Space production and space images

The »Gürtel« in Vienna

Abstract

The article discusses the interchanges between function and fiction, the built environment and symbolic reality by exploring the century-long history of Vienna's Gürtel, a heavily-used urban thoroughfare. By using the concept of >space images< as an analytical category, spatial themes as weil as the fears and desires that accompany them, are investigated. Around 1900 the newly laid out Viennese Gürtel - with its linearity, sense of order, breadth, light, and incorporation of green areas - corresponded to an >urban< space image, which was typical for the Gründerzeit. Gradually the street's inhabitants integrated a number of innovations which initially provoked a sense of insecurity, such as the Stadtbahn and the automobile. From the 1950s onwards, previous views were undermined by the increasing popularity of a >fordist< space image, based on the principles of seriality, standardisation, the rejection of traditional sets of symbols, and a clearly divided usage of space. This change resulted in a concept oriented towards the reduction of distances and the acceleration of movement in space, but the fordist concept began in turn to lose its persuasiveness during the 1970s. New concepts began to emerge, which were designed to promote a more ecological city: variety, openness, usage diversity and »place instead of space«. The article shows that Gürtel inhabitants were subjected to disturbances and irritations, due above all to the growing volume of traffic since the 1960s. Inhabitants have responded to this situation with a mixture of resigna- tion and de-sensitisation, attempts to suppress the reality of what was >On their door-step<, but also with attempts to appropriate the built and used space for themselves.