Remembering Red Vienna
- Loren Balhorn
Though tragically snuffed out by the rise of fascism, Red Vienna was an island of socialist organizing and workers' power worth commemorating.
When it comes to progressive urban planning and municipal administration, “Red Vienna” (1919–1934) remains a common reference point. Best known for its housing programs, this radical municipal project also entailed comprehensive social improvements that included health care, education, child care, and cultural reform efforts.
Red Vienna represents a historically specific, social-democratic response to social and political questions that remain relevant today: the distribution of wealth, access to infrastructure, and the reorganization of reproductive labor. Against the backdrop of contemporary challenges to left, urban politics — the struggle for the right to housing, for public reinvestment, and against the rising right — we should look back on this sweeping interwar project to draw out the possibilities and limits of progressive urban politics within a conservative state.
Red Vienna’s Social Basis
Other European cities also approved socially oriented, modernist housing projects for their urban working classes: both Frankfurt am Main (“New Frankfurt”) and Zürich (“Red Zürich”) initiated programs much like Vienna’s in the wake of World War I, but none were nearly as expansive and ambitious.
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