Archive for the ‘Studies’ Category

Radweg Getreidemarkt->Karlsplatz

Montag, Februar 18th, 2013

Vor ein paar Tagen haben die Wiener Grünen angekündigt, dass der Radstreifen am Getreidemarkt von der Lehárgasse zur Wienzeile weitergeführt werden soll.

Derzeit endet der Radstreifen, der direkt neben dem Gehsteig auf dem Fahrbahnniveau verläuft mit einem lapidaren „Ende“ bei der Lehárgasse. In Zukunft soll der Radstreifen die Auto-Fahrspuren kreuzen und quasi zwischen Geradeausspuren und Linksabbiegespuren weitergeführt werden. Als Alltagsradler in Wien fahre ich diese Variante genauso, allerdings sehe ich für mich einige Nachteile. Derzeit suche ich mir die Stelle an der ich die Fahrspuren kreuze abhängig vom aktuellen Verkehrsaufkommen sehr genau aus. In Zukunft werde ich dazu verdammt sein, genau dem Verlauf zu folgen und vermutlich warten zu müssen bis mir der Autoverkehr ein Kreuzen erlaubt. Man darf nicht vergessen, dass am Getreidemarkt sehr hohe Geschwindigkeiten gefahren werden (auch von den AlltagsradlerInnen).

Ein weiteres Problem löst der vorgeschlagene Plan auch nicht, nämlich die Verbindung Karlsplatz->Getreidemarkt->Museumsquartier, derzeit ist ein mühsamer Umweg über die Nibelungengasse notwendig. Besonders schlimm ist es, wenn man vom Karlsplatz zum TU Audimax möchte (was für hunderte Studierende alltägliche Notwendigkeit ist), da muss man nämlich ebenso über Nibelungengasse -> Eschenbachgasse -> Getreidemarkt fahren (quasi „mit der Kirche ums Kreuz“) oder den Getreidemarkt hinaufschieben. Der Radweg mit einer etwaigen „Gegen die Einbahn“-Öffnung der Lehárgasse wäre auch eine attraktive Verbindung in den 6. Bezirk.

Ich hab mich im Rahmen meines Raumplanungsstudiums vor ein paar Jahren mit der Situation beschäftigt und hab den folgenden Plan erstellt. Ich hab darin einen baulich getrennten Zweirichtungsradweg entlang des Gehsteiges vorgeschlagen. Meiner Meinung nach ist das vor allem für ungeübtere RadlerInnen an dieser Stelle eine bessere Lösung.

Hier gibt’s die ausführliche Beschreibung zum Runterladen: Planung für einen Lückenschluß des Radweges am Getreidemarkt im Bereich Wienzeile (8.2MB, PDF)

Übersichtsplan

Europas Universitäten brennen!

Sonntag, November 29th, 2009

Ich wurde von den Grünen in meinem Bezirk, Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, gebeten, einen Artikel über die aktuell besetzten Universitäten für den Schmelztiegel, deren regelmäßige Zeitung, zu schreiben:

Seit Wochen sind viele Hörsäle an Universitäten in Österreich und ganz Europa besetzt.

#unibrenntEs begann an der Akademie der bildenden Künste, an der die Einführung von Studiengängen nach dem Bologna-System kurz bevor steht, eine Folge des im Sommer novellierten Universitätsgesetzes. Eine Änderung, die weder bei Lehrenden noch Studierenden auf Gegenliebe stößt, gilt der Bachelorabschluß doch als minderwertig. Jedenfalls wurde im Anschluß an diese Pressekonferenz beschlossen, aus Protest die Aula zu besetzen.

Zwei Tage später fand im Votivpark eine Solidaritätskundgebung statt, in deren Anschluß relativ ungeplant das Audimax (der größte Hörsaal) besetzt wurde. Ungewöhnlich war, dass sich auf einmal eine große Menge von Menschen anschloss, der Hörsaal barst an den ersten Abenden aus allen Nähten. Erfahren von der Besetzung hatten die meisten Menschen über Mundpropaganda und über die neuen Medien, vor allem Twitter und Facebook. Die gewählte Vertretung der Studierenden, die Österreichische HochschülerInnenschaft, sah fassungslos zu, wie sich die Studierenden auf einmal selbst organisierten und klarmachten, dass sie eine Einmischung gar nicht wünschen.

In den folgenden Tagen breitete sich der Protest auf ganz Österreich aus, so wurden Hörsäle in den meisten Universitätsstädten besetzt. Nach zwei Wochen begann sich der Protest auf Deutschland auszubreiten, derzeit (Ende November 2009) sind über 80 Hörsäle oder andere Räumlichkeiten von Universitäten in ganz Europa besetzt. Ein Ende ist derzeit nicht absehbar.

Leider ist auf den Besetzungen nicht alles eitel Wonne, sind diese doch auch nur ein Abbild unserer Gesellschaft. Kritisiert wird unter anderem der latente Sexismus, der z.B. in Redebeiträgen deutlich wird, es kam sogar zu sexuellen Übergriffen auf schlafende Besetzerinnen. Auch wenn die BesetzerInnen versuchen, die Hörsäle möglichst zu schonen, kommt es immer wieder zu Verschmutzungen und Vandalismus. Natürlich werden vor allem die Wände mit politischen Plakaten und Transparenten zugepflastert.

Interessant ist dafür die Organisationsstruktur: Es wurden diverse Arbeitsgruppen geschaffen, die spezifisch an bestimmten Themen arbeiten, z.B. an den Forderungen, an der Organisation, Pressearbeit oder Verpflegung. Jeden Tag werden interessante Personen zu Vorträgen und Diskussionsrunden eingeladen. Sehr wichtig ist die Vernetzung über das Internet, so werden über Twitter Aufrufe nach Verpflegung und Spenden ausgesandt, die Plena und Vorträge werden mittels Livestream ins Internet übertragen. Damit sind die Besetzungen sehr transparent, was für positives Echo in der Bevölkerung sorgt.

Grund für die Besetzungen sind die untragbaren Bedingungen im Bildungssystem. Das europäische Bologna-System hat zwar zu einem Zuwachs an Studierenden geführt, allerdings sind die Universitäten seit den Sparpaketen in den 1990er Jahren massiv unterfinanziert. Es wird versucht, die Engpässe an den Universitäten durch Zugangsbeschränkungen und unfaire Knock-Out-Prüfungen zu lösen, welche aber zu Konkurrenzsituationen zwischen Studierenden führen und daher abgelehnt werden. Die BesetzerInnen sehen, dass Bildung eine wichtige Ressource für die Gesellschaft der Zukunft ist, diese ihnen aber von der Politik verwehrt wird und das notwendige Geld stattdessen in Banken und unnachhaltige Infrastrukturprojekte gesteckt wird.

In den Kindergärten und Schulen sieht die Situation nicht viel besser aus. Gerade in den ersten Lebensjahren wird die Basis für das spätere Lern- und Leistungsverhalten geprägt. Überfüllte Kindergärten und miese Gehälter machen KindergärtnerInnen das Leben schwer, diese sind extrem Burn-Out gefährdet. Die Situation in den Schulen sieht nicht besser aus, die PISA-Ergebnisse bescheinigen Österreich einen massiven Nachholbedarf, über Reformen wird seit Jahren nur geredet.

Infos: http://www.unsereuni.at

How the Power of the Crowd could change Urbanism

Dienstag, Juni 23rd, 2009

My studies in Sofia, Bulgaria, where I did my year of studying abroad with the Erasmus program, are finally over. Most of the things I did this semester were not so interesting, at least not for presenting them on my Blog. But one of my subjects, where I didn’t participate in the classes, but had weekly private seminar meetings, was really interesting. The subject of the class was „Environmental Policy and Sustainability“, and I was asked to write some essay about this topic. My first idea was to take some example about ecology in Austria and write about this, but then I decided, that this is lame and boring.

Prof. Elena Dimitrova, the teacher of the class, gave me some books as readings about Sustainability, the most interesting being „Earth at a Crossroads: Paths to a Sustainable Future“ (read it online on Google Books) by Harmut Bossel (published in 1998). The theory behind the book: If you want to have a sustainable development, it’s not enough to just live ecological, you also need sustainability in the social system, in transportation, in your political system and in the economy. When I read the book I had to think about Linux, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, CouchSurfing and other initiatives all the time.

So I decided to write about sustainability in digital culture and gave it a spin to politics and urban planning to get back to the topic of my studies. It took me a long time to research for this essay and to write it (even if my English is pretty good now, it’s still not my native tongue), there’s already a lot of information on the internet, but urbanism is still an unexplored  field. In the process I learned a lot, and I found many ideas which I would be interested to implement. If you are interested in this topic you should definitely check out the literature references in the end of the essay. I hope you will like it, I think it got pretty good in the end.

title page As you might see, the essay is available under a Creative Commons license, so please take it and do something interesting with it.
presentation title page This is the presentation to the subject, that I gave in a class (in front of a handful of people). There are two black pages, which should hold videos. The first is a great music video of a guy called Kutiman who remixed Youtube-videos. The second is a beautiful animation of the edits in the OpenStreetMap in the year 2008.

Talk about „Social Infrastructure“

Mittwoch, April 22nd, 2009

Today I gave a talk about social infrastructure in Vienna … in comparison to social infrastructure in Sofia. It was quite difficult to work on this topic, I think you could write Phd-theses about it. I think I managed quite well. If you look at it please bear in mind that I tried to hold it for someone who has the perspective of living in Sofia most of his/her life. Here are the slides.


Social Infrastructure in Vienna – in comparison to Sofia

Trip to Lakatnik and busy studying

Freitag, Januar 23rd, 2009

This week I had two exams and one home-work … It all went pretty well. Now, I have a longer break, which I will use for traveling … My goal is the Northern neigbouring country, Rumania. I already have a reservation for a bus tonight and a CouchSurfing-host for the first days. I’m planning to come back to Sofia on the 6th of February, so I have nearly two weeks to explore this country. Then on the 9th of February a friend from Vienna will visit me … I’m already looking forward to this.

One of the classes that I had last semester was „Contemporary Europe“, where we learned about organization and – more interesting – about Policies of European Union (or better European Commission). If you don’t know about these, you should check out ec.europa.eu, it’s really interesting, and there’s a lot of information online.

So, to end this short blog entry, before I vanish to foreign countries (ok, I’m already in a foreign country, but at least it’s a different one), I want to show you some pictures of last weekend – we did a short trip to Lakatnik, about one hour by train North of Sofia.

You can find some more pictures on my photo pages again.

One more thing happened: Yesterday I lost the filling of one of my teeth … thanks to one flat-mate I could find a dentist and it’s already been fixed :)

Forest Landscape Design

Mittwoch, November 19th, 2008

One of my professors at the university gave me an article called ‚Notes on Forest Landscape Design‘ as reading. I didn’t expect much, but I was very positively surprised. Many design principles and ideas were presented, that are valid for other design projects too. One main conclusion is: Always have everything in mind :)
So, if you have some free time, I can recommend you: http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/e-journal/pan_eco/edesign.html

Trip to Елена (Elena)

Sonntag, Oktober 12th, 2008

This weekend (Friday and Saturday) I was invited to join an excursion to some villages in the surroundings of Елена (Elena), a small town with some 6000 inhabitants in the centre of the country. The next larger town is Велико Търново (Veliko Tarnovo), the former capital of Bulgaria before the occupation of the Ottoman Empire in 1393. In Елена the 3rd-year students of architecture exercise planning. So I was again confronted with some new students, but we got on quite nicely. Some always kept translating me the most important things, because the professor who guided the trip only speaks Bulgarian and French.
There was not a lot of time for sight seeing in Елена, as we spent most of the time travelling or in the villages. On Saturday morning I got up early and had time to have a walk around town. Although it was foggy, I could make some nice pictures. Most of the town looks pretty normal to me, but near the city centre, which is crossed by a small river, are some roads which let you forget that the last fifty years or so have happened.

The villages showed a poor image. Many houses are deserted, you seldom see people, especially young people. The age group 15-35 years was missing completely. What really stroke me was the absence of cars. I often have the problem that cars spoil possibly good images, especially these modern large SUVs.

These villages are really beautiful places, so tourism could get interest in these places soon. Some houses have already been sold to international investors and a few new buildings have already been constructed, which doesn’t fit the regional style. It’s a job for the governments to find a way to develop regions like this without destroying the landscape. Too many disasters happened around the world because of uncontrolled development of tourism. I don’t think that the Bulgarian government is capable of handling this job, I heard too much about corruption. There must be a reason, why ‚city planner‘ is the 5th best paid job. By the way, I’m just reading a scientific book about tourism, but that’s content for another article.

Миковци (Mikovtsi) – the first village we visited – is surrounded by some little wooded mountains. The evening-sun provided some great pictures. Here we could also see an example for new development – an apartment-house which looks somehow traditional, but it’s not typical for this region.

In Марян (Marjan) it was already getting dark, so the pictures aren’t very good. Марян is famous for having a monastery where a legend tells said that the remains of Tsar Boris I, the first Christian tsar of Bulgaria, have been found.

Of Чакали (Tshakali) I can’t tell you much, because the group separated and I followed to the next village. The name origins of the jackals which lived there in former times.

Каменари (Kamenari) is named after the stone plates around the city. They make construction very difficult. Here I had the impression, I’m no longer in Europe, so different was the atmosphere. Here too the children we saw have no future, the school has closed down some time ago. The only amenities are a shop and a health care centre.

Майско (Majsko) was our last stop. The only developing village we saw, which is due to the fact, that the population consists mainly of Gypsies and Islamic people. Which raises even more problems, because they don’t want to be assimilated by Bulgarian culture. Although one of the main roads between northern and southern Bulgaria is passing through this village, there was not a lot of traffic.

All in all this was a very interesting trip with a lot of alien experiences and beautiful views, but also a lot to think and worry about.

One more thing happened. I met one of the students on the trip who is responsible for the Erasmus-students. I thought there are no such students at this university, because I asked at the international students office that I like to meet the other foreign students. The woman there promised to organize a party when everybody is here. Now I learned, that they already had several parties and meetings. I had also asked what organisational stuff I have to do – The answer was No. Which was not correct, I should get an ID and cheaper tickets for public transport. I’m a bit angry about this office.

Hope you enjoy my pictures!

Bye, bye Burgas!

Samstag, September 27th, 2008

Celebration of our Diplomas

Finally our language course is over. At 1pm today (which is in 1 1/2 hours) our bus to Sofia is leaving. I managed to get a ‚B‘ grade (which is second-best). I’m quite satisfied with this result.
I already voted for the parliamentary elections in Austria on Sunday yesterday – no, I won’t tell you, who got my vote, but it took me some time to decide. I hope the outgoings will be not so bad. We will see.
I wanted to show you some pictures of Burgas, which has some really nice parts around the city centre. Several things kept me from doing so: Unfortunately I caught a little flu in the last days, I hope it will get better soon. I bought ‚The Da Vinci Code‘ of Dan Brown, which is a very catchy book. Finding a CouchSurfing host for Sofia (I only have one until Tuesday). Learning for the final test of the language course (which was on Thursday). And I got my bicycle repaired (the Gears were destroyed, I have a new axle now – and no longer a pedal brake :/ ).
So hope you have a nice weekend, read you next week.

Beach, Sea Garden, University, Kebap and more …

Mittwoch, September 17th, 2008

You are for sure waiting for an update from me, aren’t you? Thanks for all the positive feedback, I’m trying to keep up the work. This week we had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon instead early in the morning, so we could get some more sleep. Theoretically, because the evenings got only longer ;) At least I got enough sleep, so I managed to see some interesting places.

Monday and Tuesday I spent mainly with learning, but as I don’t like to learn at home I went to the beach and to parks. I already wrote about the beach, which presented itself pretty deserted as we finally have autumn. As you can see the waves were pretty strong, I even got wet shoes while taking pictures.

Next to the beach is the Sea Garden (I was already mentioning it), which is one of Burgas‘ most important trademarks. In this spacious park you find a theatre, lot’s of pubs, several night clubs (especially in Summer) and so on. And for sure lawn, trees, exotic flowers, ways, statues, benches, … For sure it could be in better shape, especially the ways are decayed. The parks foundations were laid by a Bulgarian park planner named „Georgi Duhtev“ in 1910 (For more information read this article on InYourPocket.com). The Sea Garden reminds me a bit on the Town Park (Stadtpark) in Graz, as also the sizes of the cities are similar. You also have the view on and the sound of the Black Sea. The downside of being so close to the sea is that’s it’s quite windy.

I finally managed to take some pictures of our university, which is an new, architectural interesting building near the city centre. It’s a private university with expensive study fees (150€ per semester if I remember correctly), and I have the same feeling that I get when I come across the Business University in Vienna. I just don’t fit between all these fancy dressed people. I got the same feeling when we went to one of these nightclubs in the Sea Garden (The Elite Club – the name says everything). Everybody fancy dressed, everybody looking serious and looking you over and it was really expensive (for Bulgarian standards). We had our fun anyway, but I don’t want to go there again.


The owner of Austrian Kebap

Today I finally managed to have ‚Austrian Kebap‘ for lunch. I had a little chat (half Bulgarian, half German) with the owner of the kebap-stand, who worked in our beloved 15th district (Рудолфзхеим-Фюнфхаус [Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus] oh yeah!) in Vienna. He worked pretty close to my home, at the mosque in Pelzgasse (On my way home from university I am always passing this place) for five years and three months. Monday to Friday he was cooking for the children and on Weekends selling Kebap. The kebap here was not especially good, so it’s not worth the long way, but I enjoyed it anyway. But I can’t get used to the habit of putting French Fries in Kebap (so it was no traditional Austrian Kebap).

On the way there I had a breakdown with my bicycle, the back wheel suddenly blocked when I was going like 30 km/h. Thank God (Goddess? Allah? Aargon? Ed? Myself? put suiting entity of worship here) I managed to stop the bike without having an accident. I wanted to repair the bike tomorrow, but one of the spanish people offered to do it – he claims to be mechanic. We will see :)


Bulgarian „Bravo“

Peter asked me in the comments at which level I aim to learn Bulgarian. I think the answer is: We will see. So my Bulgarian is really progressing, it’s already enough for little conservations. Like „Hi, I’m from Austria and I study Bulgarian at Burgas Free University. I would like to have a Hamburger with Chesse. Where is this pub? How much is the Kamenitza? Hello. Thank you. Bye-bye.“ and I sometimes can understand what the other person is replying. I bought a Bulgarian „Bravo“ during first week and at that time it took me an hour to read a sentence. Now I can read the text and get a general idea what the article is about. I still miss lot’s and lot’s of words and they get into my mind very slowly, but I can see a progress. I’m planning to do another language course in Sofia, but not as intensive as now. I’m curious myself at which level it is possible for me to get into a new language. And I have more fun doing it as I expected.

So much for tonight. Tomorrow we will have class in the afternoon again, so I have to think what to do with the free time in the morning (repair the bicycle probably). For the next days I’m planning to narrate you about the magic of an internet technology called RSS which helps you keeping updated with all these blogs and news sites you usually visit. Hope to read from you in the comments :)

The first week has passed …

Samstag, September 6th, 2008

Nearly a week has passed without a message from me – Sorry. But this week has been pretty busy. As you already know, I’m doing this Erasmus Intensive Language Course in Burgas, Bulgaria. „Intensive“ is the right word for it – Every day from 8am to 1pm we are sitting in a class room at Burgas Free University and having class – like in school. And our teacher Salutska is giving us a hard time, as she speaks hardly English (and I think she doesn’t want to). We also have to repeat things in the afternoon, we won’t manage without.
You want to know who is „We“? At the moment we are a group of eight people, half male-female. Two students from Poland, two from Italy, one from Finland, Czech Republic and France. On Monday another three students from Spain shall arrive – I think they will have a really hard time in the language course, and we will have time to repeat.
A thing that’s really confusing is the alphabet – there are not only other characters, there are even two different alphabets: a printed and a written one, and both are used in printed form. Sounds confusing? It’s confusing. For example: The sound ‚d‘ has the printed characters ‚Д‘ and ‚д‘ and the written characters ‚D‘ and ‚g‘. ‚i‘ has ‚И‘ and ‚и‘, written ‚U‘ and ‚u‘. ‚t‘ has ‚Т‘ ‚т‘ or ‚M‘ ‚m‘. And so on.
Some words about the place where I’m staying: I’m still at Хотел Космос (Hotel Cosmos) in Бургас (Burgas). We were searching for a flat all week, but it’s really hard to get a flat for a month. Yesterday we visited a flat, where we would have lived with the owner (a 60-year old man). Actually the flat was quite pretty with a beatiful view on the black sea, but it was to small for us and some of us were anxious to live with such an old man in a flat. So apparently we will stay in the hotel all September. Fortunately it’s quite cheap.
The town itself is not very beatiful and there are just a few sightseeing spots. In the center you have a shopping area, which consists of two perpendicular pedestrian roads. There are just a few shopping malls, usually you just have small shops with very specialized variety of goods (like Clothes which is very common, Mobile phones or wall painting colors). You have those shops all over the town, so even the suburbs are quite lively. If I have more time I will write a longer report about Burgas with a lot of pictures. At the moment the beach is calling, so I try to be short.
Today I already hiked to one of the three lakes that surround Burgas. As a couchsurfer in Burgas (who is actually American, but lives here for two years now and is supporting doctors at a medical service for Gypies around Burgas) already told me, the Burgas Laks (which is to the west) is not worth seeing. It takes quite some time to go there by foot and you even have to cross a highway and than the view is not beautiful at all. The lake is an ugly, stinky, dirty spot. There were some fisherman, but I can’t imagine that there are still creatures in there. I don’t think that I would like to eat one of those.
On the way back I crossed an older suburban area near the lake and I actually found a „Вело Сервиз“ (say: Velo Service) and I bought a refurbished bicycle there. It looks like a bike from the 1970’s, but there’s an additional break (so it has front, back and back pedal break) and five gears. And it’s blue.
I have to take good care when cycling, the car drivers don’t take care (about anybody). It’s really hard to cross a street because zebra crossings are being ignored. Pavements next to the roads are not for walking but for parking, so using them is like an obstacle course.
So much for today, thanks for your attention :) I’m always pleased to read your comments, so keep on posting. See you next time!

Here you have some pictures: