The 15-Min City: A Configurational Approach for Understanding the Spatial, Economic, and Cognitive Context of Walkability in Vienna

This paper focuses on how a city’s configurational patterns impact the city-wide and neighbourhood spatial, economic, and cognitive context through the case study of Vienna. The authors investigate Vienna by applying the space syntax method to get a better grasp of the city-wide and local to-movement, through-movement potentials, and intelligibility. This approach allows the authors to determine the degree of street life and liveliness of Vienna in relation to walkability potential, which includes social and economic factors. The case study of Vienna is performed using quantitative analyses, with a mathematical street network modelling approach and statistical analyses. Additionally, this quantitative approach is enriched with a qualitative photographic survey. The data imply that Vienna, as a historically developed city, has a high potential for walkability. This is also confirmed by the balance between the foreground network for long-distance movement via motorised public transport, trams, and cars and the background network for walkability in neighbourhoods. The paper concludes by juxtaposing socio-spatial potentials with realised walkability and influencing factors that support or hinder walkability, and by considering how a sustainable urban future can be achieved through well-functioning strategic planning guidelines.