City with a female face: how modern Vienna was shaped by women

The Austrian capital has been pioneering ‘gender mainstreaming’ for nearly 30 years. How did the city come to be so far ahead – and could its gains be lost?

At 240 hectares, the neighbourhood of Aspern, Vienna, is one of the largest urban developments in Europe. By the time it is complete in 2028, it is due to be home to 20,000 people, plus another 20,000 workplaces, and with an explicitly family-oriented design. Centred on an artificial lake and with half of the entire area devoted to public space, it is billed as “Vienna’s Urban Lakeside”: a model city-within-a-city, in a place that already has the one of the highest qualities of life of any city in the world.

When Christina Atta moved to Aspern four years ago, she was one of its rare single women. “I was alone with my cats, and everybody had children,” she says. Now she is pregnant with her second child, however, Atta, 35, can better appreciate its design. Her only complaint is that the bus to the city can’t accommodate all the young children.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2JeUo3W