Flaktürme, land management & civic techs
The Flakturme "Haus des meeres" was rehabilitated as an aquarium and surrounded by a recreational park.
A week before I joined Team Octree, my nomadic adventures took me to Vienna. True to myself, I wandered the city in search of oddities.
From one park to the next, I'd discover huge concrete structures, the Flaktürme, flak towers installed by Nazi Germany during the occupation.
I was surprised to discover open-air sports centers, climbing walls, shared gardens, and playgrounds for children.
After a bit of research, I learned that the city had 6 towers with very different uses: an aquarium, a TV tower, a state bunker, and an art warehouse.
How did monuments coming from such a violent past regain their rightful place in a city? How did they become places for sharing, meeting, and socializing?
In 1940, Vienna built a defensive architecture
When Nazi Germany ordered the construction of these towers, the local population was in short supply due to conscription, so they mobilized foreign workers and prisoners of war who had been rounded up in camps and forced to work.
Indeed, these towers were erected to protect Vienna and eventually to accommodate people. They were equipped with systems allowing them to locate enemy aircraft and kept a defense arsenal preparing them to resist autonomously in case of a siege.
The plan was to convert them into memorials to fallen soldiers in the event of a Nazi German victory.
2003 : the city deals with it's ghosts
After the defeat of the 3rd Reich, a new purpose had to be found for these towers, which were costly and dangerous to demolish, given their proximity to homes.
Now protected, various transformations have been proposed by citizens, companies, and public players, but few have seen the light of day: data centers, hotels, exhibition venues, luxury residences, bars...the list is intriguing.
In 2003, with the help of the De Krone newspaper, Vienna's municipal Department of Urban Development and Planning called on its residents to submit projects, 500 of which were then examined by experts.
20 years later, I can find virtually no trace of the work carried out at the time, either online or by directly contacting the public organizations involved in the project, and it's fair to ask whether the costs involved were justified.
Digital technology and territories today
As part of the Explore à Genève en 2022 festival, Octree was asked to create Civic Echo, an open-source tool for diagnosing the ecological transition aspirations of Greater Geneva's residents.
This process resembles a more modern version of the one organized by Vienna at the time, except that citizens are encouraged to pool their ideas and aspirations in order to develop future projects.
This kind of tool can be used to answer very concrete territorial questions, such as the census of public space or the level of habitability. A city can now aggregate data on a much larger scale, for example, to find out about the comfort of its transport system, confidence in its healthcare provision, and other aspects of living together...
Are there any better sensors than people when it comes to exploring and building the city they inhabit?
Inhabiting the city daily together
The citizen consultation in Vienna was implemented with relatively poor technological means. The effort put in place, and the cooperation between the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), the Krone newspaper, and the municipal department of Urban Planning, were nevertheless remarkable.
More than just a buzzword, Vienna shows us that the Smart City is not just a modern concept of digital territorial observability, but a real cross-disciplinary approach to resolving social and territorial issues, with digital technology as a means to an end.
Despite the low direct impact of the consultation, the towers have not been completely abandoned. Tower VIII, in the less touristy Arenbergpark, is a fine example of how citizens have reappropriated the area by building a shared garden, managed collectively by local residents.
Shared garden of the Arenbergpark
These places, which contribute to the development of living cities and the creation of mixed communities, are generally made possible by an occupancy agreement, for which individuals or organizations act as guarantors.
They rely often on reclaimed resources and depend on donations for materials such as soil and natural fertilizers.
The people who gather around the project have very diverse profiles: curious people who stop by to chat, drop off compost, or pick a few herbs... community organizers who organize events, share their cooking, and show people around, teachers who pass on their skills in vegetable gardening and DIY... grumpy people, eternal optimists, one-offs, regulars, these places becoming social crossroads in the neighborhood.
Sustainable communities are fragile
How do such young and sparse organizations organize themselves? How do they balance their desire for independence with their material and real estate needs?
To exist and co-exist in the urban environment, such an organization needs to keep track of the information it needs to survive, such as the renewal of occupancy agreements, subsidy projects, cash flow, and partnerships with farmers.
And that's where it gets tricky! In my experience, the succession cycle for shared gardens is 2 to 4 years, volunteer work is not very sustainable and it's difficult to get members (not necessarily defined) together regularly to share information and make decisions effectively.
A few active members find themselves with everything on their shoulders and are implicitly recognized as leaders by the rest of the group, who may feel constrained in their initiatives.
Attempts by local authorities to federate the many shared gardens and pool their resources, when they fail to gain acceptance from the occupants, are met with interlocutors who feel they have little legitimacy or have become legitimate through habit, and have to interface with organizations with opaque governance and start their work all over again when volunteers withdraw to make way for others whose history and culture are then lost.
A digital guarantee for collectives? Decidim.
A Decidim platform can provide a multi-level framework, from organization to project, from public to associative: helping to share information, make decisions transparent, and pool ideas, knowledge, and budgets.
It provides a space where all the stakeholders in this kind of project can co-exist and make their voices heard, giving free rein to the development of these communities while enabling their continuity thanks to the archiving of the decisions and projects that brought them together.
Decidim came into being 13 years after the consultation carried out in Vienna for the rehabilitation of the Flakturm. I can only assume that the outcome would have been different and generated more interaction if a Decidim platform had existed back then, but I'm sure that the remaining information today would help us learn better lessons from the past.
So why not use Decidim? Decidim guarantees the transparency of the participatory process but relies on technologies that are difficult for the uninitiated to master. While a Decidim platform enables greater inclusion of citizens, knowing how to deploy it is an expertise restricted to a few insiders, making it difficult for small associations and certain municipalities to access.
To solve this problem and make Decidim deployment more accessible, Octree has a solution: a tool enabling anybody to deploy a Decidim platform in just a few clicks and without being an IT expert: voca.
- Simon for Octree
Sources:
On the questions of the data center and the closed art reserve: https://www.viennadirect.com/sights/mak.php
In reference to the aquarium: https://www.haus-des-meeres.at/en/Flakturm/Flak-Tower.htm
In reference to foreign forced laborers; the cost of the data center; the call for projects and consultation; to the citizens' consultation by De Krone newspaper: 500 proposals by experts in March 2003, but the results published in January 2004: https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Flaktürme
About the aquarium tower and collective memory: https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Ausstellung_Erinnern_im_Innern_-_Flakturmmuseum
After the war, the non-destruction of the towers was ordered because of the potential threat to surrounding protected houses, a coffee house, and a hotel. On July 1, 2015, the Vienna City Council unanimously decided to sell the property to Haus des Meeres for the symbolic sum of one Euro. In case of Nazi victory, the plan was to keep the towers as memorial monuments for the soldiers who fell for the Reich. In 2005 and 2006, exhibitions organized by the artists' association Faktum Flakturm were held in one of the towers. In addition, a group of historians were commissioned to carry out in-depth research into the history of the site. The discoveries made during this episode have made it possible to partially close the gaps in knowledge about the origin of the towers and their uses. However, the research had to be brought to an abrupt halt: the operating permit expired in March 2007, and due to a lack of safety measures, the towers were closed by the relevant authorities (MA 34). The Group is currently fighting for renewed access to the towers. Other redevelopment projects have also failed, among them: a swimming pool project was swept aside by a citizens' initiative: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_Flaktürme
About the Nazi occupation: https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Nationalsozialismus
