IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Barely anyone living in Vienna, Austria, remains unfamiliar with the narrative that the city affords a comfortable lifestyle. Recreational areas, public transportation and housing affordability are said to contribute to that livable life one allegedly has in Vienna, and international indexes affirm this image by ranking Vienna as the most livable city worldwide. This image builds on the social orientation of local urban planning practices, established in the interwar period of so-called “Red Vienna”. Contemporary policies too contribute to this image, most notably through the so-called “soft urban renewal” policies that combine (the goal of) high-quality affordable housing with a participatory approach. Based on an 18-months long institutional ethnography of Viennese public institutions active in the domain of urban renewal, this contribution interrogates whom the alleged livability of the city serves. I develop the idea of a livability apparatus that depoliticizes the issues at stake and conceals the primacy of economic development in livability matters. I show how, based on an interplay between discourse and institutions, the livability apparatus establishes the truth of Vienna as most livable as an uncontested value while operating at the expense of those who fail to fit into a middle class imaginary. “Soft urban renewal” policies are paradigmatic in this regard for the way in which they bring together major social cornerstones of the “Viennese way” of urban planning and play into the ongoing interurban competition in which the city excels and which imperils precisely what the livability apparatus is praising, namely affordable housing.