This touring exhibition explores Austria's land policy, highlighting the impact of soil sealing, land speculation, and inadequate spatial planning on housing, climate, and urban development. It presents alternatives and best practices for resource-conserving land use.
Two mobile variations of the exhibition 'Land for Us All', curated by the Architekturzentrum Wien, are touring Austria from May 2021. The exhibition addresses the critical issue of land policy, which impacts everyone. It aims to raise awareness about the consequences of careless or purely capital-driven treatment of this finite resource, which has reshaped towns and villages. Progressive soil sealing contributes to the climate crisis, while land speculation and hoarding inflate housing prices, threaten public space, and impede sensible transport policies. The displacement of urban manufacturing leads to monofunctionality and job losses. Outside major centers, weak spatial planning results in sprawling landscapes of shopping centers and single-family homes, leading to deserted town centers, exploding traffic, and the loss of agricultural land threatening food security. The exhibition, curated by Karoline Mayer and Katharina Ritter, illuminates the complex backgrounds, fields of expertise, and responsible agents involved in land use. It questions how grassland becomes building land, why land prices rise, and how these issues connect to our lives. Comparisons between countries highlight system strengths and weaknesses, while international best practices offer viable alternatives. A collection of existing tools points toward spatial planning that conserves land, mitigates climate change, addresses housing issues, and facilitates good architecture, urging collective new thinking and action.
