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Assignment: Vienna: Getting housing right

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Vienna: getting housing right

06/04/2023 GMT

Vienna: Getting housing right

BBC World Service - Assignment, Vienna: Getting housing right

Does Vienna have the world’s best public housing? Chris Bowlby reports

Are there lessons to be learnt from the way Vienna builds public housing? Chris Bowlby reports from the Austrian capital.

Affordable housing is in widespread crisis. Many cities around the world have failed to build enough houses with good design and make living in them affordable – whether rented or bought. This effects millions, especially young people. One place which seems to have a far better record is Vienna. Rents are modest, the housing is high quality, there’s a good social mix with new estates designed with everyone in mind. So how has the City achieved this? And with pressures like a growing right to buy ethos, how sustainable all this in the face of future challenges? While the great Social Democratic tradition that Vienna’s housing embodies seems to have faded or disappeared across much of Europe, here it seems to have thrived. Is Vienna’s housing dream a one-off, or can it be a place everywhere else can learn from?

Reporter: Chris Bowlby
Producer: Jim Frank

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