The analysis of the historical development of users’ rights in the urban context reveals the following: legislation shifted away from an initial emphasis on protection of people and was soon rewritten to protect vehicle traffic. In 1938 Vienna in fact, the NS street ordinance provided the most significant shift in the hierarchy of street users. Postwar regulations called for “care, caution, and attention” but nevertheless remained primarily fixed on the protection of traffic. It was not until 1960 that the “human being” once again moved into the center, replacing traffic as the focus of attention. The current traffic ordinance, and with it the right to use public street space, is rooted in a system of values that privileged the ideal of a ‘Gesamtvolkssinn’ over the rights and the protection of individuals. Since the glaring disadvantages of automobilization have been recognized today, we should actually stop the subsidization of motorized individual transport that has been propagated over the past eight decades. However, it remains to be seen whether the projects currently being fervently discussed at EU level and in national politics in terms of the New Green Deal, energy efficiency, emission savings, fairness and true costs in the area of mobility will really be implemented. While the latest turnaround in the debate is to be welcomed: the preference for environmentally friendly mobility, the reduction of the rail electricity levy, the alignment of paraffin and diesel taxation, the improvement of the logistical interplay of water/rail/road, as well as financial and social support structures that are supposed to provide incentives for climate-friendly mobility behavior - it must be noted that the discussions on the shift of rights of use continue to make slow progress. Our approach can be outlined as follows: we want to understand how the distribution of rights of use and entitlements experienced today has developed and in what way forces have been steered by whom and with what goal. The ultimate aim is to recognize and be able to read the systemic play of interrelationships as such.