The Smart City of Vienna from a Perspective of Urban Wilderness

The concept of urban wilderness has gained importance in urban and landscape planning debates in recent years. Urban wilderness is seen as a cost-effective strategy for creating recreational space, protecting biodiversity and dealing effectively with problems such as climate change. While these potentials are usually discussed in connection with urban wasteland and green spaces, a comprehensive exploration of urban wilderness as a quality of urban areas that can be transferred to different elements of a city is still lacking. In this study, urban wilderness will therefore be framed less as a category of clearly delineated areas, but rather as an alternative perspective on the city as a whole. Taking into account aspects of urban justice, the project will explore which elements of the city of Vienna different social groups associate with urban wilderness and how these can influence demands for and expectations towards urban wilderness. In order to capture the views and needs of a socio-culturally diverse urban population as comprehensively as possible, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with people from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds living in Vienna. Based on the compilation of list of attributes and a first typology of urban wilderness, the project will lay the ground to better assess the potentials and barriers of urban wilderness as an alternative perspective on the city.