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Digitization in Austrian small-town regions: opportunities and risks for spatial planning and development
Abstract
The digitization of our society continues to progress, which comes with implications for cities and regions. This paper reviews the existing literature on digitization and spatial development. It then identifies the potentially concerned sectors of spatial development through re-interpreting the basic ‘functions of existence’ in the light of digitization. Expert interviews in three selected Austrian small-town regions inform the outcome of the paper: an extensive list of opportunities and risks through digitization in the fields of mobility, economy, tourism, environment, social infrastructure, local governance and planning.
Digital initiatives may have helped to maintain active social networks during restrictive, social distancing measures of the COVID‐19 pandemic. To examine how and under which circumstances digital initiatives can contribute to social cohesion, semistructured interviews with 35 stakeholders of local communities and clubs were conducted. The thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews identified four main themes, characterizing conditions under which digital initiatives successfully contributed to social cohesion. First, preexisting digital routines need to be considered. Information and communications technology (ICT) routines, even if limited, need to be extended for digital initiatives to be successfully integrated into communities. Second, acquiring ICT skills are not a technical but a social problem. Members with limited prior knowledge relied heavily on strong ties to improve their ICT skills to become part of digital networks. Third, social media fatigue is particularly prevalent in those with limited prior ICT experience. Importantly, individual withdrawal from digital networks, resulting from SMF, had a knock‐on effect on others. Finally, communities that were not engaging with ICT dissipated. As such, ICT may contribute to social capital by maintaining social engagement in social networks, particularly if providing additional benefits to the community.
Location policies of public services such as health care have a great impact on urban and regional structures. Hence, we criticise the general failure of national public sector policies to account for regionally unequal conditions. Conversely, we question the sufficiency of current regional planning concepts for a spatially sensitive location policy of public services. In this theoretical-conceptual contribution, we review the literature on public service provision and the logics of public facility location systems, especially concerning their explanatory value under different regional urbanisation conditions. We reinterpret the conceptual limits of the prime planning concepts of ‘central places’ and ‘polycentricity’ – represented by their underlying spatial logics of hierarchy and complementarity – by employing the ‘central flow theory’ of Taylor, Hoyler, and Verbruggen. With the help of the ‘territory-place-scale-network (TPSN) framework’ of Jessop, Brenner and Jones, we perform a conceptual shift to ultimately outline an integrative ‘central places and flows planning approach’. It accounts for unequal regional conditions for public service locations, and thus manages to integrate economic, political, and spatial components of service provision. We illustrate the feasibility of the central places and flows planning approach using the case of the Finnish social and health care sector. The (failed) Finnish governance reform plans of 2015–2019 for the health care sector are a telling example of spatially un-sensitive sector policies. The reform plans wanted to advance free market elements and enhance the free choice of clients. These aims implicitly re-enforced centre-favouring conditions at the expense of peripheral regions.
Digitalization, combined with the proliferation of online review and payment systems, has been integral to the creation of the sharing economy. While the sharing economy has opened industries to additional workers, it also shift risks to users and leads to a hybridization of previously pure economic concepts such as markets and circuits of commerce. Due to this risk shift, how do sharing economy users, specifically Airbnb hosts, protect themselves from the risks inherent in a marketplace that is both formal and informal, and regularly crosses the boundaries between legal and illegal? Using qualitative interviews with 23 Airbnb hosts in New York City, I argue that Airbnb's shifting of risk to workers leads to a hybridized form of institutional work as hosts create a social circuitry in order to protect themselves. This research contributes to the larger literature on digitalized and informal markets and circuits, risk, and societal impact of digitalization.
Airbnb prominently argues to promote more inclusive forms of tourism through enabling ordinary households to occasionally share their home with tourists. This conventional understanding of ‘home-sharing’ has been challenged, however, with critics arguing that property owners and landlords use the platform for the commercial provision of permanent holiday homes. This article uses Airbnb provision practices and the dichotomy of ‘home-sharing’ and commercial provision as an empirical entry point into the debate to what extent Airbnb promotes more inclusive tourism development. While existing studies on Airbnb provision practices in the European context have predominantly focused on the major tourism centres with the biggest tourism numbers, we consider a second-rank European tourist city with a rapidly growing Airbnb supply, Vienna, Austria. Methodologically, we critically review and extend common approaches to identify commercial practices. Based on a new dataset of Airbnb listings, quantitative statistics and GIS, we find that, in Vienna, the notion of ‘home-sharing’ is insufficient to fully explain the characteristics of the Airbnb supply, with commercial practices playing a considerable part, yet in geographically uneven ways. Our extended methodological framework provides further, more differentiated insights into provision practices than previous studies. We conclude by relating our findings back to debates on inclusive tourism development and discuss questions for further research.
Automated vehicles (AVs) could completely change mobility in the coming years and decades. As AVs are still under development and gathering empirical data for further analysis is not yet possible, existing studies mainly applied models and simulations to assess their impact. This paper provides a comprehensive review of modelling studies investigating the impacts of AVs on travel behaviour and land use. It shows that AVs are mostly found to increase vehicle miles travelled and reduce public transport and slow modes share. This particularly applies to private AVs, which are also leading to a more dispersed urban growth pattern. Shared automated vehicle fleets, conversely, could have positive impacts, including reducing the overall number of vehicles and parking spaces. Moreover, if it is assumed that automation would make the public transport system more efficient, AVs could lead to a favouring of urbanisation processes. However, results are very sensitive to model assumptions which are still very uncertain (e.g. the perception of time in AVs) and more research to gain further insight should have priority in future research as well as the development of the models and their further adaptation to AVs.
This contribution searches for a regional planning conception that allows for a mutual recognition and practical translation between strategies for urban regions and peripheries beyond separate urban and rural categories; taking the Austrian strategic spatial planning context as the example. For this, various notions of polycentricity are discussed and assessed with regard to periphery. The Austrian strategic spatial development concept ÖREK sets out a focused work programme with changing responsibilities and participation of actors. The objectives are targeted and the processes are implementation oriented. Amongst other topics, urban regional issues and peripheral, declining regions are worked on separately. A conceptually integrative, plan-like strategic instrument across the topics and for the whole of Austria is lacking. The ESPON notion of ‘inner peripheries’ is proposed as a complementary concept to the ESDP notion of polycentricity, helping to create a bridge between urban regional and periphery strategies. This has the potential to guide strategic planning practice efforts in Austria towards a yet missing strategic spatial plan for the whole of the country beyond urban and rural categories. Practice relevant conclusions related to the case of Austrian strategic spatial planning are drawn and a need for further, comparative research in a European context is identified.
Die digitale Transformation wird zu tiefgreifenden Veränderungen von Geschäftsmodellen, Organisationen und Arbeitsgestaltung führen. Entsprechend werden auch gänzlich neue Anforderungen an Führungskräfte gestellt. Um diese veränderten Anforderungen greifbar zu machen haben wir eine großangelegte Befragung von ExpertInnen aus Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft, Verbänden und Politik durchgeführt, deren Ergebnisse wir in diesem Kapitel vorstellen. Dabei betonten die befragten ExpertInnen, dass durch die digitale Transformation die Abgabe von Macht von Führungskräften an Mitarbeitende zunehmen, die Wichtigkeit von beziehungsförderndem und coachenden Verhalten von Führungskräften gegenüber Mitarbeitenden steigen und Führungskompetenzen wie Agilität, Veränderungsmanagement und Führung auf Distanz eine stärkere Rolle einnehmen werden. Mitarbeiterleistungen werden transparenter und sollten von Führungskräften daher entsprechend ergebnisorientiert bewertet werden. Darüber hinaus wird durch die Digitalisierung auch mehr Druck auf Mitarbeitende entstehen, welchen Führungskräfte durch gesundheitsbewusste Führung abfedern sollten. Führung selbst wird insgesamt stärker technologisiert, d.h., durch digitale Tools unterstützt, werden. Diese Veränderungen von Führung werden am Beispiel von Organisationen verschiedener Größen und Branchen illustriert.
Der Bericht fasst die Ergebnisse des im Auftrag der Österreichischen Parlamentsdirektion durchgeführten Pilotprojekts „Industrie 4.0. Foresight & Technikfolgenabschätzung zur gesellschaftlichen Dimension der nächsten industriellen Revolution“ zusammen. Es diente als Versuch, Methoden des Foresight und Technology Assessment für das österreichische Parlament anhand eines ausgewählten Zukunftsthemas zu demonstrieren und konkret nutzbar zu machen. Ausgehend von einer Klärung der mit dem Konzept „Industrie 4.0“ verbundenen Inhalte steht die Untersuchung von Chancen, Risiken und Herausforderungen in neun gesellschaftlichen Wirkungsfeldern im Zentrum. Darauf aufbauend werden für zwei ausgewählte Felder – Qualifizierung und Sicherheit – Handlungsbedarfe und Handlungsoptionen für die politische Gestaltung skizziert. Die hier vorgestellten Ergebnisse wurden mittels Literatur- und Dokumentenanalyse und in mehreren Workshops mit Mitgliedern des Ausschusses für Forschung, Innovation und Technologie sowie mit Stakeholdern und ExpertInnen gewonnen. Wesentliche, im Laufe des Projekts erarbeitete Grundlagen bilden ein vom Projektteam erstelltes Hintergrundpapier, ein von einer externen Expertin verfasstes wissenschaftliches Vertiefungspapier zum Wirkungsfeld Qualifizierung sowie ein weiteres von einem Experten zum Wirkungsfeld Sicherheit.
Mobility largely depends on public services and constitutes a key factor for regional development. However, demographic and structural changes challenge public transport networks in peripheral regions and lead to economic shrinkage. This, in turn, undermines the principle of creating or maintaining equal living conditions across Germany and leads to spatial polarization. Limited mobility is closely connected to social exclusion and warrants an in-depth analysis. Our paper examines the commuting patterns of apprentices in rural Brandenburg, Germany. It is based on a survey of apprentices in tourism and the food industry. The study finds that apprentices in rural areas are confronted with public transport deficits but also apply strategies for dealing with these problems. The paper also shows how this relates to social exclusion and to current planning debates regarding co-production and digitalization in the context of public service provision.
Der Beitrag erörtert die Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf die Einzelhandelsentwicklung in ländlichen Räumen. Zunächst wird die vorhandene Literatur zu diesem Themenfeld aufbereitet, um anschließend eine kommunale Pilotstudie zur Angebots- und Nachfragesituation in einer ländlichen Kleinstadt in Nordrhein-Westfalen vorzustellen.
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