91��ɫ

EUC recently welcomed Assistant Professor Eva Schwab from the Faculty of Architecture at TU Graz, Austria on the invitation of EUC Professor Ute Lehrer as a short-term visiting scholar at 91��ɫ. This September, she delivered a seminar on "Expanding the Greenbelt in an Expanding City: Changing Regulation, Demands and Actors in Vienna's Greenbelt" hosted by EUC and The City Institute. In this talk, she shared the history of the Vienna Greenbelt arguing that the inhabitants of the Vienna region understand the greenbelt as a common good and have taken to shape it actively. The talk was complemented by EUC Professor Laura Taylor on the relevance of our own Greenbelt around Toronto and Dr. Camilla Perrone, also a shor-term visiting professor from the University of Florence, Italy, who shared some some thoughts on Terrain Vague, a conceptual thinking to look at space beyond the market. Nicole Nwanshi, EUC Special Projects Assistant posed a few questions about her visiting scholarship at 91��ɫ.

Can you start by discussing your research path — training as a landscape architect, a PhD on informal settlement upgrading in Medellín, and now studying a 120-year-old planning instrument in Vienna — What is the thread connecting those?

Since I decided for a career in academia, I consider myself a critical urban studies scholar. I studied and practiced landscape architecture, and that experience of course influences my view and the things that interest me. Two main realisations from while practising landscape architecture still influence my research: one is that the materiality of space, where it is and how it is designed, as well as the regulations for its use are not neutral, but always an expression of values and power relations. The other one is that planning and design are one part of making a space, but the other part comes from people using space – sometimes in unintended ways or ways that question or critique the “official” idea for that space. These two dynamics or processes are braided together. So from that stems my interest in how people contribute to making the city – which is a thread that runs through, especially looking at peripheral spaces where „government and policy blind spots“ provide opportunities to manifest alternative forms of uses and other aesthetics. So the connection between the informal settlements in Medellín and Vienna’s Green Belt lies in how people use green spaces, how they express ideas of urban life and the role that landscape plays in it through these practices, and how they shape the city – whether through discourse or through actual practice.

What drew you to put Vienna’s Green Belt in conversation with Toronto’s for this talk? Where do the two cities’ experience diverge most sharply, and furthermore, are there lessons from Toronto’s greenbelt debates that you think Vienna’s planners have been slow to learn, or vice versa?

The fact that one is 120 years “old” and has seen a lot of contestations and the other is 20 years “young” and has it’s fair share of contestation has raised my interest. The current challenges are surprisingly similar despite the many differences in size, legislation, history, property etc.: The question of whether building on green (belt) land is necessary to alleviate the housing shortage. The debate about what the value of the green belt is for people’s lives. And – last but not least – what the green belt means in times of climate and biodiversity crises. The regional dimension of Toronto’s greenbelt surely is a great inspiration for the Vienna case; regional considerations have rather recently entered the picture there but are necessary to address the challenges above mentioned in a more integrated manner. On the other hand, the fact that the Viennese greenbelt is easily accessible and a very valued recreational space can be an inspiration to the Ontario case. The rivers that are integrated into the Toronto greenbelt already show these qualities.

The Vienna Green Belt has been continuously reshaped for over a century by local, regional, and national actors. Can you detail a moment when the balance of power among these actors shifted, and what changed as a result? 

I understand that this question is coming from the experiences of the Canadian planning system and how the levels interact here. The situation in Vienna is very different, constitutionally the municipality holds the primary planning power. So, I would say that Viennese planning has been very pragmatic about engaging with actors at other levels, for instance at the national level. Part of the greenbelt is made up of a national park, this coalition provided the best means to protect the landscape of the Danube’s floodplains at the least cost to the City of Vienna. I think the recent move towards a regional understanding of the greenbelt is less driven by this kind of pragmatism, it shows an understanding of the interlinked nature of the pressures onto the greenbelt and a willingness to see the greenbelt not as a border but as a connector, as an interface.

In your work, you discuss recent bottom-up protest and grassroots planning as forces that expanded the Green Belt rather than just resisting development. Can you give an example of one of these movements, and explain, what made it effective enough to actually change policy?

It was a very specific moment in time that gave the Rothneusiedel movement, which I talked about, its power: an overall increased awareness of the effects of climate change and of the importance of soil protection for effective climate change adaptation was the substrate, just as well as the fact that the Green Party was part of City Government at that time, with the green vice-mayor acting as councillor for urban development, transport and public particpation. I am convinced that in another political climate they would not have succeeded. But apart from that, I am fascinated by how a very broad coalition of actors was established and how themes around landscape and landscape identity, food and urban agricultural practices acted as a the glue that kept it all together…so much so that large parts of the land foreseen for development was re-zoned to become protected as part of the greenbelt and that the planning department accepted these themes as core criteria for the design competition for the area that in the end was developed.

Looking ahead, what do you think the Vienna Green Belt needs to become over the next few decades to stay relevant, and what should planners elsewhere – including in Toronto – take from its 120-year history? 

The history of the greenbelt in Vienna shows very clearly that establishing, keeping and expanding land protection is a continuous struggle and effort. Understanding this is important, it means that making a plan or to pass a law is not enough; these instruments need to be filled with meaning, over and over again. Civil society plays an important part in this. The history also shows that uses and meanings of the land(scape) change; the openness and diversity of the landscape is an opportunity for changing ideas to manifest and to stay relevant. Keeping this openness, however, needs strong regulation. With regards to the future of the Vienna and other greenbelts, I think they are instruments that can help with one of the biggest challenges we are facing, that is understanding and honouring our entanglement with the more-than-human world, overcoming the nature/culture divide that is at the basis of so many of the problems we have created.  

______________________________________

Apart from urban design studios, Dr. Eva Schwab is teaching courses in spatial planning as well as critical urban and landscape studies. She trained as a landscape architect in Vienna and Barcelona. After some years in practice, she embarked upon a career in research with a PhD on public space-based upgrading programmes of informal settlements in Medellìn/Colombia. Her doctorate won both the Landscape Research Dissertation Prize and the Talent Award of the City of Vienna in 2016. Employing a spatial justice lens, she since has engaged in critical urban studies about the politics of public space production and use, especially at the urban periphery and/or relating to marginalised social groups. Recently, her research also engages a territorial and more-than-human perspective in the investigation of urban peripheries and the conflicts between man-made structures, administrative regimes and ecological logics. In TU Graz' Faculty of Architecture, she led the project (2022-2025) that explored the potential of peri‑urban mobility spaces for climate‑change adaptation and mitigation. In the Centre for Sustainable Construction, she chairs the Working Group on Cities and Regions. She has co-edited the books on Territorial Justice (Jovis, 2019), Basics of Urbanism (Park Books, 2021), Territorial Urbanism Now! (Jovis, 2024) and Courage – Transformation of Mobility Spaces: Process, Actors, and Design (Jovis, 2026).