Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in the City, the BABLE podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at bable-smartcities.eu.
[00:00:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: So it is another year and another year live at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, where BABLE is an official collaborating partner and Smart in the City is an official media partner. And it is another amazing year. So I'm getting the chance to sit down with some of the key speakers and attendees and all the amazing people here, networking and getting to meet each other. So thank you, of course, to Fira Barcelona for the amazing partnership.
One of the speakers and one of the people that we really wanted to talk to this year is sitting across from me, ready to have to spill all of his knowledge about everything that is going on in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria. And his name is Jurgen Chernobyl. He is the Executive City Councilor for Climate, Environment, Democracy and Personnel. Welcome, Jurgen.
[00:01:38] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Hi. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Absolutely. My pleasure. So I like to get started with a little bit of a teaser to get warmed up. So the warm up question that we have today is if Vienna were an animal, which animal would it be and why?
[00:01:53] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Questions like these are the, the hardest for me. First of all, I think I wouldn't, I wouldn't think of Vienna as one single animal because Vienna is all about a community. Yeah. Or maybe a colony of ants. But thinking about a colony of ants, I don't know how an aunt is as an individual. Maybe there are like unicorn aunts.
So Vienna is maybe a colony of unicorn aunts.
But thinking of that, Vienna is more a home for these ants than the ants. I don't know, it's really hard for me to answer questions like that. Vienna is a good place to be, in fact, for everyone and for every animal as well.
[00:02:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good. A unicorn colony of ants is probably the most creative answer I've had for that question. So I love it.
I want people to get to know you. First off, who am I talking to right now? Right. Not just a voice. And you have a story and a background. And I would love to know more about what led you to your role today? Where did you come from? What were your experiences like?
[00:03:01] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Okay, first of all, I'm from Vienna.
[00:03:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: Born in Rennes?
[00:03:08] Jürgen Czernohorszky: No, no, no, not originally like most of the Viennese are. Most of the people in Vienna came to Vienna from somewhere. In my case, it wasn't that far away. It was another part of Austria.
And I'm a child of the eight of the late 70s, as I'm 47 now. So I was very much influenced by the first, I would say, green phase in Austrian politics. It was about the Club of Rome report then and the sour rainfalls that was damaging the forests in Austria and the ozone leak and things like that, on the one hand. And on the other hand, it was the first time when really right wing people in Austria were on the rise.
And so maybe these things, on the one hand, the activism for the climate and the environment and on the other hand, activism against right wing politicians or for the. For the democracy in Austria made me a political person. So I was political in some way, even in school, as spokesperson of my class and things like that. And I organized trips to Vienna to protest marches and things like that.
Professionally. I became a social sociologist later and I worked for big youth and family organization.
But I was a political animal. All that, all the time. I was in the students union and in the city council in Vienna for a long time. I was the youngest member of the city council that day, which is the name for the city parliament in Vienna.
Yeah. And later I got to. I got the chance to be part of the city government responsible for education.
And now I am part of the city government responsible for climate, environment and democracy and energy and city personnel and other things.
[00:05:21] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really interesting background. It sounds like you would have been voted to be the executive city council for climate, environment, democracy and personnel, even as a high schooler.
[00:05:30] Jürgen Czernohorszky: So it sounds like I didn't plan it. In fact, I didn't actually want it at a single time in my life. But it turned out it fits me, it seems.
[00:05:42] Tamlyn Shimizu: So I want to dig in a little bit to Vienna.
It is about to be recognized as European capital of democracy for this year. Right.
[00:05:54] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Tomorrow we take over the baton from Barcelona.
[00:05:57] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, exactly. I was actually here last year celebrating with Barcelona, the European capital of democracy. And now we're moving, passing the baton, as you said, to Vienna. So what does this title actually mean to the city and how does it align with Vienna's vision for democratic engagement in the future?
[00:06:16] Jürgen Czernohorszky: I would say something very special and very great about Vienna is that there is A core mission for every policy in the last decades. And this is the responsibility for a city to be a good place to live in for everyone. Not the rich, not only the persons that live in a certain neighborhood, but literally for everyone. And that is the reason why there is such a long tradition for affordable housing, for example, for the fact that Vienna has so many green spaces for people to make the city their living room and so on. It's all about the living quality for everyone and a vision of making politics, not for the few, but for the many. And if you have this vision, you have to come up with an idea to actively involve people, especially when it comes to a big transformation. Vienna is a city that is transforming really, really fast. On the one hand, because we're growing that fast. Vienna has 2 million inhabitants right now. It's the second largest German speaking city in Europe and it grew by 450,000 people in the last three to four decades. So it grew very, very, very fast. And that was a challenge for a place to be a good place, an affordable place for everyone if it's growing that fast. And the other hand, there are all the challenges, all the crises we face, climate crisis, digitalisation. So we transform our city basically with the same mission. We want to be the number one city in the world when it comes to the quality of living in 10, in 20, in 30 and 40 years to go. But in order to do so, or to be that same city as a good home for everyone, we have to change a lot, basically. We have to transform everything. And when you transform everything, when it comes to climate mitigation, when it comes to climate protection, when it comes to digitalization and so on one hand you need brave politicians and a mission based approach. I would say politics that says, let's try it. I don't know, it's hard, I don't know.
People would have never gone to the moon if John F. Kennedy had said, let's make, I don't know, working meeting. But he said we chose to go to the moon within a decade. So it's about mission and a clear vision, what is to be done, like for example, climate neutrality by 2040. But I think it's not enough. Because if there's on the one hand a big mission for a city, for a big transformation for everyone, there has to be, on the other hand, the clear need of having all hands on deck, having all people to actively engage, to actively form their neighborhoods, to actively be part of the solutions we have to come up with. And therefore it's all about democracy and all about democracy, innovation. And there is another reason. Then I'm ready with this long answer. The other reason is that actually there is a big democracy deficit in Vienna because there are so many people that live in Vienna that came from abroad. Vienna, as a melting pot, a hub, has always been lying in the middle of Europe and between the two sides of the former iron border. Vienna has always been a place where people came together.
But that means that there are very many people without an Austrian and therefore a European citizenship. And Austria has a very, very restrictive citizenship law. In fact, it's really, I would say it's one of the really worst things about Austria. So it's hard to get, to get to be Austrian and therefore you're not allowed to vote. And in Vienna, more than a third of the people that live in Vienna are above the voting age, cannot vote. So this is a big deficit. And as a city we cannot change it because it's national law. But we can come up with opportunities, we can come up with programs, we can come up with a whole bunch of different policies that brings the city together with its people, no matter where they come from, no matter what citizenship they have, and to draw the paths to go for the future. So that was basically, these are the two main reasons why Vienna is very enthusiastic about democracy and further developing democracy. And that's why we applied for the title and won.
[00:11:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: So congratulations. And can you give an example of one of these programs that you mentioned that can still bring people into these democratic processes, even if they're not citizens, for example?
[00:11:22] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Yeah. First of all, we have a long tradition and we've been trying out different things in different areas of politics. For example, youth involvement. There are youth parliaments in every district and there's a youth parliament at the city level deciding on how to spend a million euros for projects young people came up with.
In the last years, we tried to invent a lot of new things. And I would say the biggest thing of the new things is the Klima teams or Vienna or Viennese climate teams. And this is basically a big project based on the participatory budget, which is decided upon by the Vienna City Council. So the money is already there when the whole process starts and it cannot be taken away. And then it's a year long actively involving people for a co creation process. So people that have ideas that come up with new approaches for their neighborhoods, and they are linked together with the experts from the city, working together on programs, working together on a doable version of their ideas. And then again, the citizens are deciding upon the different projects with all the money they have.
There is no politician that says this or that project. And then it's. And then it's realized in two years, period. And this was something that showed us one thing is a really, really good invention we want to try out in all the things we do in the next years. And this is the co creation approach. So the city is not only asking for ideas and then it's realizing these ideas, but the city is actively involving citizens and is actively working together with citizens, which also changed the city administration a lot. And the other really successful approach at the Klima team was that we tried to be as, as near to the people as possible. So it was all about going to the parks, going to communities, working together with young people in schools. So it was not anything where people had to go to, to apply or something, but it was there, it was everywhere. And this approach of coming out to the people on the one hand and of working together with them were really new actually. But in this size it was new and it's a really good thing. And it changed a lot already.
[00:14:33] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really, really interesting projects. What have been already? What do you hope as the tangible changes that you see long term from these participatory processes? So what do you see as this clear outcome of doing this? You have this in 10 years, 20 years. What, what is your hope for, for the future there?
[00:14:56] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Maybe, maybe it is worth to, to think about the challenge of transformation again. I really think the world we live in right now, or the society, societies we live in right now, are in the middle of a crisis or are in the middle of many crises. And there is a quote I like very much from the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci who said, I don't know exactly, but basically he said a crisis is when the old world is dying and the new world can't be born. And I think we are exactly in a phase like that. And so the crisis, be it for example, the climate crisis, it's also a crisis of imagination. We cannot imagine a better world. We can imagine, I don't know, sunken coastal cities, we can imagine heat waves, I mean, we're experiencing it. But we cannot imagine a better world without exploitation of the planet, more justice on the global scale and so on, more green areas, less traffic, whatever. So I think it to be a part of the. Part of, I don't know, being midwife of a new world, being open for new and positive visions of a new world is only doable if you do this Together, because it's only the people in our societies that know about the things they need, about their dreams, about the things they long and love. And I think a city can be a place that is the realization of these longings and dreams. I think the city is a perfect place for a better world because the city is a place where people come together and decide they share something, they share open space, they share their share flats, they share knowledge, they share parks. And therefore I think they can share a future and can actively design this future. And that needs democracy, innovation.
[00:17:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Beautifully said, thank you very much for that. We actually interviewed Barcelona last year, as I mentioned for the same award, and we asked them a question and I'd like to hear your take as well on it. So democracy often faces challenges in fostering inclusivity. You hear many voices, the same voices many times.
Can you discuss perhaps any other initiatives that have successfully ensured marginalized voices are heard and represented in the decision making process?
[00:17:50] Jürgen Czernohorszky: First of all, we had the chance to make a very, a very comprehensive evaluation of our projects. We did the last year, for example, the climate teams. And it showed whenever we succeed in reaching out, more people get involved that haven't been involved before. For example, the climate team, 70% of the people involved said that they have never been part of some participation project in Vienna.
This is one finding. And the other finding is we have to be very careful with our language. German is a crazy language and it's full of barriers, especially in the city that is very diverse. It's one big barrier. So we have to come up with easy language, we come up with pictures, we come up basically, I think if the things we do are something that also children can take part, it's a good thing, it's nothing bad. And the other thing is, I think we have to learn that we do not only address individuals, because it's hard to raise your voice being on your own, but we have to address groups or families or a bunch of friends. And if they can together, if they can do something together, it's easier. And the other thing is the word do. It's easier to do something than to say something, than to make a very, very, very thoughtful argument. Maybe it's easier to do something. So that's the reason why we came up with the idea of making workshops all over the city. For example, workshops on a new youth strategy. It was the project of Werkstadt Jungis Wien, which means basically Jung Viennese workshop. And 20,000 young people work together in different places where they have already been in Schools in kindergartens and youth clubs and thought about their environment and what has to be changed. And the other thing is, right now we are working on one big hub within the city administration that brings together community of practice NGOs, people that work for participation projects within the cities, civil society, and organizes workshops all over the city. They pop up somewhere on a pedestrian zone, in a park, in the club, in the club, in a youth club. But also it's a strong tie to cultural activities as well. And then they work together basically on everything. You can work together, you can talk about everything. And I think that's very.
That changed a lot for the better when it comes to involving people that haven't been involved before. For example, there's one workshop together with the community organization that brings together refugee women.
And there was one democrativax upon democracy workshop only with them. And it wasn't about coming up with findings in the first place. It was just about having time to talk and think and maybe envision something that would be great if you can wish for everything. And then basically the findings were really, really great and changed the program of our city working on democracy already.
So that's something I really like the workshop approach.
[00:21:33] Tamlyn Shimizu: Amazing examples. Thanks for sharing some.
I want to play devil's advocate a little bit. So some critics might argue that these democratic initiatives can sometimes be more symbolic than impactful, potentially slowing down decision making because, you know, it's easier to maybe just push forward on things and make decisions and go forward without all these different workshops and all these other activities. Right. Because that slows down. So how would you respond to those who feel like these approaches may not lead to tangible results fast enough?
[00:22:09] Jürgen Czernohorszky: First of all, I think that it's definitely true that there are things that can be wrong when you try out new things. And many projects we try go don't go well because they don't come up with results or they take too long or whatever. But that's the same thing with discussions in the city council. Not everything is ideal when people come together to come up with decisions on the future. And I think it takes both. First of all, official nado of representative democracy.
It's the reason for the stability in European countries. And it makes sense that there are elections and that there are long term decisions and that there are basic like that there are some crossroads and people decide this or that direction and then it's a big plan or a big or a legislative period that is marked by this certain way that was decided upon. But on that way it is a total Illusion, if you ask me, that things can go faster and better if you don't involve citizens, especially on the community level. Maybe it's possible on a national level, but on a community level, the people live there. If you do something in a city like Vienna and haven't asked anyone and haven't informed before and, but we want to change, I don't know, the surface of the city, of the street, less car parking spaces, more trees, whatever.
I mean, there is a, there are protest marches and I perfectly understand that. But if we try to come up with the ideas together, citizen participation and city experts, there will be much more acceptance for the, for the thing that is done by the city. And I think that makes most of the, of the projects you do even faster.
[00:24:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So with that being said, what do you think are still the biggest challenges slowing down progress in Vienna? What are the bottlenecks that are really slowing down the progress that you want to see in the city? And what do you, what tools do you think you need to really accelerate this change?
[00:24:38] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Maybe there is one really, really big threat to democracy in Vienna. I would say it's the same threat as in many countries in Europe right now, which is a rising right wing movement and there are more and more enemies of democracy getting louder and louder. Austria as well as in other countries. And I would say one of the reasons for that is that there have been so many crises which haven't been dealt with perfectly by the acting politicians. So it's not, it's not only, it's not only about right wing people and people that are, I don't know, caught by some, I don't know.
[00:25:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's a reaction.
[00:25:28] Jürgen Czernohorszky: It's a reaction, yeah. And then it has to be said that it's also a reaction of living conditions that got harder, for example, for young people that try to come up with a good vision of their future when they look on the climate crisis or on the job market and whatever, it's hard to have a positive vision of the future. And the inflation in Austria is also a topic, so it's harder to scrimp and save enough money to have a normal living. So this is a big threat for democracy and it's all about democracy. Democracy is not only about making decisions in an inclusive way. For me, democracy is coming up with a society that lets everybody take his part, that has, that is empowering everybody to have an active role. And part of this empowerment is, for example, that everybody has enough money to live and everybody has enough Time to engage himself or herself. So it's a lot about social policies, it's a lot about education and so many things. It's all about the basics that, that even allow us to come up with an approach that lets everybody play his part.
And that's about Social Security. And if Social Security is threatened, it's also a big, big, big threat for democracy. I would say that is the biggest challenge. And to be honest, it cannot be solved by projects like I told you before, it has to be solved by comprehensive politics that consequently puts people in the center and consequently asks the question is the thing I'm proposing as a politician making the lives of the people better or not? And if it's not, it's bad politics.
So maybe that's, that's a big thing, that's a big threat. There are much smaller threats as well. For example, as you said, there are blind spots for things we do for projects we do. For example, there used to be a blind spot, especially on people that are.
Haven't. Don't have so much time to involve, like for example, single moms or especially on people that don't have the language capacities to be part of. So we have to come up with an approach that doesn't have a one size fits all answer, but very many different possibilities to be open as a city to work together with people.
[00:28:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really interesting. Thank you for sharing that. I also want to ask you if there's anything that we talked about today that we didn't get the chance to talk about today. So if there's any kind of question left unanswered, something that you really want people to know about, this is your open floor time. Within the interview part. Do you have any topic that you think, oh, this is the topic that people need to know about.
[00:28:57] Jürgen Czernohorszky: I would like to, maybe I would like to come up to the whole vision point once more because I think the whole community that is building itself right now, the community of former or future European capital of democracies, can have a big active part, can make a contribution to a. A positive vision of democracy activism, a positive vision of a city as a stronghold for democracy. The city for that sees itself as a living room for everybody. That is a shared space and therefore it has to be decided upon together what is happening with this space. And so it's a lot about learning from each other. And I'm sure that there are thousands of things that Vienna can learn from other cities and there are a lot of things that we have learned from Barcelona in the last year. And I'm so enthusiastic about the possibility that this is something that will stay, even after Vienna has stopped, to be European capital of democracy in one year to come. Because I'm sure that can move cities forward. Because I'm rather convinced that for nearly all of the problems we face as mankind, the solutions lie within the cities.
I mean, everybody's right when he or her says there are a lot of problems in cities, like, I don't know, pollution, congestion, housing, whatever. But I think the cities are the perfect place to come up with the solutions for that. And therefore, I really think that the initiative, like the European Capital of Democracy initiative, can contribute to that, because we come together the next year in Vienna. There are so many cities that have the possibility to come to Vienna to highlight their projects when we have the Mayor's Conference or the Innovation in Politics Award, or we work together with a big art festival in Vienna. And for the Viennese projects, it's a possibility to highlight the things they do and to learn from each other. So I expect a boost of inspiration for my city, and I hope that we can contribute to a few inspirations in other cities as well. And as it is the second city of democracy now, Barcelona and Vienna had the chances to.
I mean, we formed this and we have the chance to really make it big. And I think that is something we try together here at Smart City Expo tomorrow when it comes to the formal closing ceremony for the Barcelona year. But it's a formal closing, but it's the starting of the first partnership between two European capital of democracy cities. And there will be a third one and a fourth one and a fifth one. And if you imagine Europe as a place full of capitals of democracy, I'm sure it's going to be a better Europe and it's going to be a better place because we all will learn from each other. And that's something I'm really enthusiastic about.
[00:32:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: I'm really excited to see how this next year plays out with the initiatives that you're pushing forward as part of this as well, and the different learnings sharing between, between the European capitals of democracy. So now we move into our segment, which is a segment that I selected for you today, which is called Trial and Error.
[00:32:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: Trial and Error.
What went wrong? What mistakes were made along the way, and more importantly, what lessons were learned.
[00:33:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: You touched on some things already, but maybe to focus a little bit more. Trial and error, of course, one of the biggest things for cities is that we try and we fail, and then we try again and we succeed. And we learn a lot along the process. And that's just part of innovation and how we succeed as cities and part of democracy and everything else. So my question to you is, yeah, what went wrong? What was the main lesson that you learned along the way of, of something that you tried?
[00:33:34] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Something I learned rather recently with the first two years of Klima teams was that it is that there cannot be enough transparency if we are convinced that we do the right thing. We can basically tell everyone everything. Every time in our first two years we tried to do that, but there were a few things we made, I don't know, not exactly behind closed doors, but it was. There were part of this processes or part of this process where the experts were working on the projects together with certain cities, citizens. But all of them, they weren't that open. And we experienced nobody did something bad. It was great programs. It was to get worked upon, to get with the citizens. But there were very many people that said, what are we doing there? Is it something, is it a program within the program that says no to certain ideas and therefore the whole. It was bad for the whole thing. So we came up with even more transparency and even more. It's again the workshop format, more workshops where everybody's invited and everybody can see how it's done, how the city is working together with the people. And I think there's also something that we can learn from for the whole city administration. When we do something in Vienna, we always try to inform the citizens, even if it's not a big participation thing, but just, I don't know, just something that is planned and it's going on. But we tend to think a one time information is enough and then the process is starting. And usually that's not, that's not working communication, it's not working that well. So I think you can communicate enough and I think you cannot be transparent enough even if you fear not achieving your goals. When it comes to transformation, we have a lot of goals. For example, we're working on a really, really big boost on solar energy.
Four times the capacity we had in 20, 21 or 5 times. Sorry, we reached it already, but we had, we didn't know that before that we will succeed in three years for five times the capacity. But we came up with a dashboard. And you can look at it, you can look at it every week, every month, and you can even look at if it would have been at a failure. And I would say it's a better form of criticism to be criticized for something you really did or did not. But to be criticized as a city for something you didn't want to or you didn't even do. So it's a lot of things I learned has to do with the transparency, I would say. And the other thing is in Austria there has been a really, I would say it was a good, good thing in Austria. On the national level, there has been a Climate Citizens Council and they worked very hard. People that were like handpicked randomly from all different backgrounds worked hard on ideas for climate protection in Austria.
And then it wasn't clear what is done with these ideas. There was one minister that was very eager to listen to them and different federal states like Vienna that were eager to learn from their ideas on the province level. But on the national level, it wasn't clear with the coalition partners. So what I was trying to say is if there is a process where people invest their time in and their ideas and their hearts, you have to be consequent in working with the solutions these people come up with. So the process has to be very clear and it has to be part of the whole process, not only to come up with ideas, but also to realize these ideas. And if this is some kind of, if this is vague somehow or it isn't decided in the first place how the responsible politicians are working with that, it's something bad for the whole process. And it was really, for me, it was very sad to see that, that it was like, kind of just like vaporizing somehow. So I think transparency and clarity for the process. This is something we learn in Australia.
[00:38:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good lessons learned. Wonderful. The last question is the question that I ask every single guest that comes onto the show because all the definitions are all over the place. And the question is to you, what is a smart city?
[00:38:43] Jürgen Czernohorszky: I would say a smart city is a city that brings together the approach of making a good life possible for everyone. So it's a social city with new ideas, innovation, technology, everything needed to be an innovative city as well. And if these things are combined not be being enthusiastic about technologies or smart approaches without knowing what they're for, that is something that won't gonna work. I think what smart city Vienna is trying to show is that these are two things that can be combined perfectly because there is no solution without a problem some person has. And if you be smart enough to see the problems you have as a community, not only as an individual, as a community, then you can work on a smart city solving these problems.
And I think it's a lot about for the Viennese approach definitely. It's a lot about social cohesion, being smart to transform a city to be a good place even in 10 and 20, 30 years to come.
[00:40:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very good. Love it. Love the social inclusion aspect of it. Very, very important when we talk about smart cities to have this holistic approach and to also be thinking about these democratic processes and everything that this encompasses. So with that, I just have to thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I really, really enjoyed hearing and learning so much from you about what Vienna is doing in the space. So really, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for coming on.
[00:40:43] Jürgen Czernohorszky: Thank you so much.
[00:40:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: And thank you of course, to all of our listeners. Don't forget, you can always create a free account on bable-smartcities.eu and you can find out more about smart city projects, solutions and implementations. Thank you very much.
[00:40:58] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
