Residential housing construction as a means for urban development

Introduction
With just under a quarter of a million homes, the City of Vienna is one of the biggest
house owners worldwide. More than 150,000 financed homes since 1984, and an ongoing development of about 7,000 new homes each year, maintain the central role of the supported housing construction within the Vienna urban development. The continuing strong population increase incites the Vienna urban planning department to huge steps in their development. Currently, several large extension areas are in the state of planning and realisation. Those were the focal point of the threepart discursiveevent series "Housing construction as a means for urban development", which took placein the rooms of the IG Architektur in Vienna in autumn of 2010.

Conversational Method
Aims for the events/discussions were on the one hand an improvement of the mutua understanding of all parties involved in the construction phase - on a level playing field, and on the other hand a chance to have a look from the outside by means of inputs from international experts, as well as the search for new planning processes and award procedures. Analogous to the debate with regard to its contents, the choice of its format was especially important to the the events' concept. Hence the setting was developed in collaboration with a versed mediator from Berlin, and the presentations of the invited experts were moderated, applying different methods of group work. The approach used was chosen as a variation of an established model - via three zoomlike sub approaches: Zoom Habitation, Zoom City, Zoom Building.

Habitation and User Participation
'ZOOM Habitation' on October 20, 2010
The first evening addressed the topic habitation and user participation. The establishment of affordable and high quality housing is an objective of a sustainable urban development. Recent years show an increasing relevance of user participation in the sustainable housing origination. The first input was made by Dutch architect Laura Weeber, presenting the project Wallisblok in Rotterdam, in which she participated as a user (and not as a designer).
The second presentation of the evening by DI Petra Hendrich shed light on the general conditions for awarding authority groups (Baugruppen) in Vienna compared to those in German cities. The term "Baugruppe" stands for the fusion of private persons in order to jointly construct and then use a residential building. Result of the concluding discussion of the participants: the real-life and sustainable identification of the residents with the project, its preceding process and the existence of an active "community" that supports dialogue, are proof of the success of participative planning.

Cooperative Planning Methods for sustainable Urban Development
'ZOOM City' on November 10, 2010
The subject of the second evening was cooperative planning methods for a sustainable urban development. The Vienna residential building with its high quality standards will not be able to deal with future challenges through means and structures of conventional production conditions alone. Certain questions arise: What part of urban development hall residential building take on? What is urbanity? What does a liveable city want to achieve? Who takes part in the planning process, and how? An input for answering these questions was given by Walter Buser (Department of Urban Planning and Building Regulation - Urban Redevelopment and Residential Building in Munich), pointing out the tensions between politics, urban planning and residential building. Claudia Schelp explained how mediated monitoring was actively applied in the early states of project development in a development area of Berlin.

Residential Building at the Intersection between Users and City
'ZOOM Building' on November 24, 2010
Residential Building is constantly torn between the higher-ranking goals of urban planning on the one hand, and the tangible expectations of the users on the other. Economic, ecological and social needs have an effect on building and constructing within this scaled spectrum. Architects increasingly perceive themselves as the impulse for new and offbeat answers, and lend themselves as an intersection between reflections of urban building, interests of residents and users, and social requirements of neighbours in the quarter. The planning process for the project Zürich Kalkbreite, presented by Pascal Müller, addressed many of those issues. The project is a perfect example of cooperative development planning.