Reviewing the Smart City Vienna Framework Strategy’s Potential as an Eco-Social Policy in the Context of Quality of Work and Socio-Ecological Transformation

Jana Brandl,Irina Zielinska

doi:10.3390/su12030859

Abstract

In the face of an increasing awareness of environmental issues and the urgent need to tackle them without shifting the burden onto the most vulnerable social groups, calls for a socio-economic transformation are growing louder. However, there is no consensus on what transformative strategies should look like. Within the German-language literature one can broadly distinguish two transformative paradigms: the green economy paradigm, arguing for soft political steering mechanisms and technological innovations in order to green the current economic system and the degrowth paradigm, drawing the current growth-oriented economic system into question. In both approaches a tendency to marginalize issues of quality of work prevails. We argue that work is not only an integral part of one’s income, but also of one’s identity and psychosocial wellbeing as well as of social peace and cohesion and that it should therefore be at the heart of socio-ecological transformative strategies. We apply these theoretical considerations to the analysis of the Smart City Vienna Framework Strategy (SCWR), which is promoted as a holistic sustainability strategy paper. Additionally, we conducted expert workshops and interviews in order to analyze how stakeholders within the sectors with the highest CO2 emissions in Vienna perceive the SCWR in relation to work. We found that the SCWR does not live up to its potential as an eco-social policy as it remains tightly rooted within the green economy paradigm and does not account for the ecological dimension of work. The stakeholders’ perspectives on the SCWR vary according to the degree to which they are embedded within the green economy paradigm as well as their position within the economic system. However, generally the SCWR is not perceived as an eco-social policy and no connection is made between environmental issues and quality of work. We argue that transformative degrowth strategies could greatly benefit from making this connection explicit.

Highlights

While there is an increasing consensus that a socio-ecological transformation is necessary to tackle the climate crisis and associated social issues, analyses of the crisis and proposals for how to overcome it vary greatly [1]
Before we present the results of our analysis we will first clarify what we mean by “quality of work” and present the two prevailing discourses framing the socio-ecological transformation and associated policies: the green economy paradigm and discourses of degrowth
Potential conflicts between economic growth- and work-related issues are not addressed, but rather it is stressed that “the wide use of the most modern information- and communication technologies opens up a diverse working world, which responds to manifold interests of women and men and leads to a sufficient number of jobs that are designed in a way allowing for the compatibility of work and family” [5]

Summary

Introduction

While there is an increasing consensus that a socio-ecological transformation is necessary to tackle the climate crisis and associated social issues, analyses of the crisis and proposals for how to overcome it vary greatly [1]. Using a broad conceptualization of work, where it is considered to be an integral part of one’s identity, psychosocial wellbeing, income as well as social peace and cohesion and a central mechanism of relating to and interacting with nature, we argue that work should be at the heart of socio-ecological transformative policies. We apply our theoretical considerations to the empirical example of the Smart City Vienna Framework Strategy (SCWR)—a strategy paper of the city of Vienna aiming at integrating environmental, social and economic issues. It has to be pointed out that the role of work in a socio-ecological transformation cannot readily be studied as it is not often explicitly part of transformative strategies and there are several problems associated with collecting and analyzing related data

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion