Abstract (eng)
Due to global, international and national climate goals and agreements, the negative externalities of unsustainable mobility practices are coming forward as a relevant political field of action. Motorized individual traffic in particular causes a multitude of socio-ecological problems and its consequences while they have been visible for years and will become even more pressing in the future.
From an environmental and urban sociological perspective, this thesis addresses the problem of whether urban development models can have a promising influence on individual mobility behavior. Based on a quantitative survey, this thesis analyzes the residential environment in Seestadt Aspern - its 'smart' urban development area with a strong reference to mixed usage and sustainable mobility concepts. The aim is to answer the question, to what extent the needs of the basic functions of society are actually covered by the model of a city of short distances, and how the purposes and motivations of the residents are implemented within their residential area.
The first part addresses the topic of non-sustainability as a research field in environmental and urban sociology, and central theories of spatial mobility concerning their macrostructural causes as well as the microfactors of individual mobility behavior are described. Building on this, there is a focus on the importance of spatial mobility for the requirements of a socioecological transformation in urban development - especially the models of a smart city with short distances and the potential of strategies for sustainable mobility are described initially in general and finally with regard to governance strategies of the City of Vienna to reduce individual motorized mobility.
Two results of the empirical part can be emphasized at this point: 1) An extensive provision of basic services within a residential area, in the form of the most extensive offer possible, promotes mobility in the surrounding area. The socio-ecological advantage of this spatial mobility behavior is based on the high proportion of active forms of transport such as walking and cycling. 2) A major challenge for setting short distances within a residential area is, in addition to leisure mobility, primarily labor mobility, especially since commuting to work causes longer distances for the residents of Seestadt and only a very small proportion of the people surveyed, work in Seestadt. Furthermore, individual preferences, the desire for social participation and spatial mobility as a means of selfdetermination show the limits of functionalist, exclusively supply-oriented urban planning.