What Can the Housing Market Teach Us? University Fieldtrips Identify Current Transitions in Vienna’s Urban Development and Housing Market Policies

Abstract

Vienna’s housing market serves as a posterchild example for affordable and social housing that includes the heritage of the “Red Vienna” housing projects, the city’s “Soft Urban Renewal Programme” as well as current housing projects in newly built urban development areas. Today, many European cities are suffering from tight housing markets and increasing rents, so in recent years the success of the housing market in Vienna has become ever more an object of interest. But also the Viennese housing market has been undergoing dynamic transformation in recent years. Although a large number of new dwellings have been created in both, the private and the public sector over the past ten years, rising rents are showing increasing demand for housing. This development is not just caused by growing population numbers, but also by shifting investment interests in the Vienna housing market, which produce affordability and access restrictions. Adequate and affordable housing is currently becoming a challenge for residents in Vienna. Over four consecutive semesters, Yvonne Franz and Elisabeth Gruber have been collecting evidence for housing market transformations by organising three-day fieldtrips for Master’s students at the University of Vienna. In addition to examining recent urban development forms and their resonance in the wider academic discourse, this article also shows how fieldtrips can be used as an important didactic tool in graduate education.