Generating Models of Urban Sustainability


Generating Models of Urban Sustainability:
Vienna's Westbahnhof Sustainable Hill Town
Heidi Dumreicher, Richard S. Levine, Ernest J. Yanarella and Taghi Radmard


Introduction
The dawning millennium beckons us with a future offering enormous promise and unparalleled risk. Like the age of Dickens' two cities, the twenty-first century presents opposing faces. It will be either the century of sustainability or the century of ecological collapse. It will be the century where the continuation of the unsustainable economic practices of today precipitate irreversible catastrophes. Or it will be the century where small local successes in implementing sustainable practices and processes proliferate and transform the entire global economy into a balance-seeking relationship with our natural ecosystem. It will be the century where the analytical, reductionistic methods of science and industry that are the sources of both our progress and our increasingly unsustainable way of life. will continue as the central economic paradigm: or it will be the century where a new integrative economic paradigm emerges which promises to reconcile humankind with the natural environment, whose health is the precondition for all human activity.

We are thus confronted with the ecological and social choice of either continuing our descent into the realm of un sustain ability, while denying that it is the consumerist/materialist path that is the problem, or shifting to a new emerging paradigm. Unfortunately, few recognize that a real alternative exists to the prevailing path. Therefore, the primary challenge facing our generation "is to develop a real and viable alternative to decline, not merely on a theoretical basis, but in a real place: the sustainable city.

Urban sustainability is an idea whose time has come (Yanarella and Levine, 1992b). While the required change may seem enormous, it may actually take very little to precipitate such a paradigm shift. It took only one steam engine, one light bulb and one photocopying machine to trigger previous social and technological revolutions. So too, it may take only one city operating within the limits of its resources and its environment to prove to all others not only that sustainability is possible, but that it is the only possible way cities and their economies can be designed and managed to ensure the long-term survival. Fortunately, an operational theory of the sustainable city is in place and has been embedded in the Charter of European Cities and Towns Towards Sustainability (European Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign, 1994). Many towns and cities are attempting to implement the Charter in programs and urban projects.

The focus of this chapter is Vienna's Westbahnhof project, an ambitious undertaking now in the third phase of its conceptualization and design at the Centre for Sustainable Cities at the University of Kentucky, in association with Oikodrom in Vienna. Because the underlying framework of this project departs in significant respects from conventional approaches to sustainability, the chapter begins with an extended outline of its theoretical underpinnings and design elements, as well as the historical model and precursor to its 'city-as-a-hill' design.

Then, through text and illustrations. it explores the fundamental effort to integrate urban architectural design with strong sustainability principles into a program for implementing a Sustainable City Implantation (SCT) upon and over the present Westbahnhof site. The purpose is to demonstrate not only that sustainability in a place is imperative, but that it is possible and realizable. When completed, the implantation may become the first project in Europe to fully implement the principles of the Aalborg Charter and, in so doing, become Europe's first modern sustainable city.



The Sustainable City of the Past
The sustainable city is not a new phenomenon. Historic towns and cities around the world did not have a choice. If they existed for any length of time it was only because they were able to develop and maintain a continually re-balancing relationship among their internal social and economic activities and with their wider natural and agricultural landscape (Levine, 1987) .. Ironically, it is a tribute to our genius that we have been able to create an artificial economic system and larger' second nature' that have been able to operate on a new unsustainable basis for many generations. We have been able to do this because of the brilliant ways we have contrived to export the problems we have created either to poorer, less defensible regions or to future generations. But the fact that those problems cannot be indefinitely forestalled, and . that cascading effects of that unsustainable future are rapidly mounting is becoming increasingly clear.

The sustainable patterns of past cultures are very similar to the ways in which a natural ecosystem .operates. Like an historic town, a natural ecosystem is a strong local economy working as an interconnected network, typified by regenerative cycles of energy and material flows. In nature, processes turn on themselves and return to their roots; there is no waste. Over time, the diversity, resiliency and, thus, stability of the ecosystem increases. Indeed, as Redclift (1987) and others (Yanarella and Levine, 1992a) have pointed out, complex ecosystems, like tropical rain forests, achieve eco-sustainability or homeostatic balance, or what natural ecologists call 'climax systems' of high diversity, large biomass, and high stability through protection from rapid change and' through shifts of energy flows away from production and towards the maintenance of the system itself (Redclift, 1987, p.18). By contrast, human settlements typically seek to stall such ecosystems in early stages of ecological succession, where the yield of products is high, but where the stabilizing elements of organic matter and biomass fail to accumulate. High production within these ecosystems then comes at a high price. The result is a state of arrested development in social systems.

The good news is that the sustainability movement is growing and is a worldwide phenomenon. The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and the Climate Change Conference in Kyoto in 1997 are just two of the many international activities striving to confront our growing environmental problems. The bad news is that the principal vehicles employed in this movement are the largely analytic, reductionistic methods that have arguably created the very problems that the movement is struggling to address. This overwhelmingly quantitative approach insists that we must commit ourselves to do more with less and less. While this approach offers successful initial steps (recycling aluminum, changing to fluorescent fixtures, more tightly insulating homes and so on), subsequent steps become successively more difficult, more expensive, less popular, and less effective, until a point of diminishing returns is reached long before sustainable balances have been achieved (Levine and Yanarella, 1994). Equally troubling is that this pervasive quantitative approach is also a top-down approach starting at the global level (e.g., Rio) and working its way down to regional, national and local programs of restriction and regulation. Such an approach is fraught with the inevitable controversy and conflict (who is to make which sacrifices and on what basis'?) that are likely to breed dissension and division, and defuse any initial momentum. In any case, as the Rio Plus Five conference indicated, the record has not been promising.

An alternative approach exists that, while less visible in the US, has achieved greater momentum in Europe. A major embodiment of this approach is seen in the Charter of European Cities and Towns Towards Sustainability (The Aalborg Charter) which, in contrast to the reductionist approach, is holistic, process oriented, and place centered (i.e. the city). This puts the Charter squarely in the realm of architecture and urban design and promises to extend both the nature and influence of those realms. As principal architects of the Charter, we are pleased that this document has been ratified by more than 300 of Europe's most progressive cities.

back to top

What is sustainability?
. At least since the late 1980s, the sustainability movement has been organized around a minimalist, consensus definition advanced in the UN through the Brundtland Commission's report, Our Common Future, namely, that sustainable development is development that' meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (WECD, 1987). Instead, an alternative course is proposed: a complete theory and process for generating and operating a sustainable city/region. It is based on Oikodrom's 'compass of sustainability and The Aalborg Charter, which in turn derive from our 'five operating principles for the sustainable city'. Here is the complete definition:-sustainability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process, operating within an equitable ecological region, exporting no problems beyond its territory or into the future.

Sustain ability is a local,...
_ Sustainability needs a place in which to happen. Although problems aggregate and become manifest on a global scale (e.g., ozone depletion, global climate change), offences to the environment are produced locally. These offences are not necessarily the work of ill-intentioned people, rather they are often simply the by-products of productive and desirable activities. The further these offences travel from their source, the more diffuse and intractable they become. Yet when dealt with locally as part of the production process, the neutralization or re-use of all negative by-products can be considered part of the price of doing business.

• Local' is to be read as city/region (Levine et al., 1998). The earlier history of our civilization is the history of city/regions' largely autonomous towns which gained virtually all of their material needs from their local countryside and had to maintain the quality of the countryside in order to sustain their way of life.

Sustainability cannot happen at the scale of the family - we are far too interdependent for that Sustainability cannot happen at the global scale - that is far too vast to be knowable or controllable. It is the scale of the city/region that is the largest scale capable of addressing the many urban architectural, social, economic, political and other imbalances besetting the modem world, and simultaneously the smallest scale at which such problems can be resolved in an integrated and holistic fashion.

Sustainability is a local, informed,...
In order to be able to maintain the quality and the productivity of the local region and its countryside, it is necessary to understand the consequences of the metabolic activities occurring within the city/region. Earlier towns operating within a largely dosed system received rather rapid feedback as to the consequences of their activities. When imbalances threatened the city system, they were noted and adjusted locally. In the modem world, there are effectively no local boundaries, and positive activities at a small scale may well have negative consequences at larger scales. By using modern means, however, we gain powerful tools both to design and monitor major energy and material flows and to model the projected implications of different processes we might choose to include in our city/region.

As part of the Westbahnhof project, we are currently working on something called the Sustainability Engine, a computer-based utility providing feedback on local cause and effect (Levine, 1994, 1996). The idea is that instead of a local culture evolving slowly over many generations through a process of trial and error (the historic precedent in, for example, medieval Italian hill towns), many different scenarios may be tried on the Sustainability Engine before anything is actually implemented. The Engine, which is a combination of computer aided design (CAD) and geographic information systems (GIS), augmented by a strong database and a systems dynamics utility, makes it possible to try out a variety of alternative strategies and scenarios relating to the city/region• (Levine etal., 1991). It provides many different kinds of feedback as citizen stakeholders explore various 'what if' scenarios, and indicates the extent to which the various proposals are bringing the city/system towards, or further away from, balance. It thereby becomes the design and management utility for building urban scenarios, economic activity scenarios, and process scenarios (energy. and material flow scenarios). It is also the feedback tool to inform stakeholders of the various consequences of their design ideas and lifestyle choices.

Sustainability is a local, informed, participatory,... Sustainability is a process by which a local community can decide how it will afford to live within its natural budget and the limits of its own creativity. If we are living beyond our means, it is always possible to limit our activities through treaties and legislation or through the restrictions of authoritarian regimes. With the prospect of top-down regulation we are already beginning to hear the expression 'eco-fascism' being leveled at proposals limiting our consumerist way of life. It seems clear that. Short of dictatorial restrictions, sustainability can only be achieved through a process that engages the participation of all stakeholders. However, representative democracy is difficult enough. How can one hope to create a process that engages a wide spectrum• of people and interest groups on a range of issues upon which they are sure to disagree?

Several factors make a sustainability process workable. First of all, such a process starts with the principle that the sustainability process is non-negotiable while, in principle at least, everything else is negotiable. That means that all participants in the process must agree that the health, equity, and viability of the city/system is the precondition for any other decision. In other words, the sustainability process begins as a 'sustainability game' that the participants gradually learn to play. The nature of the sustainability game is to try to satisfy one's individual self-interest while maintaining the viability .of the city/system. As an individual, an industry or a sector will be incapable of satisfying its own needs alone or in isolation, it becomes necessary to engage others and to correct for the imbalances caused by the satisfaction of their needs. Using the Sustainability Engine, each stakeholder will attempt to satisfy his or her needs and interests through a variety of different scenarios, each involving different• strategies and different partners (Levine, 1994, 1996).

Strategies that throw the city/system out of balance are eliminated quickly, or are rebalanced by introducing new ideas or processes with different attributes. Over time, more favorable strategies are built upon and elaborated while less favorable strategies are set aside. Developing scenarios are favored and pursued when they satisfy multiple interests, when they bring the city/system toward balance and when they hold the promise of fostering equity for all the stakeholders.

As the sustainability game proceeds, the stakeholders increasingly realize that they share a common destiny and that significant synergies will result from their creative encounters, negotiations, and co-operation. Over time, it becomes less of a game and more a real economy and urban system. Eventually, the players become partners and become more focused on building common wealth.

Sustainability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process,...
The problem with our existing economic system is that it has no built-in mechanism to ensure its own long-term survival. In fact, because it demands growth and expansion, it is designed to put pressure on the physical and ecological limits of our planet. As noted above, natural ecosystems in early stages of succession are also designed to maximize production at low levels of diversity, but as such systems mature, and organic material accumulates, the emphasis shifts away from production and toward maximizing diversity, resiliency and maintaining internal balances. This needs to be a characteristic of human ecosystems. Using the Sustainability Engine to create different models of an emerging sustainable city/region, the stakeholders become engaged in such a balance-seeking' process.

Yet if the city/system is close to balance, any major intervention is almost certain to throw the system out of balance. The problem is then to seek the means to bring the city/system back toward balance. Even a city/system that has been thrown far out of balance presents an opportunity for major interventions. In this game, there are no inherently bad moves. On the contrary, if the city/system should ever come exactly into balance, then in a sense the game would be over and such closure might actually be undesirable or at least premature. In any event, the design and management of the city/system is an ongoing process. At some point in the process, when all the stakeholders are working in harmony and the economic systems and opportunities have developed, it would be appropriate to build the SCI.

Sustain ability is a local, informed, participatory, balance-seeking process, operating. within an equitable ecological region (EER),...
In the past, nature was assumed to be so vast as to be able to comfortably absorb any and all offences that humankind's activities dumped onto it. This was far from true: it is now clear that we have exceeded many of nature's capacities. What then may we be permitted? What is our ecological budget? The EER is our concept for the natural budget in land area, available for each city/region to support its way of life (Levine et al., 1998). It is an important, precise concept, which gives us a clear picture of where we stand in relation to sustainability. A preliminary determination of the EER for a city/region is simple to make: a country's total land area is divided by its population and multiplied by the number of people in the city/ region, yielding a certain number of hectares per person. This will not be the final EER. The actual budget may be considered some variety of points of view, and the way in which will finally be calculated is a matter to be determined in the future.

The point is that we have been appropriating environmental space in many cases far beyond what we can afford and far beyond what we are entitled to. EER is an equitable method for permitting us to understand what we are entitled to and what we have to work with. Once the land and its resources have been identified for a given city/region, the informed; participatory, balance-seeking process can proceed.

In looking at existing city/regions, it is obvious that many do not have an adjacent land area available to constitute their EER. In such cases (and this may well become the rule rather than the exception), it will become useful to contract with a rural partner region or regions whose needs and resources complement their urban counterpart. 'In such a case, the city and its mutually dedicated partner regions will have closed their ecological cycles within their equitable ecological footprint.

Sustain ability is a local, informed, participatoiy, balance-seeking process, operating within an equitable ecological region, exporting no problems beyond its territory or into the future,...
A key idea is that when the prior part of this emerging definition is realized, such a city/region will effectively export no problems beyond its territory or into the future. However, even this circumstance is negotiable, given the fifth of our 'operating principles for sustainable cities', which states that 'imbalances are to be negotiated outward' (Yanarella and Levine, 1992a). This means that in some cases an imbalance may be exported from the city/region, but only if its re-balancing can be accounted for by an agency beyond the scale of the city/region.

Another aspect of the fifth 'operating principle' is based on the realization that an island of sustainability cannot exist for long in a sea of unsustainability. It indicates that a successful sustainable city must become the inspiration for the proliferation of other sustainable cities, until the contagion is complete. This means that even in its early stages the principles and processes of sustainability must find a place and a space for possibilities to grow. By adopting this theoretical framework as the basis of regional management, a city/region will be able to operate within the realm of sustainability. Once the viability of such a sustainability process is demonstrated, the success of that example will be a catalyst to the proliferation of sustainability to the countless other city/regions of the planet.

This definition has profound implications for the future of the design professions. The challenge of our times is to forge-an equitable way of living on this planet, within the limits of nature. This challenge can be seen in part as a design problem, a major part of which are urban and architectural design problems, along with urban management issues. More importantly, the methods to be used in the sustainability process derive from and are much more akin to traditional architectural design methods than they are to science and its analytical methods.

Sustainability is seen as a process for transforming society from an exploitative, consumerist enterprise to an equitable society where the balances between ~man enterprises and between humankind and nature are negotiated locally. Although such a process derives from traditional design processes, a new expanded architectural design process is envisaged. Instead of relying solely upon the 'hoped for' genius of individual architects, the sustainable design process will also benefit from the collective genius of all the individual stakeholders in the equitable ecological city/region (Levine, 1987, 1989). In spite of the fact that the sustainability design process will require working in a highly interactive way with .other professionals and stakeholders, the architect will be located in a more critical position than conventional practice affords. Thus, for the architect, both challenges and opportunities will greatly increase in the design and management of the sustainable city of the future.

back to top

The Westbahnhof Project - the sustainable city of the future
The city of Vienna, Austria, is considering building a SCI as a solution to a long-standing urban problem: the need to build over a major train yard at the Westbahnhof. Developed conceptually through numerous architectural design studio projects and field studies, the SCI is inspired by the historic medieval European hill town (see Figs 1,2 and 3).This city-as-a-hill prototype, rendered through the Sustainability Engine, presents a new, holistic, people centered, urban vision. In the SCI, sustainability is non-negotiable. this means that all major material flow processes are regenerative and the implantation is completely powered by solar renewable resources.

back to top

Theory and practice - form and counterform
Having established a coherent, consistent and complete theory of the sustainable city/region, the question remains how to proceed from theory to practice. In fact, the evolution of the theory has been paralleled by the co-evolution of a new urban form. In seeking an appropriate form and structure for the sustainable city of the future, the aim is not to identify means of solving the problems of existing cities, but to synthesize a new model where the problems of the modem city never appear, and the above process definition of sustainability can be strongly adhered to. In the iterative, trial and error process known to all designers, numerous different concepts are proposed and studied. Unproductive directions are eliminated and promising models are saved. By circling around the problem over and over again, a locus of mutually supportive relationships slowly emerges. It is not just a question of seeking a 'perfect form', but of determining and developing a family of forms with the flexibility and responsiveness to accommodate a variety of possible local preferences.

Thus, structures are chosen at a variety of scales, which have mutually supportive tendencies that can be associated with the needs and possibilities of sustainable cities. From the definition of the sustainable city/region, a number of strong tendencies can be inferred. The definition suggests a dense, compact city with a dynamic balance between community and privacy. It suggests a community rich in form, public space and individual and collective opportunities. It suggests a city with a strong sense of itself as a place, a clear and defined form and a common destiny. It suggests a human-scaled environment, not one that is over-scaled and sized to accommodate vehicles, industries and faceless institutions. Yet it also suggests a city able to find appropriate space for the various larger-scaled industries and necessary to accommodate the metabolic and economic processes of a modem city.

back to top

The city-as-a-hill - a new urban model
In seeking to discover an urban structure with the above characteristics, our proposal for a new type of city district combines some of the most compelling aspects of the medieval European hill town with the best of modem processes and technology. Instead of the medieval city on a hill, this proposal is for a city-as-a-hill whose outer surface resembles, in scale and texture, the pedestrian-scaled medieval towns. Using advanced computer modeling software, which allows for the possibility of generating many varieties or models of such SCIs in an interactive and participatory manner, this new urban configuration creates many opportunities not possible in the modem unsustainable city (Levine and Radmard, '1990;' Levine et al.,1991).

In our city-as-a-hill model, the outer surface of the city contains all of the dwellings and neighborhoods, the smaller-scaled commercial and institutional activities and the network of public buildings and public spaces, that is, the streets, walkways, stairs and squares which give historic medieval towns their life-affirming, pedestrian character. Inside the city-as-a-hill, daylit by courtyards and light wells, is a series of concourses and gallerias, along which are located the large-scale commercial, institutional, and industrial spaces, as well as the infrastructure and other activities necessary to support them.

Over the years in which these models have been developed, their structure and complexity have increased. A new, flexible, concrete structural system, the Coupled Pan Space Frame, which generates a complex family of building geometries, is being used as the framework for both spanning the train tracks and for creating the inner hill and the urban fabric above ground level (Levine, 1982; Dumreicher and Levine, 1996). This frame permits the negotiation of both level and sloping streets on the constructed hill, giving it the sort of three-dimensional, organic character rarely seen in modem architecture and modem cities.

back to top

Vienna's sustainable city implantation
Behind the Westbahnhof lies a train. yard 1.5km long by 200m wide. For many years, this yard has been a scar on the city, dividing a neighborhood and creating near slum conditions on either side of the yard. There have been many proposals to build over the yard but none has been either a suitable economic proposition or acceptable to the city. The present proposal (Dumreicher and Levine,1995, 1996) is for a glazed, vaulted train shed behind the terminal building at the east end of the site. It is, in part, in the tradition of the early glass train sheds found in many major European cities, except that the glazing contains integrated photovoltaic (PV) collectors that deliver a substantial percentage of the implantation's energy requirements, while modulating the climate and quality of light entering the terminal.

A pedestrian street extends from the terminal and runs the length of the site to the west, parallel to the tracks, rising up the city-as-a-hill at a gentle six per cent slope. As it rises, it crosses other horizontal floor levels and at every third level (levels four, seven, and ten) it passes through a public square or piazza. A streetcar runs along this otherwise pedestrian street and, after passing through the main piazza (Hauptplatz) at level ten, it descends through piazzas at levels seven, four, and one to join an existing track at ground level.

Running almost the length of the site is a three-story galleria. Levels four and seven, as the major horizontal circulation levels, connect courtyards in the' outer city to each other and to the piazzas, as well as connecting to the inner gallerias. Along the gallerias, day lit through courtyards and light wells from above, are the major institutional, commercial, and industrial activities as well as infrastructure, service, parking, tracks and transportation - activities, whose bad neighbor effects and large scale often disrupt the integrity of a traditional urban fabric, but which are necessary to sustain an urban economy. In the city-as-a-hill, they fit in well, providing maximum accessibility without compromising the small-scale, village character.

The SCI is a totally urban construction, which multiplies value, in part because it multiplies real estate. Railroad services occupy almost the entire site at the original ground level, but there are additional levels of developable real estate in the framework above, with their own appropriate functions and activities. Because it is completely urban, and has no open ground of its own, the implantation is to be linked with a rural partner-land, which is dedicated to rebalancing the city/region. On this land, most of the agriculture and energy from solar/regenerative sources would be negotiated with its urban counterpart. The implantation, together with its rural partner-land, would constitute an equitable ecological region. .

back to top

Sustainability features of the SCI
Humanly-scaled urban form
An urban form small enough to be easily walkable and to eliminate even the desire for a car, yet large enough to provide the variety of opportunities and services required for a rich urban life.

Density and compactness
A complete and well articulated structure that permits virtually all needs and services for the majority of inhabitants within the SCI.

Three-dimensional urban fabric
A clear form and boundary, and a legible, yet complexly woven, three-dimensional structure that coalesces into a continuous urban fabric.

Physically secure public spaces
A structural design such that no large mono-functional buildings front onto public paths) where they would create 'dead' or dangerous zones.

People oriented scale
An urban design enhandng the public spatial realms while providing for many scales of private realm, offering pathways that build in a continuity of walking surface.

Self-balancing
A green city implantation that works toward internal balance-seeking while striving to absorb more material and energy flow problems from the surrounding unsustainable city, thus exporting ecological, equity and economic benefits to that city.

Complex and flexible urban
A robust, but malleable and open-ended concept/system capable of different articulation of urban sustainability derived from participatory processes spanning design) governance and management.

Spaces for possibilities
A flexible architectural/urban structure, which creates the sense of an equally pliant and secure social space where physical) social and economic characteristics of the city can be negotiated.

back to top

The partner-land principle
Numerous references have been made in this case study to the relationship between urban implantations and rural partner-lands for the exchange of goods, materials, energy and social and cultural opportunities and benefits. However, it is one thing to create theoretical models of how this might work and quite another to create the social and political space to enable it to happen. To create a fertile ground out of which the Westbahnhof SCI can rise, the whole Fifteenth District is appropriated as the urban region to be utilized. It is being partnered with Mistlebach, a sparsely settled agricultural region in the Weinviertel to the north of Vienna near the Czech border, which has approximately the same overall population (70,000).

Within the Fifteenth District, an extensive network of social, ecological and economic initiatives and enterprises already exists, but the actors are unaware of their importance and the value or extent of this network. Individuals often consider themselves as a powerless minority who, at most, can only overcome some of their more pressing shortcomings. In the process of establishing the network, the actors come to see the relationship between their own small spheres and the dynamic and increasingly powerful whole. In activating the city/region principle, a first step has been to establish partnerships between well defined structures in the town district (Wien 15) and the region (Mistlebach), including the political, administrative, cultural, economic and agricultural institutions. The concept of a market place is extremely useful in the establishment of new opportunities. The market place of ideas, as well as of goods, services and cultural exchanges becomes the generator of an expanding social network for the creation and utilization of available goods and services. Such a program has already been put in place, involving, for example, the fanners of Mistlebach and the grocers of the Fifteenth District.

The partnership concept represents a first small step in the reconstruction of the global economy on a sustainable basis. The essential operating goal of any sustainability regime is to assure that the movements of materials, energy, goods and services are activated by the larger, more comprehensive forces of supply and demand which include ecology and equity as balancing influences on traditional economic forces. The 'partner-land' concept is a novel way of implementing a first operational step at the scale of the city/region.

back to top

Conclusion
In subsequent stages of development of the SCI, the city models and their parts will become the framework for the integration of other systems including: mechanical, electrical, material and infrastructure systems, facilities management, information, energy and material flow models, economic activity, imports and exports (input/output) to the city, and the modeling of the ecological balances within the city and between the city and its rural partner-land. This will be done on the Sustainability Engine. The Sustainability Engine is the 'autonomic nervous system' of the SCI. Both during the design process, and in the governance and management of the city, the Sustainability Engine houses the energy, material flow and process models that are studied and tested in order to progress the development of the city. As the city, its processes, and industries are studied, the Sustainability Engine provides frequent feedback on the ongoing state of the system and indicates the sectors where it is out of balance.

Urban sustainability thus promises to create the next major transformation both in architecture and in our cities. In many ways, the sustainable city may represent the rebirth of Modern Architecture. The Athens Charter became a disaster for our cities. Because of the mechanistic ways in which it separated functions and activities, it reinforced the economic tendencies toward unsustainability. In contrast, the sustainable city will demand a dense, diverse, highly integrated urban fabric. It will demand a whole new range of architectural and urban forms and structures. It will put architects and architecture at the centre of a participatory process demanding the skills and creativity of all participants. In short, it will complete the agenda of Modern Architecture.

Note Because the design of the Westbahnhof SCI is an ongoing project, subject to continuous interaction, modification and negotiation throughout the design, construction, and maintenance process, designs should be regarded as ongoing studies. There are already many different (often conflicting) residential plans, neighborhood plans and site plans, with differing levels of detail, responding to different needs and design considerations. The few studies such a limited chapter permits are taken from different series of design studies ..

back to top

Acknowledgements
The research reported in this chapter was carried out by Oikodrom - Forum Nachhaltige Stadt, Vienna, Austria, and the Centre for Sustainable Cities, University of Kentuck, Lexington, USA. Financial support for the Westbahnhof project has been given by: WienMA18/23, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Jubilaumsfonds, Bundesministerium fur Wissenschaft und Verkehr, Bundesministerium rur Land und Forstwirtschaft, Land Niederosterreich, Urban-Buro Wien, and the University of Kentucky. The architectural, scientific, and social scientific team was composed of: Heidi Dumreicher, Oikodrom; Richard S. Levine, Centre for Sustainable Cities; Florentine Astleithner, Oikodrom; Harald Fenz, Oikodrom; Bettina Kolb, Oikodrom; Frederike Konig, Universitat Graz, Verein Sustain; Christian Krotscheck. Universitat Graz, Verein Sustain;Michael Narodoslawsky, Universitat, Graz, Verein Sustain; Reinhard Paulesich, Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wein; Richard Perfler, Claudia PichI, WIFO, Wien; Veronika Prandl, Oikodrom; Taghi Radmard, Centre for Sustainable Cities; Friedrich Schneider, Universitat Linz; Robert Snyder, CADD Concepts; Otto Schulz, Osterreichische Vereinigung fur agrarwissenschaftliche Forschung (OVAF); Claudia Schwab, Oikodrom; Horst Steinmuller, OVAI'; Ernest J. Yanarella, Centre for Sustainable Cities; Rob Nickol, Scott Fleming, Nathan Smith, James Black, University of Kentucky; and Matt Fox, Ball State University.

back to top