Gloomy ranking

WWF castigates Lower Austrian cities as concreters

Flowers instead of asphalt - the WWF conservationists would rather see that than roads and parking lots.(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Austria's cities are more heavily sealed than WWF experts had thought. They found the most concrete in the two largest cities in Lower Austria. They reject this dubious honor.

Black asphalt strips and gray concrete deserts - this is the gloomy picture the WWF paints of the largest cities in Lower Austria. In a new study, the conservationists put the sealed surfaces in cities in relation to the number of inhabitants - and St. Pölten with 307.7 square meters and Wiener Neustadt with 257.1 square meters per capita are the frontrunners.

Surprising results at first glance
The fact that major cities such as Graz, Innsbruck and even Vienna are at the bottom of this ranking is surprising. And a closer look puts the result into perspective. Wiener Neustadt town hall puts it in a nutshell: "At the top are medium-sized cities that need a lot of infrastructure but only have 50,000 inhabitants." St. Pölten echoes this sentiment: "We have 108 square kilometers of urban space, compared to 105 square kilometers in Paris."

Concrete desert - the new cathedral square in St. Pölten(Bild: Thomas Werth)

Many roads and commercial areas
The WWF criticizes the provincial capital for its many traffic areas: "105 square metres per capita are paved or covered in concrete," says soil protection spokesperson Simon Pories. In Wiener Neustadt, the environmentalists are bothered by the many sealed industrial areas - 62 square meters per inhabitant.

Gray in gray - industrial area in Wiener Neustadt(Bild: Vernunft statt Ostumfahrung)

Cities put up a fight 
In St. Pölten, the high value is explained by the numerous cadastral areas: "The distances between the settlements are long, and the demand for traffic areas is correspondingly high." In addition, there is the A...1, Western Railway and freight train bypass in the urban area: "If you were to take the settable and populated area as a comparative value, only 18.6 percent would be sealed." Wiener Neustadt counters in a similar way: "72 percent of the urban area is unsealed." The WWF's fear that the planned eastern bypass will lead to the development - and concreting over - of further industrial areas is countered: "There will be no industrial areas on the bypass!"