Vienna, 01.08.2024
aspern Seestadt is a young city - not only from the perspective of the buildings, but also the residents are young. This can be observed, for example, in the public space of Seestadt: While parents with buggies walk through the city in the morning, schoolchildren of all ages roam through Seestadt in the early afternoon on their way to the underground or directly home.
The fact that Seestadt is a relatively young city is visible in the neighbourhood’s uniform rhythm of activity peaks closely linked to school schedules.
This perception is confirmed by statistical data as shown in a comparison of Seestadt’s demographic characteristics to those from the Donaustadt district and Vienna as a whole:
This is Vienna’s 2019 age distribution.
This is the age distribution of the Donaustadt district – essentially the same as the Viennese average.
aspern Seestadt is a clear outlier –
its population is clearly younger!
A sharing fleet!
Young residents are open to new ideas. For example, most users of shared mobility services are younger than 50. For young people ownership tends to play a less important role, which is why sharing models are seen as attractive.
52% of the cargo bike
rentals in 2019
took place in spring.
Sharing has been firmly anchored in Seestadt from the very beginning - similar to Vienna’s long-running CityBike system, Seestadt has its Seestadtflotte. Flotte means fleet and suggests that much more than bicycles can be shared here. Seestadtflotte allows users to borrow cargo bikes, e-bikes, and shopping trolleys free of charge from eight stations. The rental of cargo bikes is fully automatic and possible around the clock - one of the first systems of its kind in Europe. Larger trolleys that can be used as bike trailers are also available in the bike rooms of the housing buildings
A look at the distribution of rentals throughout the day - the so-called daily hydrograph - shows how the Seestadtflotte bikes are used throughout the day: The peaks in the morning and late afternoon are clearly visible
Seestadt wouldn’t be Seestadt without resident led initiatives like the Seestadtauto car sharing program which offers three cars for sharing.
Around 100 members reserved a car on average 50 times a month in 2019. The trips range from a quick drive to the McDrive Seestadt to a two-week holiday in Italy.
Seestadt residents have a wide range of mobility options at their disposal. The aspern.mobil LAB team asked Hannah Schuster, a resident of aspern Seestadt, how she is using these numerous offers in everyday life (e.g., when shopping) and how her building group has also created its own community offers:
A glimpse into the future
aspern Seestadt continues to grow, new neighbourhoods such as the Seebogen are being completed, and further plans are in the starting blocks. Seestadt will continue to grow for at least another decade. Parallel to this, further development areas are being opened up along the U2 Donaustadt axis (Berresgasse, Am Heidjöchl, Hausfeldstraße, ...). How will the mobility offer develop further?
We’ve asked Lukas Lang, former mobility planner from 3420 AG, the company coordinating urban development in the aspern Seestadt, to help answer this question.
As Lukas Lang explains in the video, there are many challenges ahead for mobility in the Seestadt, whether in the Seebogen neighbourhood or around the long shopping street in the north. As Lukas concludes his interview: Our goal is working together to create a sustainable mobility system for the future.
We are still on that path!
With the aspern Seestadt Mobility Survey, the aspern.mobil LAB will continue to record mobility behaviour including changes in the routes and transport modes of Seestadt residents over time. This data will support continued improvements to Seestadt transport and development of innovative new transport solutions. The Lab’s co-creation platform will continue actively supporting research and development by residents, city officials, companies and academia.
The mobility survey provides data for an empirical assessment of mobility innovations developed by aspern.mobil LAB projects. If you are interested please contact us, we are always looking for new people and organisations who want to become part of our research community
Our journey through Seestadt’s mobility system now comes to an end. It was a pleasure for us to collect the stories and transform the data into pictures! We hope that you found the trip interesting and were able to learn something new about aspern Seestadt.
Travelling has many facets. Our travel decisions sometime seems to be a very personal and individual. In fact, aspern Seestadt shows clearly how good urban planning, well thought-out and tested mobility concepts, a multi-layered set of transport services, and, critically, an innovative, open and curious approach help guide us in making these decisions
So now, enough talking and thinking … lets go outside and hit the road!
