5. Social neighbourhood & neighbourhood development

5.2 Strengthening social interactions & co-operation

“Wohnstrassenleben” – traffic-calmed living streets

"Wohnstrassenleben" event

Street festival with bike repair point in the foreground and orange-white festoons of the Urban Renewal Office stretching across the street

Fig. 28: Street festival with bike repair point in the foreground and orange-white festoons of the Urban Renewal Office stretching across the street. Copyright: City of Vienna / Elia Stefan

On 24 September 2021, the Day of Traffic-Calmed Streets, WieNeu+ organised the #wohnstrassenleben event in Pernerstorfergasse, which is precisely such a pedestrian-priority street, with the aim of drawing attention to the actual purpose of traffic-calmed living streets – namely, enabling people to move freely about and children to play here.

This is regulated by Section 76b of the Road Traffic Code of 1960, which states that “Vehicular traffic is prohibited in living streets, with the exception of bicycle traffic […] Walking and playing on carriageways are permitted. However, vehicular traffic, as far as it is allowed, must not be wilfully obstructed […]”.

The #wohnstrassenleben event in Pernerstorfergasse offered a wide mix of activities. Defective appliances and bicycles were repaired, catering was provided by Caritas, the Volkshilfe charity drew attention to the problem of child poverty, the Vienna Business Agency organised a game involving artificial intelligence and music, and the adjacent music school performed a concert.

"Wohnstrassenleben" event

Matchbox toy cars creating a traffic jam on a city map, with same-size dinosaur toy figures

Fig. 29: “Wohnstrassenleben” – traffic-calmed living streets. Copyright: City of Vienna / Elia Stefan

Research Festival

Fig. 30: Research Festival. Copyright: Vienna Business Agency / Tirza Podzeit

In autumn 2021, the Research Festival on Tour of the Vienna Business Agency also stopped in the WieNeu+ neighbourhood. For two weeks, children and young people were provided with a wealth of information about new technologies from and job possibilities in these fields.

The event took place in Kempelenpark, which in 2021/22 was among ’s biggest venues for interim use. Since 2017, the former Siemens Campus was publicly accessible and soon evolved into a vibrant site for training, start-up enterprises and ecological and social pioneer projects, which fully reflects the purpose of the concept of interim use.