SOCIÓPOLIS, THE NEW EUROPEAN CITY
Dietmar Steiner, Arkitertur Zentrum of Viena director.


When we talk about the European town or city of the future then we generally see ourselves confronted by two competing developments running in opposite directions: the old and the new. This conflict dominates current society and the political reality of the European town or city, beyond all the differentiated theoretical considerations.

Firstly, there is the model that still believes in the continuity of the 19th century European town and, on the basis of Walter Benjamin's 'Arcade Project' ('Passagenwerk'), wants to revive the Flaneur in the streets of Ildefonso Cerdá's block grid. This model has retained its validity as we still use towns in this form. In fact we love them because they still provide us with familiar orientation. It is the urban space of the citizen, who knowingly plays their role in society, embedded in the social network of power. It's proved its worth, the old European town, as astonishingly it is robust enough to integrate the massive new technological and communications tools, too. Twenty years ago the science-fiction film 'Blade Runner' demonstrated both in a striking and revolutionary manner that these old urban structures are conceivable in the future as well.

However this model tends ominously to deny the contemporary reality, for the social and spatial alluvium of the agglomeration of a town or city, the overflow urban landscape of the periphery, is blanked out here. The American development of this historical model of urban space led to the village life of the quarter, ending in the New Urbanism of the harmony-addicted middle-classes, who build the facades they are familiar with as strongholds against the stream of outcasts.

It is only logical that the counter-model to the European town has claimed its space. It is the model of European Sprawl being offensively countered by the new urban reality. This is based on the fact that today the majority of Europeans no longer live in the old towns but spend their daily lives in the new agglomerations. Out there, where the petrol stations and shopping centres, farming land and rubbish depots, industrial parks and residential areas mix planlessly. Where no urban forms can be perceived or named anymore they have to be identified, re-evaluated, and defined.

This is why the central issue for the urban development of Europe is how this apparently irreconcilable divide between the ideology of the old and the reality of the new town or city can be overcome. It has become useless to maintain the old dream of the compact city with its strong border - the 'edge of town' - to the surrounding countryside. It would be equally false to give up the values of the old town in favour of an artificially enthusiastic sentimentality for the periphery altogether.

Before, then, the paralysis between dream and reality kicks in, a productive approach needs to be found between the old and the new model of the European town. This is the path that SocióPolis is pursuing in a manner as radical as it is unique. Even the departure point for the programme, to find new forms of housing and ways of living for current marginal social groups, addresses a substantial issue. The dramatic sociological development of European society to date - ageing, new marginalised groups, migration and social diversification - has actually only been discussed primarily according to social and economic criteria. The effects of these developments on the urban structure have largely remained unidentified and undefined spatially. Urban social housing is still oriented around average middle-class requirements.

The socially integrative approach of SocióPolis is new, especially in connection with socially committed and even experimental architecture. The image of a town is being developed where the newest building technology is employed, that integrates contemporary information technology and place the old priorities of mix, of functional integration, in a new context.

SocióPolis has achieved the decisive urbanist breakthrough, though, as proponents of 'urban landscape' - a term that has increasingly been at the forefront of the debate recently. The initial approach was to view the town more as an integrative model of public and private, and the issue was also to connect urban and natural space. When the town itself is subsequently seen as landscape then it is only a small step from integrating the qualities of the countryside, of agricultural land, in the town itself, too.

The old, truly restraining walls of the towns fell back in the 19th century. The emotional attachment to these urban borders between the town and the countryside, the so-called 'edge of town', endured though. The town was seen as the opposite to the countryside. The differences gradually disappeared with the overflow of the new town into mixed agglomerations. It is time to answer this issue offensively, and not only to see the town as metaphoric landscape but to adopt agriculture concretely in the urban structure.

The new European town, says SocióPolis, has to face the new social responsibility of a society deteriorating into marginal groups, and to offer new forms of housing for it. the new European town has to permit an integration of the countryside taking it beyond the cityscape, even allowing agriculture into the urban fabric. It has new technology at its disposal to do this and this technology has to lead to a socio-cultural expression of the architectural manifestation.

For the first time in the new millennium the SocióPolis project is designing a truly integrative and hybrid vision of the European town for the future. SocióPolis is setting new standards by realising a dream of social balance, where all people potentially have the same opportunities - a dream of lifting all the borders between town and country by farming within the town limits. SocióPolis does this employing all-new technology and has engaged some of the most talented and interesting architects in the world to provide their contribution.

It would be so simple to build the town that everyone wants.
It is with particular pleasure that the Architekturzentrum Wien presents the exhibition and catalogue on SocióPolis in Vienna. It represents a special challenge for a city that wrote history in the last century with an integrative model for housing.