Diagnosing policy pathways in Vienna: News from the Science for Policy Hackathon
This blog post was co-authored by students from the course “Urban Research to Practice: Science for Policy Hackathon”.
While urban sustainability is often discussed through large strategies and long-term plans, many of the forces shaping a city’s future emerge through the everyday actions of individuals and groups. They show up in how people move through their neighbourhoods, how food is bought and stored at home, how public space is shared, and how different departments within a city communicate. When we – 21 students in the Urban Research to Practice: Science for Policy Hackathon course – began exploring key policy challenges in Vienna, including the need to develop multifunctional public spaces, enhance the quantity and quality of green space, and strengthen climate education and awareness, we quickly saw that seemingly separate issues were deeply intertwined. While we recognise that the City of Vienna shows high commitment to its sustainable development strategies and has developed multiple concrete initiatives, we aspire to contribute innovative ideas to some of the city´s persistent and complex policy challenges.
Mobility, for example, is not only about transport, as it effects safety, public space, and the rhythm of daily life. In many neighbourhoods, parked cars occupy more space than trees or seating areas, while garages sit half empty leaving roadsides to fill up. It also has a strong temporal dimension, related to both intergenerational learning and seasonality. The former is visible in how future mobility behaviours of today’s school children are shaped by commuting patterns today. Keeping the car-centric status quo or altering it slightly will not be sufficient to bring the desired change towards more sustainable mobility. Parents may drive their children short distances to school out of convenience or safety concerns and initiatives to address these issues lie to a great extent on the shoulders of the schools and parents. The importance of seasonality is visible when pedestrians enjoy consumption-free outdoor spaces which are abundant and well-used during spring and summertime. On the flip side, these spaces remain empty and without many alternatives during the colder months. This opens possibilities for new innovative infrastructure in those spaces, especially if they are developed through participatory processes. Accordingly, these patterns influence how people move through the city and interact with one another, while affecting the integration of year-round accessible public space.
Food systems tell a similar story. Although Vienna has ambitious climate targets, a large share of food waste still happens inside households. People rarely see the environmental impact of how their food is grown, or of what they discard. Education and awareness raising efforts, while present, remain somewhat scattered across schools, NGOs, and municipal programs. In turn, this presents an opportunity to develop cohesive approaches with shared language, tools, and accountability, which enable actors to collaborate effectively and drive the development of sustainable urban policies.
As the city grows, green spaces shrink and heatwaves intensify. Biodiversity depends on small pockets of habitat that can be overlooked in large–scale planning negotiations. Different departments of the City of Vienna often work on similar goals, resulting in opportunities to enhance alignment and cooperation. Moreover, when expanding the scope to include the impact of community groups in transforming small spaces into green oases, or schools experimenting with urban greening projects, clear signs of potential exist to deepen cooperation for participatory greening and policymaking.
The question remains as to how to attend to such diverse yet interlinking urban sustainability challenges in meaningful and integrated ways. This is where the Science-for-Policy Hackathon course aims to contribute new ideas. We work with Challenge Owners from the City of Vienna and policy experts, who bring practical experience and institutional knowledge. The course gives us a space to explore the science-policy interface from a conceptual and practical perspective and engage with key urban sustainability challenges in creative ways. Through methods such as visioning, backcasting, stakeholder mapping, and theories of change, we practice not only imagining brighter futures, but also understanding the steps needed to achieve such. We discover that sustainability is less about perfect solutions, and more about building relationships across disciplines, sectors, and scales, to improve coordinated efforts and lines of communication. If cities are to achieve their sustainability agendas, they will need deepened collaborations that link the everyday experiences of citizens with broader institutional strategies, thereby, paving the way for the development of inclusive, empowering, and evidence-informed policy.
Building on our problem statements and following a two-day Science for Policy Hackathon, we will present our policy briefs to a jury and public audience on 15 January. For more information and to register, please go to: Final Pitch Event of this year’s “Urban Research to Practice – Science for Policy Hackathon”
