Seattle architect Mike Eliason describes what he learned about their housing policies.
After a trip to Vienna for a Passivhaus conference I wrote about the remarkable housing there, and how much of it is actually social housing owned by the city. Seattle architect Mike Eliason was at the same conference. He puts what he learned about Vienna and Austrian housing policies together in two articles in City Observatory and what he thinks it can teach us in North America.
They’ve been doing this a long time/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
It all starts off with national policy. “Vienna’s affordable housing is largely funded by federal taxes. Vienna uses these taxes to subsidize affordable housing construction, rehabilitations, and preservation.” But unlike much of North America, it mixes market housing with subsidized housing in the same building. It has also been doing this for decades, so everyone is pretty much used to it.
When a site comes up for a new project, they have competitions among groups to pick the best project.
Seestadt Aspern/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
But the key difference is zoning. Where I live in Toronto, there are hundreds of tall residential towers packed together on what was formerly industrial land, far away from the single family residential areas where the NIMBYs live. Mike describes a similar situation in Seattle. Not in Vienna:
Courtyard in Seestadt Aspern/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Vienna seems to build consistently mid-rise, about 8 storeys, which I have noted is a function of their building codes; that’s how high a fire truck’s ladder can reach and pick people off balconies. The buildings are full of courtyards with gardens and play areas, but achieves pretty high densities. Mike notes that “though they are dense, they provide amenities unheard of in Seattle – especially for non-luxury housing.” The form of tenure is different, which gives some security to occupants:
Mike thinks that Vienna is an ideal model for Seattle; it really is for just about any successful city in North America.
We can only wish.
