Robert Korab

Cities are complex ecospheres, combining great diversity and high efficiency with high density of environmental loads and strong restrictions to life. Nevertheless we have to keep the advantages and diminish the loads to generate a rich pattern of diverse urban habitats that satisfy different needs and lifestyles. This could be a vision for Biotope City.
To fulfil this goal we have to change the attitude of urban planning and urban policies. Structural improvements and empowerment of the key actors to do their every day life business in a more sustainable way are prior to classical regulatory politics. Actors and driving forces of urban development have to learn and improve by themselves. Principle goal is to increase welfare and living chances in the urban habitat for all of its inhabitants.
The housing sector can be seen as the ‘body’ of Biotope City, since it forms the habitat of the main and most impressive biological population – the human population. It has far reaching ecological, economical and social impacts on the constitution of Biotope City.
The City of Vienna historically adopted housing as a main field of urban politics. In 1995, Vienna started a new policy, considerably improving the planning and ecological qualities in urban housing construction, but avoiding higher production costs and rents.. The means for achieving this: Quality competitions for property developers seeking public subsidies, with strong integration of sustainability aspects.
The competition model has given an in-depth impulse to Viennas housing sector, facilitating modernization and innovation and boosting structural changes both at local and regional level. Following that way house-building and housing are well prepared to make their future contributions to Biotope City.

Cities are complex ecospheres
It’s a short minded view to regard cities as devastated landscapes. Cities are very special human-ecological formations that have high potentials:

• With their strong, dense and complex material and social interactions they maintain a high level of diversity both in cultural and natural dimensions
• In comparison to their intellectual and material outputs the middle european, densely populated cities and agglomerations have an only moderate demand for energy and natural resources to maintain these interactions
• In this perspective they have to be regarded as highly efficient, spatially optimised ecospheres
  On the other hand, the huge amount of interactions, intellectual and material turnovers come along with a number of severe physical risks and disadvantages:
• Dramatically high level of entropy and losses in energetical (thermal losses) and material (waste, emissions) dimensions
• High area density of land use and environmental loads cut down appropriate living spaces for all inhabitants of the urban biosphere

So despite of the altogether high efficiency of the city as an ecological system we have to face strong restrictions in living spaces for the individuals and species and unhealthy concentrations of environmental loads. Within some ‘hot spots’ of the urban environment this leads to severe degradations of the biosphere.

 

More Sustainability needs structural empowerment
In fact this situation is not exclusive: The solution is to keep and improve the efficiency of the urban habitat and on the other hand widen the margins for attaining biological and social (or ‘community’) welfare. In terms of systems ecology this can be seen as a new and higher level of dynamic (‘homeostatic’) equilibrium. This doesn’t necessarily come along with a completely ‘physically clean’ environment. In the core it means to create a dense pattern of multiple degrees of freedom for the diverse inhabitants of the urban ecotope – biological species as well as classes and groups of humans with their different needs and lifestyles.
It is easy to imagine that such a complex pattern of improved ‘living chances’, such a rise of prosperity, can never be created by merely focussing on the physical parameters of the environment. This is the ‘classical path’ environmental protection follows. But this kind of defensive repair strategy is not sufficient to gain sustainability and structural welfare, interwoven into the urban habitat. Moreover, our aims to realize Biotope City rises the challenge to empower the urban system to undergo structural improvements far beyond (necessary) material improvements.
What does this mean from a systems theory viewpoint? In terms of sustainable development it means that a system has to change its internal behaviour and focus of development by its own. It is not a matter of forcing the system to move by setting up external rules and restrictions. Sustainable development is necessarily based on the self organizing and self learning forces of the systems itself and its key actors. All of the actors have to learn their games at their own, using their own means and skills.

Urban policies refocused
What does this mean from the viewpoint of urban planning and urban policies? Planning and politics no longer can rely merely on their material framing, material laws, regulations etc. They have to accept the diversity and self organizing forces of the real-world urban habitat. But they would be ill-advised to completely trust in the ‘self-regulating’ market forces. Plants and animals and the primary feelings and social needs of human individuals have only a very small and single eyed representation at the level of market economy.
So what can planning and urban policies rely on? In our time and cultural system they can trust in the implicit and primary aim of the leading key actors to stay among the best of their profession, to compete with others for maintaining and servicing well known, user-friendly, worth living and valuable facilities and products. Today this is true for capitalist enterprises as well as for non-profit organizations and even for public bodies. And they may influence this competition by awarding and supporting the best, by boosting Good Practices, tolerating the average and cutting off old fashioned, un-valuable and un-sustainable practices.
The latter is also the principle new Viennese housing politics is relying on. In the following I will give you a short insight into history, goals, outcomes and driving forces of these politics.

The housing sector shapes the body of Biotope City
At first let me throw a flashlight on the meaning of the housing and construction sector for our vision of Biotope City. The residential building sector is one of the key factors in Biotope City, since it is the habitat of the main and most impressive biological population – the human population. Residential buildings and neighbourhoods shape the body of Biotope City.
Predominantly, urban residential areas are formed by comparatively dense building structures, consisting of multi-storey houses. Hence from the ecological and socio-economic viewpoint, construction and renovation of those multi storey, often high-volume residential buildings are key issues of urban sustainability and sustainability in general. This is at least true for the European hemisphere, but by the time gets more and more important for urban agglomerations all over the world.
Now let us look at the urban habitat from the point of view of the well known ‘sustainability triangle’, comprising ecology, economy and social aspects. Basic environmental effects and aspects of the urban housing sector under Austrian conditions are:

• Construction activities contribute by more than 50 million of tons annually or approximately 1/3 (!) to the overall material flow of the Austrian economy.
• More than 1/3 of overall Austrian end energy consumption is bound to heating, approximately 40 % to heating and warm water supply.
• In the field of heating lies the biggest and most sustainable energy saving potential, and consequently one of the most important contributions to reducing environmental loads and in particular impacts on climate change.
• Buildings are ‘long life products‘. Unfavourably planned and designed buildings affect the environment and the welfare of its inhabitants for a very long time.

Important socio-economical aspects are:

• More than 50 % of the Austrian population live in urban areas. In the Netherlands this number is even higher.
• Approximately 50 % of the Austrian apartment stock is located in multi-storey buildings with at least 2 apartments.
• Economic scopes and effects in high volume urban residential building sector are – compared to the small housing sector – extensive and easier to manage. We have to deal with less individual owners and housing companies that can be reached easier and tend to quickly adopt successful behaviour and strategies.
The social importance of the housing sector for Biotope City’s body can easiliy be derived from the following suggestions:
• People spend far more than half of their lives in their domestic homes or neighbourhoods. They are anchoring and starting points for all activities and form peoples basic perceptions and spirits to a high extent. Our domestic neighbourhood mainly tunes our lives.
• Most of peoples common needs are fulfilled within the neighbourhood, including basics of leisure and entertainment demands.

Now that we have touched on the systemic and political background and the dimensions of sustainability in Biotope City’s‘housing body’, let us take a keener look at the solutions that Vienna proposes as part of the way that leads toward Biotope City.

 

The Vienna model: Developers Competitions for public subsidies
Regarding the social dimension the city of Vienna is well known for its social housing policies during the period from 1920 to 1933. As anywhere else in Europe, housing policies and housing construction in the second half of the 20th century was dominated by mass production of domestic homes to fulfil the rapidly growing needs of an increasingly wealthier urban population. Yet in the 1990s the housing market turned to shift from a supply market to a demand market. At the same time construction and renting costs raised sharply. In that situation the city council of Vienna decided to use its subsidies spent for social housing (about 75% of the annually new housing production are granted public subsidies) to gain more influence on quality and costs of urban housing production. Backed up by politicians and the urban administration, a group of independent experts developed the procedure and rules of the so called ‘Developers Competitions’.
The procedure, carried out internationally for the first time on such a large scale, is based on the principle of free competition of house-building enterprises for public subsidies. In addition to non- profit building societies, also commercial property developers are authorized to participate. The procedure differs from conventional town-planning and architectural competitions inasmuch as the applicants for the project concerned are the property developers themselves. Another aspect is different, too: The economic and ecological qualities of the project are regarded as being of equal importance as those of the plans and the architecture.
The essential element of the Vienna competition model are the competitions of property developers arranged by the authority granting the subsidies (the Province of Vienna) and dealing with big plots of land to be developed. It is a chief aim of the competitions to reduce both the production costs and those to be paid by the users (own resources, rents) in the field of constructing multi-storeyed residential buildings and, at the same time, seeing to it that there will be perfect quality in terms of planning and of environmental technology: For the tenders to be invited, not only the usual planning documents are requested, but also a number of indicators and criteria have been developed, in various spheres: planning quality, economy and environmental relevance/ ecology [compare the Annex: Assessment Criteria]. On the basis of all these elements a panel of judges evaluates and compares the projects submitted.
Parallel to the competitions all the other house-building projects in Vienna for which subsidies are sought have been getting appraised since autumn 1995 by a council of experts, performing an individual but in all cases identical procedure. The council then recommends subsidization or rejects the application. Just like the panel deciding in the competitions, also the council of experts is composed of architects, representatives of the house-building business and of the authority inviting tenders (the Province of Vienna) and specialists in ecology/ environmental technology, the economy and law.
So far more than 200 projects have been subjected to judgement in the course of competition procedures and more than 300 to the opinion to be passed by the council of experts. In all, a project volume of more than 60,000 housing units has been assessed during the last 7 years. Of the submitted projects all told, a building volume of more than 30,000 dwellings was recommended for implementation.

More ‘Intelligence of Building’
The competitions of property developers already fulfil the function of forming the standard for all the housing construction in Vienna. Especially the standard of environmental quality has been raised considerably. The quality of the projects submitted to the council of experts (they account for three quarters of all the house-building projects for which subsidies are recommended while those entered in the competitions of property developers account for the remaining one quarter) matches the standard valid in the competitions, although with some retardation.
The fact is worth stressing that the achieved high standards of quality are not based on rules and/or norms, but are solely the result of the quality competition. The appraisal yardstick applied by the panel and by the council of experts is not fixed, but flexible, oriented by the average standard of the projects submitted. As the quality rose, also the relative yardstick became more exacting. This means that, for getting subsidies, more must now be offered than as recently as three years ago. The innovation power of the house-building enterprises competing with each other is stimulated by the body giving its opinion not being a ‘schoolmaster’, but playing the role of a knowledgeable, hard-to-please arbiter. In the final analysis, also the property developers benefit from this because on a housing market with demand for excellence quality getting better and better increases the sales chances.
The Vienna Model has achieved a special success by cutting the building costs and those of the flats – despite substantial improvements of the planning and ecological quality – in no time by more than 10% on an average. They have settled down at this low level although the quality keeps improving. The simultaneous reduction of the public subsidies available has necessitated progress in the design and the architectural-technical optimalisation of the projects. In a general way, this has been conducive to ‘the intelligence of building’. New products and environmental technologies have come onto the market. Partly, this has led to considerable reductions of the prices of certain products and technologies.

Ecology matters greatly
Below is a survey of environmental standards already attained in the field of house-building in Vienna:

• In all the houses built newly the low-energy standard is ensured, in accordance with the decree on thermic protection and the building code. This causes an annual demand for heating energy of less than 35 and at the most 50 KWh per m2 of floor space. Compared with the situation in 1995, this means a reduction by approximately 50% of the estimated consumption of energy for heating rooms in dwellings built with public assistance.
• There is an obvious trend towards optimising buildings by using solar energy. On the one hand, gains possible by passive use of solar energy are now striven for more than before when the plans are made. This also provides better lighting and more sunlight to the flats. On the other hand, heating water by means of thermic solar collectors is a method now often applied in large-volume housing construction.
• A number of projects provide for utilization of waste heat gained from waste waters and waste air, in some cases also in connection with grey-water recycling in order to procure non-drinking water. Most of the alternative.energy systems are dual ones, laid together with distant heating and the lines of basic supply.
• As for saving water, single meters for measuring consumption of cold water are now standard equipment of all the new flats. A great number of projects provide for facilities making it possible to use non-drinking water for flushing WCs and for irrigating park areas.
• In the field of in-house technology and energy, contracting models are now used more and more. Together with the ever-increasing demand for counselling in matters of housing construction, a specialized market with innovative technical services enterprises has come into being.
• Remarkable are, furthermore, the now better standards regarding construction physics and construction ecology. Good examples of this are high-quality, from the viewpoint of construction physics optimalised wall structures, facades and systems offering full thermic protection as well as excellent windows and glazing for the sake of thermic protection. When designing the interior, mainly construction-biologically unobjectionable and certified materials are now getting used.
• The use of products and materials apt to endanger the environment has decreased substantially. PVC, for instance, is hardly used anymore. As of 1999, the applicants for subsidies are asked to refrain from using any building materials or products containing HCFC/HFC. This measure alone will lead in Vienna to a reduction of gases adversely affecting the climate of a magnitude equal to all the climate-damaging emissions from industrial enterprises.
• Regarding construction more and more attention is paid to low-cost, economical and nevertheless high-quality methods of building. The combination of economical methods of building with superlative quality of the building components and materials as well as with sophisticated but robust in-house technology constitutes an absolutely trend-setting development, impressively documentining the acquired higher intelligence of building.

Last but not least there is now more sensibility, having led to better awareness of the interconnections between the building, the environment and the surroundings of the dwellings. An example worth mentioning is the ever-increasing quality – in terms of the design and the environmental impact – of the open and green spaces. Positive from the viewpoint of urban ecology are the efforts to minimise the paved spaces, e.g. by building garages in such a way that not much ground is needed, as well as the measures taken to improve the soil and to bring about better seepage of precipitation water. It is worth stressing that the measures designed to improve the environment of the buildings are producing favourable effects in several respects: They ameliorate the quality of staying and of recreating oneself next to the dwelling; they contribute to the ‘revitalisation’ of green areas scarce especially in the big city, and they establish equilibrium in the balance of nature and in the microclimate.

 

Cheap, ecological, satisfactory, innovative
It is the objective of the New Vienna Housing Construction System to combine the economic aims closely with the social, planning and ecological ones, thereby substantially increasing ‘the value of the residence’ for all those concerned. The property developers want to build flats that can be sold easily, with maintenance costs as low as possible and finding tenants without any difficulties even after twenty years. As for the residents, they want a high-quality, durable product tailored to their needs and, moreover, not causing much operating cost. Finally, the City of Vienna wants to spend as little subsidization money as possible and nevertheless offer a good quality of life, residence and environment to its citizens even in the long term.
These goals can be achieved if good ecological solutions are not merely of an isolated demonstration character, but also bring manifest advantages in terms of the national economy and managerial economics. The buildings pay for their residents if the operating costs are low and if people have the feeling that they inhabit ‘healthy’ houses. The property developers get what they want if they own attractive, well-built housing developments with a long service life. As for the City of Vienna, the projects pay if it can do without construction of power stations and new waterworks and if the environmental and social repair costs are cut.
The persons involved and the aims are brought together via the ‘market of residences as a quality product’. This development is supported by property developers now better and better informed and by excellent planners. They no longer shun product innovations and pilot projects serving as models. Until recently, research and development played only a rather minor role in the building trade specializing in construction of residential houses. However, the latter are very durable, expensive products, with the owners having accepted very long-term liabilities and risks. Therefore, projects giving examples, as reference facilities working perfectly and constructional model solutions, are an indispensable prerequisite for the establishment in the medium term of new, generally spread product qualities. What an individual property developer taking individual risk has tested on a small scale as ‘an experiment of his own’ requires, in the field of building multi-storey residential houses; milestones in the form of proven model solutions. In housing construction in Vienna, milestones are being set indeed, in terms of planning, constructional technology and ecology. In a few years from now they will perhaps have become residential standard.

The main scene of action in the future: revitalisation of what exists
In the medium-term perspective the emphasis of house-building is likely to shift more and more from construction of new residential houses to revitalisation of what exists already. For more than fifteen years the City of Vienna has been pursuing its policy of ‘gentle’ urban renewal. During this period, public subsidies have been granted generously in order to revitalise more than 100,000 housing units all told. Redeveloped were especially residential buildings and big housing developments dating from the so-called ‘Gründerzeit’ in the last third of the 19th century and from the time between the two world wars. Many of the houses benefiting are city-owned. Since about two years ecological criteria are considered more and more when revitalisation projects are tackled. For a fairly long time already, special subsidies to the amount of up to € 180 per m2 of floor space are available for ecological measures taken in the course of redeveloping residential buildings.
In addition to its subsidization of the old housing inventory, the City of Vienna from 2000 on procures at least € 30 million up to 50 million annually in the form of public subsidies for the thermic/energy-wise improvement of residential buildings erected in the period from the fifties to the eighties. Presumably this will permit improving annually buildings with more than 10,000 flats all told, where in the year 2000 buildings with 20,000 flats were refurbished. This will be a matter of investing at least € 90 million a year to raise the environmental and residing standards. Graduation of the rates of subsidization and a differentiated system of assessment ensures utmost ecological and economic efficiency in using the funds.
The new promotion scheme made it possible for the first time to revitalise residential houses dating from nearly all the building periods. Especially remarkable is the fact that the quality criteria guiding the allocation of subsidies for building or revitalising residential houses steer the promotion funds getting scarcer and scarcer much better in the direction of projects that are of high quality in terms of planning and the ecology and, moreover, economical.

Big effects - little price
In practice the issue of whether the project concemed is economically efficient of course always plays, in the final analysis, a decisive role. What will innovative action and environmentally benign building really bring and what will it cost? An example of this:
The realization of the de facto low-energy standard in new housing construction in Vienna causes extra costs, accounting for percentages of the building costs. Together with the more or less cost- neutral reorientation to building materials free from HCFC/HFC a reduction can be achieved, with very little extra costs, of the house emissions adversely affecting the climate. Compared with the state in 1995, this amounts to more than 30%. Besides the reduction of the extemal follow-up costs caused in the environment, also the expenses for heating the flats can be cut, by up to 50%. Although the prices of energy at present are relatively low, the tenants pay by up to 10% less for their flats.
In addition to the cost advantages also those in terms of environmental policy and the national economy are striking: Total consumption of energy in all of Austria might be reduced by at least 10% if in alI of the dwellings in this country heating were saved to the amount of the same percentages as this is now the case in house-building in Vienna. When improving, for instance, the architectural substance dating from the period between the fifties and the seventies, this goal might be attained with not much technical effort. This would permit over fulfilling, at least regarding private households, even the severe Toronto objective of reducing CO2 emissions by 20%, to be brought about by low-cost energy-saving measures in the sphere of heating residential buildings. Even in terms of Austria’s total consumption of energy a large part of the Kyoto objective would already be reached thereby.
If the environmental investment ‘packages’ connected with such measures were calculated and financed separately, they would pay off already after a few years. The example given illustrates the importance of the contracting models. They make it possible to outsource the costs of saving energy and water and to channel them in a special financing cycle where they amortise soon. The field of application of such and similar financing models is not limited to building new houses. In a much broader sense such models might be used when revitalising existing residential houses. Not only the technical redevelopment itself, but also measures taken to alter the city and to upgrade – town planning-wise and design-wise – big housing developments could thus be managed and financed by going new ways and by applying novel models of private-public partnership.

From building to house management
What was mentioned above already outlines, generally speaking, the policy to be pursued in the future in the fields of large-volume housing construction and urban renewal: Disintegration of the responsibilities and costs for the design and social functions of housing developments from the operating and technical services and their costs. This can be combined, but not necessarily, with a disintegration of the connected services rendered by the planners and the operators. At any rate it is desirable to step up in the field of housing – and analogously to the rest of the economy – professionalism, division of labour and orientation towards the customers. Last but not least, this would create markets for new enterprises and new kinds of services. Procurement of intelligent extra services and the development of innovations would be stimulated. As for the consumers, i.e. the tenants, generally cost-optimalising management of residential houses would be in the medium or long term cost-neutral or even bring considerable advantages.
The present system is not tenable any longer. It is characterized by the fact that the various functions connected with residing are for their most part predetermined, more or less definitively, already when the building has been constructed. This is a matter of technical, social and commercial aspects of managing and using a building. From now on, more scope should be allowed to innovation dynamics. This will permit more cost-efficient, more flexible and at the same time environmentally optimal construction and management of residential houses. Especially buildings with modal splits of use would benefit, too.
To an extent, this aim is already being pursued by the new projects for house-building in Vienna. More and more projects are no longer getting devised by the property developers alone nor exclusively on the basis of conventional constructional and technical criteria. Especially when competitions of property developers are arranged, interdisciplinarily composed teams are formed early. Together, the members elaborate a comprehensive view of the project concemed, ranging from its very conception to issues of planning and the technology and to those of marketing and exact cost estimates. The next step will be taken by no longer regarding housing construction as a singular task of building, but as a constituent part of the town planning for all of Vienna. The property developer thus would occupy a position at longer term and structurally more oriented towards the market. A major step would have been taken indeed, from the person who builds to the general developer.

Most important are the structural innovations
This is where – referring to our theme Biotope City– the results of the so-called Viennese Way are getting completed: Even more important and more sustainable than the gratifying improvements of the planning and environmental standards are the structural innovations contributed by the Vienna Model. New viennese house-building is about to become, in organisational and economic respects, a major factor of modernization of the city. The keynotes and characteristics of this development are:

Quality is generated by intelligence
A high planning and environmental quality is the result of integrative project development and planning. This leads to projects tending to be more perfect and more harmonious, offering not just single highlights, but an optimal overall performance. Increasing the sustainability of building and residing necessitates primarily intelligence and only secondarily technical innovations. The dynamics of the innovation climate caused by the competition situation is conducive – in the long term – to increasing the investments made in ‘residing’ as a product. This should be interpreted not onIy as building accommodations, but also as a process leading to the establishment of the infrastructure necessary for keeping ‘residing’ as a vital function in a fashion benign to the environment and capable of undergoing change if needs be.

The present development gives impulses to sustainable progress of the economy in the Vienna region
Regarding the projects assessed to date, the project developers estimate the extra costs for special equipment in terms of environmental technology and of ecology at between € 22 and 110 per square metre of floor space entitled to subsidization. In the course of implementation of projects recommended via competitions or the council of experts, this being a matter of more than 30,000 housing units, the improved standards of environmental quality in the field of house-building in Vienna have touched off an additional investment volume of approximately € 200 million, used for environment-protection measures.
This extra market volume for environmental technologies and for products friendly to the environment is giving a strong impulse to the development of the economy in the Vienna region, guided by the principle of sustainability. Owing to the quality competitions a new market has been created for innovative products, including construction and facility technologies. The innovative dynamics in the otherwise rather conservative building trade and housing economy has increased considerably whereas some of the prices of high-quality products and facilities have decreased substantially. Good products and solutions have become both more attractive and cheaper.

An innovative building and housing trade is a major factor of modernization of the regional economy
In view of its substantial investment volume relatively independent from economic fluctuations, an innovative building and housing trade is a major factor of modernization of the regional economy. An attractive domestic market and large project volumes form a financial backbone, permitting the development on a large scale of innovative concepts, products and technologies so that they will become mature for the market. Furthermore, an attractive domestic market stimulates the establishment and progress of innovative enterprises.
Regional projects serving as a reference make it easier for these enterprises to use their competitive edge in the field of technology for gaining a foothold on supraregional markets.

House-building subsidization tomorrow: away from mass promotion, replacing it by quality promotion and structure improvement
The social and housing-policy general setting for house-building subsidization is undergoing rapid change. Previous functions, such as reconstructing residential buildings and providing low-priced accommodations to the masses, are no longer necessary or have become much different. Public subsidies are getting scarcer and scarcer and, therefore, have to be used very purposefully in social and housing respects. Moreover, it will become necessary to pool – more than up to now – the various promotion funds (house-building subsidies, business promotion, technology promotion, etc.) and use them for the general ‘alteration of the city’ and, respectively, for improving the structure of Vienna. Revitalisation of existing residential houses and construction of new ones should continue to play a chief and integrative role when whole blocks of buildings and parts of the town are getting redeveloped. The housing economy, as a competent branch of project development and services, in the interest of proper performance of the task of altering the city, can no longer limit itself to supplying flats, but also will have to develop an integral view of ‘residing’ as a market-oriented service. It will be its duty to combine social obligations with private- sector handling and superlative customer service. The Vienna Model, suitable for achieving top quality with as little public subsidization as possible, has strengthened also private-sector and customer- oriented thinking in the non-profit housing trade. The quality competition for subsidies and the stiffening competition for attracting home seekers have had the effect of much more intellectual services and private capital than before getting used today for developing innovations and arriving at intelligent solutions. Housing construction thus has gained a number of additional social, economic and technological facets. Comprehensive development of a project, in terms of planning, constructional technology and the economy – has gained in importance considerably. Many builders of residential houses have begun to develop novel fields of competence and business, going far beyond the building and operating ones of conventional property developers. The new and/or future services provided by property developers range from intensified and continuous customer service to facility management and to supplying social services in the environment of the accommodations. Much more attention than before is being paid also to the recreation value of housing developments. Several projects giving impulses to town planning as well as various special housing projects are in the stage of preparation or already implementation. They will focus things on new lines, e.g. by combining ‘residing’ with ‘working’, by ‘theme’ dwellings and by bringing about social integration. Thus, the housing branch of the economy is about to become, besides merely building, an important partner, participating in the efforts to shape the city and the society well.

Success due to networking and co- operation
On the Viennese way of quality competitions a networking of knowledge, expertise, economic power and social responsibility is taking place at several levels:

• A perspective much broader than mere construction technique has become a success criterion in house-building in Vienna. When a project is getting developed, property developers, financiers, architects, specialists, the suppliers in the field of the building trade and the construction industry and representatives of the offices allocating the dwellings are brought to a common table early.
• Due to the now keener demand for innovative projects and products the rate of research & technical development in the building sector has increased considerably, although this branch otherwise tends to shy away from innovations. Novel products and technologies have been developed and have come onto the market. This has necessitated stronger coupling of demand, production and technical intelligence. Simultaneously and more so than previously, the requests and requirements of the customers using the buildings have become a focal point of interest shown by the producers of buildings.
• The higher requirements regarding project care have been conducive to the coming into being of novel, interdisciplinary views and abilities also of administrative offices of the City of Vienna.

The selected form – collective assessment – leads to the formation of specific competence within the group giving its opinion. This is good for mutual understanding in a fashion transcending the various disciplines.

 

New developments and competences need to be communicated broadly so that they can become a natural component of the philosophy in the field of housing
Together with the new standards and requirements in house-building and in revitalisation also the demand for new qualifications has risen, especially in matters conceming the environment, but also what regards project development. Therefore, the City of Vienna soon after introduction of the competition procedure set up an ‘Advice Office for Issues of Environmental Technology and Urban Ecology in the Field of Housing Construction’. All those involved in house-building (property developers, architects, specialists, representatives of the building trade and the construction industry as well as staff members of the pertinent municipal offices) can inform themselves about the new requirements and examination dimensions of the competition procedure and, specifically, about problems of environmental technology and the ecology. The advice office has the function of an intermediary and of an information and innovation agency. It is its duty to accompany, giving expert advice, project development and technological innovations and to network the various competences acquired at several levels. This has been complemented, since 1999, by an information service on the Internet (‘Infoservice Wohnen und Bauen’ http://www.iswb.at). Offering a survey of innovative projects and technologies, of research work and legal regulations governing housing construction, this service is to be developed further, becoming an electronic platform for discussions among experts.

Structural innovations are the backbone of Biotope City
Thanks to the structural innovations and especially to the purposeful build-up of competence and to the networking of existing expert knowledge the integration of requirements of environmental technology and ecology has been accomplished in Vienna, already becoming action routine when residential houses are under construction. Thus, house-building in Vienna was brought so to speak ‘from within’ – by sensibilisation, further education and activation of the persons involved – onto the way towards even better quality. Seen in the long-term perspective, this indicates what the future house-building standards and residential requirements will be.
Returning to what I called at the beginning the need for structural improvement or structural empowerment: In that light the technical achievements are of less importance than the much more essential changes of the positions and attitudes of persons involved in the housing sector, seeking now more sustainability and a safer future in the field of housing. Thereby, only the high motivation and close co-operation of all the participating persons and key actors can make sure that ‘residing’ will be and remain in every respect, i.e. equally from the social, ecological and economic points of view, a sustainable foundation of human and natural urban societies – enabling, empowering and creating urban habitats that lead toward our common vision of Biotope City.

ANNEX: Assessment Criteria in Developers Competitions

Assessment fields and categories	AssessmentRange
PLANNING	Mean value of:
General quality of the development	0 – 100 points
Floor Plan, functionality	0 – 100 points
Quality of living and working conditions	0 – 100 points
Architecture and Urban Design	0 – 100 points
ECONOMY	Mean value of:
Overall construction costs	0 – 100 points
Costs for users/buyers	0 – 100 points
Relation of costs to quality standards	0 – 100 points
Consumer-friendlyness of user contracts	0 – 100 points
ECOLOGY	Mean value of:
Building Technology, Construction base lines, technical facilities	0 – 100 points
Building ecology, use of ecologically sound materials	0 – 100 points
Indoor quality, sunlight exposition, lighting, human toxics	0 – 100 points
Urban ecology(ecosystems approach), landscape architecture, open and green spaces	0 – 100 points