Vienna: Still a Just City?

This book explores and debates the urban transformations that have taken place in Vienna over the past 30 years and their consequences in policy fields such as labour and housing, political and social participation and the environment. Historically, European cities have been characterised by a strong association between social cohesion, quality of life, economic ambition and a robust State. Vienna is an excellent example for that. In more recent years, however, cities were pressured to change policy principles and mechanisms in the context of demographic shifts, post-industrial transformations and welfare recalibration which have led to worsened social conditions in many cities. Each chapter in this volume discusses Vienna’s responses to these pressures in key policy arenas, looking at outcomes from the context-specific local arrangements. Against a theoretical framework debating the European city as a model of inclusion and social justice, authors explore the local capacity to innovate urban policies and to address new social risks, while paying attention to potential trade-offs.

The book questions and assesses the city’s resilience using time series and an institutional analysis of four key dimensions that characterise the European city model within the context of post-industrial transition: redistribution, recognition, representation and sustainability. It offers a multiscalar perspective of urban governance through labour, housing, participatory and environmental policies, bringing together different levels and public policy types.

Vienna: Still a Just City? is aimed at academics, researchers and policy-makers in urban studies, including urban sociology, ecology, geography and welfare.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Yuri Kazepov is a professor of International Urban Sociology and Compared Welfare Systems at the University of Vienna (Austria). Among his fields of interest are multilevel governance, the territorial dimension of social policies. On these issues, he has been carrying out comparative research and evaluation activities for the EU and National Agencies.

Roland Verwiebe is a professor of Social Stratification Research at the University of Potsdam (Germany). His research interests include the domains of social inequality, migration, attitudes and values as well as quality of life in the city. On these topics, he has published in leading international journals.