The End of Red Vienna

Abstract

After decades of corporatist urban governance dominated by social democracy, Vienna is undergoing a process of economic and political restructuring. This process is expressed physically in large urban development projects, Donau City being the most important. Donau City is a large real estate project on the left bank of the Danube, based on public-private partnership. Due to the liberalization of the housing market, new private actors are increasingly important, influencing decision-making in the Donau City project. In urban planning in general, growing interest in real estate investment has resulted in new planning procedures incorrectly labelled as bottom-up. In fact, this is a fragmented, privatized, opaque and ad hoc form of urban governance accompanied by a new elitist hierarchy formed by leaders of the city’s administration, business and academic worlds. This new, unaccountable elite has elaborated a strategic plan for Vienna with little reference to the citizenry. Therefore, the new liberal form of governance goes hand in hand with important continuities concerning co-optation, exclusion and conflict avoidance. The article ends by stressing the importance of alternative political projects that aim at participatory democracy overcoming deep-rooted authoritarian structures.