"ANKER 10" - for day-to-day community engagement in the neighbourhood

The situation in the housing estate "Ankerbrotgründe"

The target area of the pilot project is situated in the northern part of Favoriten, Vienna's 10th district. It's a public housing estate of around 800 apartments and 2500 dwellers which was built in the mid eightees. It may be regarded as prototype of a municipal housing area with an accumulation of unfavourable structures and factors, but also a number of strengths and opportunities. Positively rated in the interviews was the connectivity with the public transportation system, the size and lightness of the apartments, the existence of a recreation area nearby and also the liveliness in the public spaces. Critics often referred to the architecture and the people living in the neighborhood.

There are numerous conflicts of interests between the various groups of residents living very close to each other. There are conflicting needs of living space for young people and migrants, and a need of peaceful and quiet places for the elderly. Insufficiant mutual knowledge of language and culture often cause a lack of communication and misunderstanding.

The increasing number of migrants moving in the housing estate is perceived by many of the autochthonous Austrians as a threat and interpreted as strategic policy of the housing administration to populate the area with migrants. In fact the reason for this trend is more prosaic: the percentage of big apartments with more than 4 rooms is above-average in comparison to other public housing estates in the district and as migrant families usually have more kids there is a higher need for more living space.

The sentiments of many residents are a mix of frustration and fatalism. There is a low identification with the housing estate, a selective perception of negative aspects and basic unchangeability. With this negative attitude each initiative is automatically devaluated as illusoric and useless. This self-fulfilling prophecy doesn't allow to keep a long breath and to sustain the engagement for the community.

Besides these negative and pessimistic attitudes we also faced attitudes of not accepting the things as they are. A number of residents engaged in networks and used their personal concerns as source to feed the networks with their energy. The results of the last year highlight these efforts.

Overall goal and methods

Anker 10 is the Viennese local pilot project of the overarching EU-Project POSEIDON which is part of the INTERREG IIIC programme. Poseidon is a city partnership consisting of Vienna as lead partner, Amsterdam, Genoa, London-Haringey, North-Kent and Stockholm. The goal of the partnership is to enhance the international exchange of experience about neighborhood management and to implement innovative projects in the partner cities.

The overall goal of the Viennese local pilot project ANKER 10 is to contribute to the improvement of the local residents' living conditions. Their interests, ideas and problems are the main starting point, as they are considered to be experts of their immediate every-day environment. The whole process will crucially depend on their commitment and dedication.

The goals of the project are summarized as follows:

• Enhancement of community in the neighborhood
• Creation of sustainable structures, processes and platforms for a constructive coping with problems and conflicts (vertical and horizontal networks)
• De-individualisation of points of views of local deficits
• Mobilisation of local potentials
• Involvement of residents in optimizing the offers of local politics
• Development and experience of new methods, instruments and tools for neighborhood managment

ANKER 10 will provide incentives to the residents to get involved into a creative process by encouraging their desire to change their environment according their requirements, making them aware of the possibility to bring about a broad range of positive and sustainable developments that can be seen and felt. Participating in an essential process of improved co-operation and communication may change their perspective of not being able to influence their environment. In this respect, the focus of the project is on action prior to reaction and on prevention prior to intervention.

Which sustainable changes are realisticly possible?

When the various and multiple problems many residents of this - social - housing estate have to struggle with are taken into account and the general framework of the project - resources and time - are considered, we have to keep a realistic and modest eye on the goals. But that doesn't mean to capitulate to the power of the difficult conditions. Within the project there can be created islands and zones of improved communication and initiated the enhancement of existing offers. Nevertheless the problems which reasons are outside the social-space of the Ankerbrotgründe cannot be tackled within this project. The opportunities opened for the residents opens windows of opportunities for individual and common engagement, changes on a small scale, a strengthening of the representation of the residents and finally the incentive of vertical and horizontal processes of exchange.

Sucesses reached so far (examples):

ANKER 10 - the film

The production of the film Anker 10 - a cooperation between the MedienZentrum Wien, the actor and performer Thomas Wackerlig and the Anker 10 projectteam - was financed by the operative project budget. The film, which is a compressed selection of in total 96 conducted interviews, was produced from mid of March till mid of May 2005. It's a compendium of various and diverse realities and as subjective as the narrations of the residents.

"How is it to live in the Ankerbrotgründe?" - in order to investigate about this question the performer Thomas Wackerlick and Sonja Gruber from the company PlanSinn made their way into the public housing estate to meet and talk with all kinds of people living there.

In creating the artificial figure "Hofrat Abseits" (counselor offside), who has -according the script - left the public office to understand how is everyday life in the area both single persons and groups were contacted in the public space. The contacted persons were informed about the purpose of the film and interviewed only under the condition of their explicit agreement that the film is shown publicly later on. To the artifical figure of the Hofrat there was inherent a relaxing and also activating element. He humoursly made the situation relaxed by his a bit clumsy and naive kind of trying to achieve respect for his role as representative of a public adminsitration, but he also activated the people by animating them to join the communicative game.

Nevertheless the characteristics of the figure of the Hofrat were used sparingly in the reportage. Crucial was the interest and curiosity for the population.

In the timeframe of two months the filmteam in total was 5 days on their way in the Ankerbrotgründe to conduct the interviews. With one exception of the bakery all interviews were exclusively made in the public space.

Resident networks

A series of recently established residents-networks work on the improvement of their living environment.

For instance: The hobbyrooms-network has managed to re-activate the hobbyrooms which had been closed for ten years. The residents established rules for the maintainance and usage of the 4 hobbyrooms for everybody. One of the residents takes care of the keys and feels responsible for the proper usage.

For instance: The Tidyness-network - In one building of the area some residents weren´t satisfied with the maintainance and cleaning of the staircase and the entrance of the building. So they decided to change this situation and clean the staircase themselves. Since then they have improved the cooperation with the housing company Wiener Wohnen and have taken several measures to optimize the situation.

For instance the network of concierges: 10 concierges are responsible for the cleaning and maintainance of the staircases. Beside the usual daily duties they also have some informal duties concerning means of neighbourhood and conflict management. The team of anker10 meets the concierges in a special platform to discuss ideas and measures for problems like noise conflicts, usage of the public space, conflicts concerning youth etc.

Focus points

Currently the Anker10 Team deals with the neighbourhood of migrant residents and old Austrian residents. Interviews wird donducted in the flats of the resiedents to check and to build up the awareness for cooperation. Next Step will be to host staircase-gatherings to find out common interests and ideas for new neighbourhood.

The district government plans to adapt a neighbourhood park and make it more attractive für young residents. In order to optimize the offers for young residents, some of the young residents should get the chance to consult the planning process.