, analysing their potentials and setting fresh impulses. The 30-months project follows a transdisciplinary approach and mediates between citizens, organisations in the private sector and city administration. In Vienna, the project focuses on the city district of Floridsdorf.

The old city centre of Vienna might be the first city area tourists think about when visiting the Austrian capital, but Vienna has numerous dynamic urban centres around where the daily lives of locals evolve. PlaceCity is a European cooperation project that has received funding in the framework of the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe. The project focuses on the variety and diversity of urban centres in different cities, analysing their potentials and setting fresh impulses. The 30-month project follows a transdisciplinary approach, involving local actors in research and design decisions. It mediates between citizens, organisations in the private sector and city administration. The project is implemented in Oslo and Vienna. In Vienna, the project focuses on Floridsdorf. In the Viennese team, we work together with the City of Vienna’s urban planning and development unit (MA18) and the architecture and urbanism agency Superwien.

The Social Design team is developing fresh methods to infiltrate the centre of Floridsdorf. Upon noticing that the diversity of this district is mirrored in its hairdressers’ shop windows, we decided to use Floridsdorf’s hairdressers as our first contact to the residents. Hairdressers always address a specific clientele, and by contacting different hairdressers, we got access to people that represent Floridsdorf’s diversity, but are usually hard to reach. With these people, we conducted long, in-depth interviews and took walks along their daily routes through the district as a first phase in the project. The interviews focused on how and why people move through the city, for what purposes and errands they leave their home and for which reasons they leave Floridsdorf. We have learned how residents of Floridsdorf follow as well as create connections between different routes, places and hubs inside and outside their district. The interviews illustrate that specific living situations influence how people use public space and infrastructure and how this in turn creates different meanings of center and periphery.

Time
2019-2021
Location
Floridsdorf
Vienna
Team
Social Design
MA 18 – Urban Development and Planning
Superwien Architektur
Eutropian
Nabolagshager
City of Oslo
European Placemaking Network
STIPO
Links
https://urbanize.at/placecity-floridsdorf/