TransLoC: Transformation of Cities into a Low Carbon Future and its Impact on Urban Metabolism, Environment, and Society

Human history is full of great challenges that have to be solved. The largest contemporary challenge of human societies is climate change, and the most important solution is the reduction of emissions from burning fossil fuels like natural gas and diesel for cars and heating. Cities like Vienna play here a particular role since nowadays more people live in cities than in the countryside. For this reason, the City of Vienna defined in its “Smart Climate City Vienna Framework Strategy” to reduce greenhouse gases and material resource consumption. This should be achieved by more electric cars and public transport, fostering walking and biking, recyclable new low energy buildings and renovation of old buildings. The governing principle should thereby be the wellbeing of the people.

Even though these objectives exist, it was not really clear how the different measures contribute to their fulfillment. For this reason, energy and environment researchers from TU Wien, urban planners from the Austrian Institute of Regional Studies (OIR GmbH), and sociologists from the Institute of Advanced Studies, launched the project “Transformation of Cities into a Low Carbon Future and its Impact on Urban Metabolism, Environment, and Society”, in short TransLoC. The goal of the project was to define and analyse scenarios with respect to energy and material consumption, environment and greenhouse gases, as well as labour market and quality of labour.

Results showed that between 1991-2015, greenhouse gases and material consumption increased, the first particularly in the transport sector, the second in both, the transport and the building sector. Main responsible in the transport sector were more cars and construction materials for infrastructure construction and renovation. In the building sector, construction of new buildings was mainly responsible for higher material consumption, while better thermal insulation of new and existing buildings reduced greenhouse gas emissions. With respect to future development, the building scenarios that foresee a renovation of old buildings instead of demolishing them and replacing them by new buildings, is more desirable to reduce greenhouse gases and material consumption. In transport, improving public transport as well as more pedestrian and bike transport is better in terms of greenhouse gas and material consumption reduction if compared to solely replace old cars by electric vehicles. However, the ability of the transformation associated to these measures is very much dependent on the existence of sufficient well-trained staff. To ensure this, better care facilities, more training, and good work conditions should be enforced.