Maria Vassilakou

Maria Vassilakou

I am Maria Vassilakou. I have been the deputy mayor of Vienna between 2010 and 2019. And now I'm working as an independent expert and adviser on urban transformation.

Eugen Antalovsky

I'm Eugen Antalovsky, until the end of 2021 I was the managing director of Urban Innovation Vienna, which is a company of the city of Vienna to support decision makers at political and administrative level in creating and implementing urban innovations. 

Greg Clark

Perfect. So, Maria, let's start with you, if we may. What is the DNA of Vienna?

Well, being a first-generation migrant, I arrived in Vienna 34 years ago. And what I have found unique about this city in all those years is the city's commitment to social inclusion and affordability. Now, don't get me wrong, there are many discussions around this, and of course, not everybody agrees to it. But a former chancellor of Austria once said he only knows socialists in Austria and specifically in Vienna. He says there are conservative socialists, there are right-wing socialists, there are middle socialists, there are leftist socialists. And what he meant by it is that what constitutes the very, very heart, the very, very soul of this city is a shared commitment in the end that everybody should be able to have a decent life and nobody should be afraid of poverty. And this commitment, I have never encountered it anywhere else in the world at this degree.

Greg Clark

That's a very interesting dimension. Before we ask Zenja to say a little bit, where do you think that comes from? Why is Vienna the city that has only socialists in it?

Maria Vassilakou

Well, I'm not a historian, clearly, but I think it has a lot to do with the last days of the Austrian Hungarian empire and the turn of the century. Back then, poverty was immense. The city was growing rapidly. Everybody has heard one million times the stories about people even having to share beds, homelessness, hunger and what is called pauperism. Now, after the First World War and as the city was constituted as an independent body, the first mayor and also his team decided that they want to fight homelessness, and they want to provide all people with a decent home to live in.

So back then, the tradition of Red Vienna started. Red Vienna stands for an immense social housing and public housing program that started in the early 20s and actually is going on up to today. And I think that this is a historical example of continued and shared commitment to one target. And this target is that everybody in Vienna should be able to afford a decent home, which resulted in today already having 62% of the population of Vienna living in subsidised or public housing units, having thus highly affordable rents. And of course, this also exerts an indirect control to free market rentals that could never be so much more expensive than the largest housing stock of the world, Vienna's public and social housing stock.

Greg Clark

So, Zenja, in your opinion, what is the DNA of Vienna?

Eugen Antalovsky

I think one strength of the DNA of the city of Vienna is how it copes with its processes of change and transformation. If you look to our history, as Maria told before, looking back to first the Republic of Austria and then the Second Republic of Austria, we have always had international migration, in particular from different parts of Central and Eastern Europe. That's one of the DNAs of the city of Vienna. If you look to the names of the people who are living in Vienna now, it has changed in comparison to the 19th century or the 20th century, because now we're much more different and diverse in the population structure.

If you go back only 30 years when the Iron Curtain fell, it shows how the city of Vienna coped with this new kind of migration. Vienna started very early to think about these challenges and chances. I remember very well when Vienna started in the eighties of the last century to discuss with Budapest about a joint Expo 1995 in a formal partnership of Vienna-Budapest. It shows that there were contacts still ongoing despite the division between the communist regime in the East on the one hand and the Western orientation of Austria on the other hand. The value of such experiences has proven some years later when the war in Yugoslavia broke out. How many refugees started to come to Vienna and how they have been integrated into the society. For sure, we had struggles and we had tensions. But Vienna has also shown that its citizens have a very good capacity and a good culture of how to integrate these different people from different backgrounds, from different countries with different languages. I think this is a high quality. It's a part of the high quality of life in Vienna. And this, I would say, is one part of our DNA in Vienna.

Greg Clark

Now, we're going to talk as we go on about many aspects of Vienna's DNA, but we haven't yet said anything about river, religion or empire. Is there anything you'd like to say about those things that are part of the DNA as you see it?

Eugen Antalovsky

I start with the empire. If you look to the perception of Vienna in the world, it's mostly connected to culture and imperial buildings. This is really a DNA factor because it is very important for the whole urban structure of Vienna. Most of the first district, which is the centre of Vienna, is imperial buildings. Going to other districts of Vienna, big parts of the built substance are more than hundred years old. And it shows how the city of Vienna copes with this. For example, the ongoing protection and renovation of all these buildings. This is our heritage we use very much. On the other hand, we try to shift more to modernization. And we have done a lot for that in the last 20, 30 years. I think the city of Vienna copes very well with the challenges of preservation and renovation and how to make living in Vienna still affordable. This is also a quality of political DNA, I would say.

Greg Clark

Very interesting.

Eugen Antalovsky

The river Danube is an important characteristic and infrastructure of Vienna. Around the “smaller river”, the Danube Canal, which is not the main river, the city has developed and expanded. The Danube is always in the mind of the people. When we talk about developing and connecting the different parts and districts of Vienna, we are aware of the very different urban structures and conditions at the right or the left side of the riverbank. At the left side you have modern parts like the Vienna Danube City with the UNO centre. You have also agricultural areas, which is very different from the areas on the other side of the Danube River. We also talk about music when we talk about the river - everybody knows the Vienna Waltz "The Blue Danube”.But more important is how modern life groups around the river today. The city of Vienna is doing a lot and has done a lot during the last 30, 40 years to bring this part of the city at the left riverbank to the river, to bring Vienna to the river, because normally, if you're a tourist and come to Vienna, you'll maybe not see the main river. You only see the Danube Canal. But the city of Vienna has decided to develop the city, because of its population-growth, more in these districts at the left side of the riverbank.

And this is the development which takes place just now. One of the lighthouse projects of the city, the Smart City Aspern, is placed in this area. And this is a very important urban development to bring the two districts at the left side of the riverbank closer to the city.

Greg Clark

So once again, the river becomes a connector for the city.

Eugen Antalovsky

Correct.

Greg Clark

Maria, what's your view about the role of the river and, of course, the role of religion in the evolution of the city?

Maria Vassilakou

Well, what is specific, I think, about the Danube River is that it does not run through the city. It is actually running beside the city. Or to put it in another way, the city was built beside the river and not around it. So I think that for the Viennese, as far as I've experienced it, the river has two main functions. First of all, it is a place to spend holidays at home, practically because of the River Danube island, which is a wonderful recreation space of the length of 24km with beaches and the opportunity to enjoy life outdoors. And then, in a sense, I think that the river symbolises the longing for long travels, the openness to the world, because this is one of the main connections and the main routes to so many different countries and specifically countries that used to belong to the Austrian Hungarian empire. But then if you ask people how many have actually taken a ride on the river Danube, I doubt that there will be that many.

So one of the main future perspectives for the city is to bring the city to the river. And I think that there is still high potential in terms of redesigning public spaces and creating connections to the river for the next year, because as it is right now, the river banks are wonderful places to go for long strolls, but are still divided from the rest of the city by huge motorways and railways.

And I tend to think a little bit of Barcelona and how it managed to connect the city to the sea. This is what has yet to be done in Vienna, modernisation when it comes to the DNA. I think that the river is also kind of the way of connecting, but also dividing the different parts of the city. I think this can be compared to London. It makes a huge difference in London if you're from the North Bank or from the South Bank. It is pretty much the same thing in Vienna. If you are from the West Bank, which are the historical parts of the city. Then you're a real Viennese. If you're from the South Bank, well, this is actually a number of villages that have grown together to new parts of the city. These are clearly the new parts of the city and the Westerners tend to make themselves a little bit funny of the ones from the southern parts. So there is clearly a different DNA if you come from the west or from the south of the river.

Greg Clark

And what about religion? How do you see religion's role in the DNA of the city?

Maria Vassilakou

To be honest, I think that religion in the DNA of the city is not so much of a big issue. Of course, Vienna is a predominantly Catholic city, as Austria is a Catholic country. But there has been a long tradition throughout the empire of tolerance towards other religions, which was, of course, destroyed in the very, very horrible times of National Socialism. But I would argue that up to today, parts of this tolerance are still there. Something has been changing clearly with anti-Muslim sentiment in the last decade especially, but still as compared to other cities. I think that part of the DNA of the city lies in tolerance towards other religions first. And second, I think that religion does not play such an important part in the minds of the people.

Greg Clark

Let me if I may then, Maria, bring you on to the broader version of this story, which is to observe, of course, that Vienna today is a very multinational, multilingual, multi-ethnic, multi-faith city. You yourself are a Greek emigre, Zenja's family are from Russia originally. There was a 150 year period during the Empire when Vienna was a very cosmopolitan city. What part has this cosmopolitanism played in what Vienna has invented? How does it connect to that?

Maria Vassilakou

I think that in order to understand Vienna, you should never forget about the seven years of National Socialism, because this has been a very dreadful cut within the history and the development of the city. So clearly, there is a Vienna of before and a Vienna of after that. Before that, Vienna was an extremely cosmopolitan city that has contributed so many things to the world. Everybody thinks of music. But for instance, the contribution to modern psychiatry or psychoanalysis is just one, or as a matter of fact, to the film industry in the States. There is so, so, so much brain power and so, so much artistic power as well that went lost after the Second World War. 

After the Second World War, Vienna had to reinvent itself. It started, I think, reinventing itself after the allies parted and Austria became an independent country again, which was actually in the mid-50s. Now, what followed were several waves of migration, in the beginning from the Balkans, later also from Turkey. And we should never forget also a crucial point in history. And this is Austria joining the European Union, which meant that after that, mostly people from Germany and neighbouring European Union countries started migrating to Vienna as well.

So, today we arrive once again at a highly cosmopolitan and multicultural society which, I believe, has one similarity to the situation at the turn of the century. What I find very specific about Vienna is that back in the turn of the century, and today, once again, it is a highly diverse society, a cosmopolitan society. But this is a fact when it comes to the city's DNA and the way the city perceives it. So it does not take special pride in this. It does not promote deliberate cosmopolitanism. It's much more about integrating people into new society. It's about reuniting people. It's about what we call the melting pot. And I find that even the majority of migrants, after having stayed in Vienna for 10, 15, 20 years, still, of course, retain parts of their original identity, but tend to separate between their original identity as kind of a private issue and acquire an additional Viennese identity in which our origin plays no role at all.

Greg Clark

So, Zenja, tell us a little bit about the cosmopolitanism from your point of view. And then I want you to talk really about, you know, the question of what are Vienna's innovations or inventions that you think are important?

Eugen Antalovsky

I think it is very important to look at how Vienna and its policymakers, as well as the administrative decision-makers, are coping with challenges. in this respect I would like to highlight two aspects. Firstly, Vienna was a decreasing city from after World War Two. If we looked at the number of inhabitants in the late 80s, there were only 1.45 million inhabitants. It was a strong decrease from the end of the 19th century where Vienna had 2.1 million inhabitants.

And this also means there was not much money in the city. The substance of the buildings was bad, and the city of Vienna had to think about how to improve the building substance and to keep living in Vienna at the same time affordable. Vienna set up a program for renovation of old houses in cooperation with the house owners - besides social housing buildings, which are owned by the city of Vienna, the stock of residential buildings in Vienna is mostly privately owned. Because of a system of very limited and low rents and private owners didn't had not enough money after World War Two to restore and refurbish their houses. So the city of Vienna set up a program to support them in renovating the houses. The city of Vienna anticipated very well which development in the future will take place in the housing-market and how to keep the prices and the rents low for people with lower income.

Secondly, Vienna invented early various forms of participation in neighbourhoods and quarters. This started around the 1970s. At that time, participation was not stressed publicly very much, but the participation processes managed to integrate different stakeholders. The “Danube Island” for example was a result of participation because there were tensions between the political parties regarding how to cope with flood protection in the city of Vienna. This was one of the first projects in the late 60s and the beginning 70s where the city administration and the city government decided to win different stakeholders for planning in a participatory way.

Most of the planning processes until today are organised in participation processes. They changed in the kind of formats and intensity and became step by step a routine in urban development. This capability of anticipating future developments and to try not to make failures is a quality of planning in Vienna. It's a part of the DNA. But on the other hand, if you look to modern architecture in Vienna, you won't see these extraordinary architectural highlights as you find it in other cities. But most of of the new buildings are of high quality. 

Greg Clark

Maria, you've already mentioned some of the things that Vienna has invented. What else should we add to the list?

Maria Vassilakou

Well, when it comes to relatively recent inventions, I would like to point out the gender-sensible planning agenda, which is an invention that has brought international attention to Vienna. This is about realising that women are or were invisible in planning processes in terms of taking their needs into consideration and realising that it is women that, for instance, are the ones who will push around babies with children and that when designing streets or new urban quarters or transforming older urban quarters for that part, the way we go about the design of public spaces should actually take these needs into consideration because it results in equitable and highly inclusive design for all.

And a second invention that is right now conquering the world, I would say, is the annual card for public transport, which we turned cheaper rather than more expensive. And this was really special. It was disruptive in a sense, because everybody expects everything to be getting more and more expensive all the time. We said we want people to be using public transport. So we introduced the 365 euro annual card, which means that for a Euro a day you can use one of the densest public transport systems in the world. Go anywhere you like. Ride as often as you like it. And of course, this is a wonderful deal that helped us achieve a major shift within our model, split towards green transport and away from private car use. It was actually so successful that in the meantime, several German cities are either introducing it or considering and analysing conditions for introducing it. And in the meantime, in the region around Lisbon and the city of Lisbon have adopted the concept and are also letting us know that it is highly successful.

Now, when it comes to everyday life, everybody thinks about schnitzel and goulash. But you could argue with Hungary if these are real Viennese inventions. So I would like actually to point out the cafe culture that we have, which is really very specific. Today, every city or almost every city can offer you a decent cup of coffee. But looking back into the 70s or 80s, Vienna was one of the very few places in the world where you could have excellent coffee in wonderful historical cafes that all exist up to today. And what's even more specific about these cafes is that it's not a place where you drop by and drink quickly a cup of coffee and then leave. It is actually your prolonged living room. You spend hours and hours there over a cup of coffee. You can read books. You can read newspapers. It is part of actually a very specific Viennese culture of leisure. And you will find nowhere else in the world this very special Viennese atmosphere at these old cafes.

And the second contribution to the world and invention is the culture of balls. No other place in the world has more than 400 balls within the season. There are small balls. There are school balls. There are company balls. There are the grand balls that are traditionally organised by, well, let's say, very wealthy associations. In the end, it's all about music and it's about dancing. And I think also that you will never, ever find in the whole world another city of such dancers as Vienna's.

Greg Clark

So, Zenja, we want to talk now a little bit about shocks and how Vienna responds or recovers from shocks, which have been the important shocks as you see it.

Eugen Antalovsky

I think Vienna experienced in the last 150 years a lot of shocks with positive or negative consequences, to name the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, World War Two, or the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s. We have had the financial crisis 2008. We have had big refugee flows during 2015 and 2016. I think these have been a lot of shocks which the city had to cope with.

I will pick up one of the most important positive shocks during the last 30 years. It was the fall of the Iron Curtain. I think this disruptive and globally important development brought Vienna into a totally different situation as it has been between the end of the empire and until the late 1980s. I remember this very well, because my father was from the Ukraine and he came as a refugee after World War Two to Austria. By the fall of the Iron Curtain suddenly a whole new world opened for Vienna and Vienna changed its position from the eastern edge of Western Europe to the centre of a new, very important part of the European Union as we know it just now, Central and Eastern Europe. By this a lot happened in the mindset of people. At the same time Austria prepared its accession to the European Union. That means between 1990 and 1995 there happened a lot of things which changed our city and our mindset and our position in Europe and the world very much. Looking back on this time, I think the city of Vienna did a great job together with the population to cope with all these challenges at the same time. It was 1989, I remember well, that the city of Vienna began to talk about scenarios and options of the upcoming future, and tried to answer questions as: When the Iron Curtain has fallen, what does it mean for the city of Vienna? Do we grow? How many immigrants will come to Vienna from Eastern and Eastern Europe?

By the fall of the Iron Curtain Vienna came immediately into a new position regarding its urban development. We discussed many scenarios how big the growth of the city in a few years will be. And what does it mean for housing? What does it mean for urban infrastructure? What does it mean for work, for jobs, etc.? The city has to cope with all these very new challenges. And Vienna did very well. Only few years later the war in Yugoslavia began, and in one year about more than 100,000 refugees came to the city and the city learned and practised very well how to integrate them, because – different to the refugee flows in 2015 - most of the people from Yugoslavia remained in Vienna and didn't move on to other countries.

Greg Clark

So Maria, Zenja has talked about a number of shocks, positive and negative, that the city has experienced. Which are the most important ones from your point of view?

Maria Vassilakou

Well, I think the way Vienna goes about coping with positive or negative shocks is to take things as they are and pull up sleeves and get down to organising things, get down to business and to the business of coping with them, actually. And we do this at a speed, and without much ado. That is actually very, very special, I think. Although by habit, the Viennese are supposed to be people who grumpy, and perhaps are most of the time. But as soon as a shock emerges, you kind of can experience how society transforms itself overnight and gets organised, gets at doing things and also displays a high degree of solidarity amongst each other and also amongst people who are arriving from outside.

Now, there are three examples for me that demonstrate this in a perfect way. Take, for instance, the decision to join the European Union. Before that, there was a referendum and many, many people were against joining the union. And everybody was expecting that the referendum would turn out to be negative. It turned out to be positive by a relatively low margin. And practically overnight, all people that had been against it did not necessarily change their mind but accepted the fact and made the best of it, the most of it from that day onwards.

One second example for me is the financial crisis, which also practically overnight the country as a whole, the city of Vienna specifically, put up investment programs in the billions to help keep the economy going. And at the same time, civil society organised itself as well because there was practically no larger company that did not decide to reduce their hours or working in order to have no people sent into unemployment.

And a third example, which actually also demonstrates this very good interplay between public administration and what they are specialised in doing very efficiently, and at the same time, the high efficiency of civil society in organising itself and also delivering services, was the refugee crisis back in 2015, when overnight approximately almost one million refugees crossed Austria on their way to other parts of Europe within three weeks. And we were able to manage this crisis in a wonderful way. I should say, and this was due to a wonderful cooperation between public administration once again, that is very, very skilled in coping with refugee waves, and at the same time, civil society that practically overnight went to the train stations and started organising, distributing clothes, distributing food, cooking, taking care of people who had freshly arrived and so on and so forth.

So this is actually something that is also written in the DNA of the city, that as soon as we have a crisis, we stop grouching around. We stick our heads together, we act efficiently and in solidarity, in a solidarity manner and see that would cope with it. But I should also say, as soon as the crisis is over, it takes a few months and then there's a backlash.

Greg Clark

Does this mean, Maria, that Vienna would be better if it had more crises?

Maria Vassilakou

I am not sure that I can give an answer to this question, because every now and then when crises arrive, we are very, very proud of ourselves for what we have achieved and how we have been able to stick our heads together and achieve it. But after a while, we kind of tend to get afraid of what we have done and what we have achieved. And the pendulum tends to move in the other direction. But I think that this is not something that must be specifically Viennese, to be honest. I think that this corresponds to every society that you have forwards and backwards movements.

Greg Clark

So, Zenja, how does understanding the DNA of Vienna help you think about the future of Vienna?

Eugen Antalovsky

If you know Viennese people, you know, they like quality of life. They like affordability, they like music and dance. They like wine. They like leisure time. They like good public transport system, et cetera, et cetera. That means Viennese people have learned over the decades that it is part of their DNA, to cope with all these different aspects and to make life liveable in a high quality. I think this is a DNA. You know, sometimes we try to slow down because we don't want to do much. Sometimes we want to sit for a coffee not only for 10 minutes in the coffee house, but  for two hours. We do not want to travel too far away if we want to go to swim, so we have the opportunity to do it at the “Danube Island”. That means Viennese people look in a very intentional way to improve their surroundings, their ecosystem, their own life. And I think that's a quality which makes us very unique.

Greg Clark

So, Maria, we've been talking about the DNA of Vienna, but reflecting on this DNA, how useful is this in thinking about the future of Vienna?

Maria Vassilakou

Well, I think part of the DNA of the city produces in regular intervals very strong leadership, which has also a transformational character. If I think back at the beginnings of the so-called Red Vienna and the whole program, a century-long program of affordable housing, it was due to a very strong leadership and a few people that came together and decided we're going to pull it through, even though back then it was something like an absurd vision. Nobody had envisaged something like this at such a scale up to then. And nobody had ever envisaged such a huge project at such a scale or turned it into reality, for that matter. On the other hand, and although the population tends to rely on this strong leadership and expect everything from the city, it tends to come together and be very active and self-organised when it comes to coping with crises or surprises or very special situations. And I think it is this combination that has the power to fuel a positive, transformative future for the city.

And as far as I'm concerned, what I have been experiencing in the 9 years of my term as deputy mayor was that more and more people, more and more communities tend to organise themselves and produce innovation and concrete, normative or transformative solutions for their neighbourhoods or within their vicinity. And this is something that I believe if the city forces it and if there are programs to encourage this, that will have the power to bring the city – might even lead to a change in paradigm for the future of the city.