Vienna’s Central Railway Station (Hauptbahnhof)
Situated at the heart of Vienna, just opposite Belvedere and Schweizer Garden, Vienna’s new Central Railway Station is actually an impressive new urban quarter hosting Office Complexes including the Austrian Railway Company ÖBB headquarters as well as the Erste Bank Campus, Hotels, a multigenerational modern scholl campus, a 7 ha large park and modern residential areas with predominantly subsidized affordable housing, most notably the Sonnwendviertel, already home to more than 13.000 people, mostly young families. Viennas railway station development is an excellent example of removing barriers, creating connections (among other pedestrian bridges connecting boroughs, that were formerly divided by a huge impermeable fenced railway area) and creating economic and social incentives for the most vulnerable parts of the borough of Favoriten, that have since experienced a renaissance as well as considerable investment (redesigning public spaces, neighborhood regeneration projects, new metro line etc.) As development expands to adjoining formerly abandoned manufactural areas it becomes evident, that this is one of the best European examples for using urban growth strategy as an opportunity for economy, ecological and social transformation.
