The lean, green Austrian capital is back on top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s list of most livable cities.
Vienna has returned to the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Ranking. EIU, the research and analysis division of The Economist Group, annually rates world cities for quality of life.
Austria’s capital is the sixth-largest city in Europe. Vienna’s population is expected to exceed 2 million soon, perhaps surpassing its previous peak population of 2.03 million from 1910, when it was the fourth-largest city in Europe after Berlin, Paris and London.
In the EIU index, Vienna got perfect scores of 100 in the categories of Stability, Healthcare, Education and Infrastructure. Its score for Culture & Environment was 96.3; many cities scored lower in that category this year, likely because of pandemic-related closings and restrictions on cultural activities.
“Vienna is rightly considered a capital of culture, but it is so much more,” says Peter Hanke, Executive City Councilor of Finance, Business, Labor, International Affairs and Vienna Public Utilities. “For many years, for example, we have been an international role model when it comes to social housing. Or the proportion of green space in our city: already 53 percent of Vienna’s urban area is green space.”
The EIU did not release an index in 2020 because of the pandemic. In 2021, Auckland in New Zealand was at the top of the index because of how well it handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Vienna slipped to 12th.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index
A City on the Move
In terms of infrastructure, Vienna is a global leader in public transportation.
Of its nearly 2 million residents, about 1.1 million people in Vienna hold an annual public transit subscription or student pass. A monthly ticket costs €51 ($51.43), or €33 ($33.28) with a subscription.
The public transit network Wiener Linien had a total of 596 million riders in 2021 — a coronavirus-caused drop from 961 million in 2019. All of Vienna’s 109 subway stations are accessible for people with impaired mobility, as are 95% of its streetcar and bus stops.
The city’s largest current infrastructure project — as well as its largest climate protection project — is the creation of a new subway line, the U5. The U5 will connect with an expanded U2 line in the heart of the city, creating capacity for an additional 300 million passengers annually. The first phase of the project is estimated to cost €950 million ($958 million) and will open as soon as 2025.
Vienna has also made major investments in bicycle lanes, increasing total bicycle lane length from 955 kilometers (597 miles) in 2004 to 1,379 kilometers (862 miles) in 2020. More fun facts: Vienna boasts 1,100 drinking water fountains, 995 city parks and 1,697 playgrounds.
Growing Spaces
Vienna’s Smart City strategy underscores sustainable development in the face of climate change. The city aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2040 while improving quality of life for all.
“The challenges we will have to face in the next few years are already here,” Hanke says, pointing to climate change, inflation, and energy costs. “In Vienna, we are working nonstop to phase out oil and gas, but I think it’s clear to everyone that this cannot be completed in the short term.”
With a quickly growing and increasingly international population, the city is focusing on building more housing. As of 2020, Vienna had 941,000 housing units, an increase of 21 percent from 1991, with nearly half of them one-person households.
Vienna’s large social housing market and strong tenant protections are cornerstones of its reputation as a great place to live. Social coexistence is a priority here, says Jasmin Soravia, managing partner at Kollitsch&Soravia Immobilien and Chair of ULI Austria. City building regulations require two-thirds of new apartments to be affordable.
“Vienna is also very interesting for international investors,” she says. “A dynamically growing city like Vienna cannot do without new neighborhoods, but clever planning avoids wasting space and resources and uses the available funds efficiently and effectively.”
Hanke points to Aspern Seestadt as a prime example of Vienna’s sustainable development projects. This city-within-a-city will include a business hub creating up to 20,000 jobs as well as host 11,500 housing units. The project site is a former airfield of 240 hectares (593 acres), and half of the area reserved for green spaces. The project was first imagined in 2004 and has attracted €5.5 billion ($5.55 billion) in investment. As of the start of 2022, more than 9,000 people were already living in Aspern, which is connected to the U2 subway line.
“But as great as international rankings are, it is far more important that the Viennese can also experience this high quality of life. It is precisely in times of crisis that the state of a society becomes apparent,” Hanke says. “The Viennese have shown incredible solidarity during COVID-19 and as the war in Ukraine started. They prove that Vienna is a city of togetherness and cohesion — that’s is something I consider essential for quality of life.”
