Bringing Youth from the Sidelines into the City! Urban Living Lab Vienna, Austria

Abstract

The articel documents the Trustmaking Urban Living Lab (ULL) in Vienna, which was developed in the framework of the ENUTC-project "Trustmaking" to leverage the ongoing transformation process around Zukunftshof in RothNEUsiedl, with a specific focus on engaging young people in shaping public spaces and green infrastructures. While the farm estate of Zukunftshof no longer serves as an active farm, the initiative Zukunftshof Association, obtained a temporary lease from the City of Vienna as the owner of the plot. As the area surrounding Zukunftshof is yet to be developed, we reached out to youth partners in the surroundings – to bring the site and its transformation to young people’s attention, and even more importantly, bring their perspectives on urban transformation to the attention of planners, stakeholders and decision-makers of RothNEUsiedl. In this process, our ULL collaborated with different youth partners, from youth centres, to job training programmes and schools, to foster engagement of young people through various co-creative activities in this process.