Glass cliffs: firms appoint female executives in times of crisis as a signal of change to investors

The glass cliff hypothesis suggests that female executives are more likely to be put in charge when the company is already in a crisis. Yet research has found mixed evidence for the existence of glass cliffs in the business world. Max Reinwald, Johannes Zaia, and Florian Kunze analyse 26,156 executive appointments of public companies in the United States between 2000 and 2016 and show that crisis firms are about 50% more likely to appoint a female executive than noncrisis firms to send a signal of change to their investors

The Contribution of Public Spaces to Climate Change Adaptation in Austrian Cities

Cities and urban areas are particularly affected by the impacts of climate change, especially by rising temperatures and more frequent and heavier rainfall events. Adapting spatial development to the consequences of climate change is being increasingly anchored as a goal in Austrian and European policies and planning strategies. Larger cities are active in setting strategic climate change adaptation (CCA) goals and implementing measures at local scale. Urban green and blue infrastructure (UGBI) and their ecosystem services (ESS) are one of the most effective measures for coping with the consequences of climate change. Urban ecosystems are essential for the urban climate and urban residents due to their regulating (e.g. reduction of the urban heat island effect), supporting (e.g. increase in biodiversity), provisioning (e.g. water filtration) and socio-cultural (e.g. benefits for health, well‐being, recreation) functions. In built-up areas, public space is one of the most important spatial resource for implementing CCA measures and especially UGBI. While steering mechanisms on private properties often fail due to lack of authorisation, instruments or legal regulations, the planning and design of public space is the direct responsibility of cities as local planning authorities. However, in public space, CCA measures and UGBI have to compete with other demands and interests, such as recreation, social interaction and communication, mobility or energy production. As cities grow and densify, pressure on public space increases. Therefore, CCA and CCA measures – both for private and public spaces – need to be mainstreamed into policies at all levels and subsequently integrated into formal planning instruments and planning processes. Our paper investigates the horizontal and vertical integration of CCA, and especially CCA in public space (streets, squares and parks), into Austrian planning-related policies on national, federal state and municipal level and critically reflects on the mechanisms for implementation in planning practice. The research is based on i) a comprehensive analysis of policy documents of four Austrian federal states (Vienna, Styria, Salzburg and Upper Austria) and cities (Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, Wels), and ii) expert interviews with members of federal state and municipal planning administrations. The policy documents include CCA strategies that have an impact on planning and explicit spatial development strategies. The results show a emerging manifestation of CCA in policy documents, though not yet consistently at all levels and in all municipalities. Measures for CCA in public space are mainly anchored at municipal level, as cities already operate actively out of a given urgency. Despite the integration of CCA measures into the strategic planning level, our research shows that implementation still faces obstacles in planning practice. Our study highlights the importance of political agenda setting for the realization of CCA measures in public space and discusses success factors and implementation gaps

Gender-Sensitive Use and Development of (Digital) Participation and Analysis Tools for Equal Access to Open Spaces

In view of the growing threat posed by the effects of climate change on cities and regions, politicians and the public administration are increasingly called upon to create environmentally and climate-friendly as well as just framework conditions in urban spaces (IPCC 2022). The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined that urban green infrastructuresnot only benefit biodiversity, but arealso socially significant. In addition to providing a range of ecosystem services (MEA 2005), they equally support the diverse usability of urban landscapes, thus affirming the right to the (climate-just) city for all (Heindl 2022). Especially in denser settlement areas, where green and open spaces with important social and recreational functions are only available to a limited extent, different, sometimes contradictory needs of diverse social groups can lead to conflicts of use. Thereby, “vulnerable” persons or groups1, who on average already have less access to high-quality green and open spaces anyway (Honey-Rosés et al. 2020), often give way to the more dominant user groups. In this context, approaches such as gender-sensitive planning and design (Terraza et al. 2020, Tummers et al. 2019) as well as attempts to design and manage public spaces sensitively according todiverse everydayneeds of the heterogenous urban populationare becoming increasingly important. The research project "DraussenDaheim"2(DDH) [German for: “At Home Outside”] is therefore developing a methodology and toolbox from a gender- and group-specific perspective, which serves not only the participatory evaluation of urban public spaces, but also the simulation-based development of different planning scenarios,which can, for example, be incorporated into space-time management concepts. Digital participation and simulation tools as well as tailor-made workshop designs are applied in the context of two Austrian use cases(Vienna, Zell am See) to identify spatio-temporal use patterns and group-specific requirements for the multifunctional use of space. In addition, the usability of the compiled tools (on the part of usersand process facilitators) is tested. The methodology to be developed also builds on knowledge from a well-tested target group segmentation approach with a special focus on active mobility (Markvica et al. 2020) to more accurately capturethe mobility and information needs of the (vulnerable) groups involved. This contribution gives a comprehensive insight into the project, its conceptual and methodological approach, and provides first results of use case specific surveys and tool-tests. From this, key findings are derived that address the potentialof the gender-sensitive use and developmentof(digital) participation and analysis tools to supportequal and environmentally friendly access to open spaces in residential environments

Urban Heat Islands Strategy Plan Vienna – Implementing Urban Green Infrastructure to Reduce Negative Effects of Urban Heat Islands

Urban heat islands (UHI) have been known since the 19th century (Howard, 1820) and describe the difference in temperature between cities and their rural surroundings. This difference can be up to 12°C (Eliasson, 2000, 31); the phenomenon is caused by the transformation of natural surfaces through e.g. soil sealing, construction of infrastructure and buildings. However, differences in temperature not only occur between cities and their adjacent areas, but also within different parts of cities depending on the provision of green and blue infrastructure as well as on their share of sealed surfaces. The situation is further aggravated by a changing climate. Numerous studies state that the number of heat days (maximum temperature of at least 30°C) as well as the number and duration of heat waves will increase worldwide – especially in cities due to their sealed surfaces, building density and lack of green space (Formayer et al., 2008; Bowler et al., 2010). This problem will become even more crucial in the future: in 2005 approx. half of the world population lived in urban regions and this number is predicted to rise by up to nearly two thirds by 2050 (Schlünzen, 2012). Consequences of those growing cities and expanding urban areas are further densification of settlement areas and loss of open and green space; this strengthens the urban heat islands effect even more. Urban heat islands can have negative effects on human health and wellbeing with sensitive groups such as the elderly being especially affected (Allex et al., 2013). To counteract UHI and their negative effects, the “Urban Heat Islands Strategy Plan Vienna” has been elaborated as part of a Central Europe project (www.http://eu-uhi.eu/, 2011-2014). The aim was the development of a strategy for the City of Vienna to implement open space planning as well as urban ecology measures to reduce the negative aspects of UHI. Within the project, a guideline has been elaborated by the project team and members of the Environmental Protection Department Vienna (MA 22) to support planners, architects as well as members of the Vienna City Administration, to show possibilities of technical and strategic measures against UHI as well as their potential to reduce urban heat, and to point out planning tools and planning levels. The guideline is available online (https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltschutz/raum/uhi-strategieplan.html, in German)

Urban green infrastructure planning as a contribution to the smart ‘green’ city

The urban green infrastructure is getting due to the strong growth of the City of Vienna under increasing pressure. A foresighted planning of green and open spaces is necessary to obtain the different "Ecosytem Services" - provision-related services, regulatory services, cultural services and support services (MEA 2005). Additionally an increase in the number of hot days and thus an increase of the heat load in the city is predicted for Vienna (ZAMG 2012). Again, making a foresighted planning of green and open spaces is a significant contribution to meet these climatic challenges (Kuffner A. 2012, Hagen et al. 2010). Based on the concept of "green infrastructure" (Pauleit et al. 2011) and the ecosystem services of these, it is shown which contribution - in particular to reduce the heating of the city - they can make to the Smart City concept

Possibilities and Opportunities of Mobile Devices to Measure the Physical (In)Activity of Young Citizens – First Results of a Case Study in Vienna

“New Media” starting with the introduction of television followed by Video to DVDs and computer games are often made responsible for the lack of movement and outdoor exercises of young people. With the spread of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, digital tools became spatially independent which offers new options and possibilities especially among young people (Direito et al. 2014). Instead of blaming new media as a reason that the young people increasingly stay at home and neglecting physical activities, the possibilities and opportunities of particularly mobile devices are to be examined in the project “ActivE Youth”. The project aims to determine how mobile devices can contribute for collecting data regarding the mobility behavior of the youth and how mobile devices can be used to reduce the lack of physical activity of young people

Sustainable Management of Urban Green Infrastructure – The Challenge of Providing High-Quality Green in Multi-Storey Residential Construction

Vienna is known as one of the most liveable cities worldwide (Mercer, 2015), not least because of Vienna’s green infrastructure (GI). These qualities of life and the trend of urbanisation lead to strong population growth in Vienna. It is predicted that the Viennese population will grow from 1.8 million (2015) to 2 million in 2029 (MA 23, 2014); to offer living space, the creation of up to 120,000 new homes is planned until 2050 (MA 18, 2014). The growth and the resulting exploitation pressure on the (green) areas pose a major challenge for the City of Vienna. The loss of green space induced by land use results in the reduction or loss of ecosystem services. The negative effects of the decline of green areas and the increasing soil sealing already occur especially in areas of high population density. Furthermore, increasing heat stress and risks related to natural disasters like the flood event in 2002 show the importance of green space in urban areas for the maintenance of ecosystem functions. Therefore, a challenge of the next years will be to maintain a high-quality and efficient network of GI. At the moment, the floor area ratio (“Geschoßflächenzahl”) and other values like the degree of soil sealing, the density rate for buildings, building heights etc. are the defining parameters for urban development in Vienna and regulate the degree of building coverage. The supply of the neighbourhoods with open/green space is determined only indirectly. Besides, those parameters are not able to state the quality of green space for humans. Vienna has already recognised the importance of GI and develops guides for developers and urban planners to contribute to encourage GI in the city (MA 18, 2014; MA 22, 2013; MA 22, 2015). But a clear framework for the conservation and provision of minimum standards for urban green space, however, is still missing; incentives for implementation of GI elements are primarily given through grants. Some cities have developed defining parameters or policy instruments for GI to enable a management of open space supply and quality (e.g. Berlin: “Biotope Area Factor”; Malmö: “Green Space Factor”; Seattle: “Green Factor”, Helsinki...), but in the current practice of applying the green space factors almost only ecological aspects are taken into account (Kruuse, 2011; Szulczewska et al., 2014). Socio-cultural aspects such as usability, aesthetics or recreation are rarely considered. For urban planning and administration it would be important to start thinking about a green space factor which, beneath size and space consumption, also takes into account socio-cultural aspects. The main objective of the “AddedValueGreen!” project was to develop a green and open space factor (“Grünflächenfaktor” or “GFF”) which encompasses regulating, socio-cultural and economic effects of urban GI (uGI). The focus was on the management and intervention of private and housing-related spaces to secure a certain amount of high-quality open/green space on building lots. Through the evaluation of housing projects by using the GFF, deficits in the green space supply and quality can be identified and recommendations to improve the GI can be derived. Furthermore, it will be possible to integrate this evaluation tool into other planning levels or management tools

Theoretical and Methodological Framework for the Development of Urban Climatic Planning Recommendation Maps

Urban climatic analyses and planning recommendation maps are becoming increasingly important in the climate-sensitive planning of cities. Urban climatic maps typically include two main components (Ren et al. 2012): an urban climatic analysis map and an urban climatic planning recommendation map. Given the urgent need for action due to climatic changes in urban areas, planning recommendation maps are essential for introducing and locating measures that effectively increase the adaptive capacity of cities, thus increasing the resilience of urban areas and their inhabitants (Baumüller 2015). The first urban climatic maps were produced in Germany in the 1970s and currently they are used worldwide. The aim of this contribution is to develop a theoretical and methodological framework for the development of urban climatic planning recommendation maps. The main focus is on the review of existing theories and methods that serves as a roadmap for developing these maps. The examples show that these analyses usually consist of four steps or four areas of processing: (i) an urban climatic analysis, (ii) additional in-depth analyses, (iii) the development and location of measures and (iv) the consolidation in a planning information map (Ren et al. 2011). Within the urban climatic analysis two main approaches are common: pure static GIS (Geographic Information System) derived maps or mainly meteorologically focused maps including the calculation of regional climate simulations (and hybrid forms thereof). Supplementary in-depth analyses are often carried out, such as the intersection with socio-demographic data to identify areas that are particularly vulnerable from a social point of view, or analyses based on specific urban or spatial configurations (Reisinger et al. 2020). In the third step of the process, measures are usually developed at different levels or for different sectors of urban development. As a final step, the results are summarised in planning recommendation maps and the measures are spatially located (Baumüller 2015). Each of these individual steps has been intensively researched in the last few years; the synopsis or bringing together of these numerous research projects and approaches is a gap that this contribution seeks to fill. The contribution demonstrates available approaches, methods and tools necessary to translate scientific climatic knowledge into urban planning recommendation maps, considering that the analyses for a particular city or municipality are strongly limited in reproducibility to other citys, even in the same country. Based on this, a theoretical and methodological framework for the development of urban climatic planning recommendation maps is elaborated that enables the creation of these

Requirements for a Dashboard Application to Facilitate Climate-Smart Planning for Sustainable Resilient Green and Blue Cities

To ensure a liveable, resilient and sustainable city in the future, climate change adaptation and mitigation measures must be integrated into urban development projects. This is necessary to counteract the negative effects of climate change, as Austria is already experiencing a noticeable increase in the number of hot days and an increase in extreme weather events (ÖKS 15). Adaptation to climate change requires that the impact of an urban development project on the local microclimate be assessed as early as possible in order to minimise the effects and optimise the project. Microclimate analyses can be used to assess the impact of a development project or to compare different variants of a project and show the effects on local temperature, perceived temperature, wind field or humidity (Oswald et al. 2020). At the same time, urban planning processes are increasingly influenced by digitalisation in the form of Building Information Modelling (BIM). Linking microclimate simulation and BIM is therefore an important step for the future of sustainable cities. So far, however, no tool exists that combines the various requirements and enables microclimatic assessment or optimisation of urban development projects. Some planning or assessment tools, such as microclimate models or green area indicators, allow for sectoral assessments. What is missing is a comprehensive tool that makes it easy to present the various impacts of a project to spatial planning and development decision-makers, investors and planners and, last but not least, to the general public, such as (future) residents. This contribution analyses and describes the requirements for such a tool in the form of a web-based dashboard that uses BIM models, links them to microclimatic simulations, and additionally presents key performance indicators (KPI), such as green area indicators, in a structured way. The design of the dashboard is data and task dependent (Conrow et al. 2023); in light of the challenges and opportunities associated with optimising urban development projects from a microclimatic point of view, we set out to address issues related to (i) the requirements for the user interface, i.e. the dashboard, (ii) the requirements for the models (BIM model and microclimatic numerical simulation model), (iii) the possible applications in different planning phases, and (iv) the necessary requirements for data and data preparation. The aim of the contribution is to analyse and describe the requirements, implementation perspectives and application possibilities of a web-based dashboard, which enables climate impact assessments, macro-ecological data for properties and neighbourhoods in an early planning phase (“climate check”) on the basis of three-dimensional building models

Theoretical Framework for Integrated Neigbourhood Development to Ensure Ecological, Social and Climatic Performance

Urban development is traditionally a planning task in which many individual aspects, strategies and measures have to be considered and coordinated. Socio-economic, socio-demographic and socio-cultural change, fast growing cities, densification, supply of green infrastructure, resource management to name a few, are all urgent issues of our time that require an intensive examination of the challenges for urban development, as well as the development of coping strategies. Last but not least, the needs of climate protection, the consequences of climate change and the global loss of biodiversity are (emerging) pressing challenges for urban planning which have to be considered within all processes. At the same time, more and more data and tools are available, which - properly processed, used, examined and evaluated - support the cities in the design and implementation of their urban planning and urban development strategies. These tools are also increasingly used to automate and simplify these processes and analyses. Due to the complexity of challenges the common approach in urban planning is a sectoral approach (Ovink & Boeijenga 2018, Juschten et al. 2021) where individual experts analyse their field of action and based on these develop sectoral solutions and measures. There are numerous sectoral strategies in and for cities, some of which contain contradictory planning requirements with respect to other sectors and therefore depict the need of intersectoral and comprehensive planning strategies. The second approach necessary for integrated neighbourhood development is to consider the different planning and policy levels. Planning decisions at higher levels influence local decision-making possibilities and vice versa. The aim of this contribution is to present the development of a theoretical and methodical concept for integrated and participatory neighbourhood development processes. The article is based on a research project in the market town of Lustenau with around 25,000 inhabitants in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. The market town of Lustenau is taking a large-volume educational building project in the quarter Rotkreuz to address integrated, inter- and transdisciplinary development of an existing neighbourhood. The research question is: “How can integrated neighbourhood development be implemented taking into account climate protection, climate change adaptation, ecosystem services of urban nature, biodiversity and social concerns?”. This contribution describes how these fields can be characterised, analysed and incorporated in master planning processes and how digital tools support the analysis and balancing of these different requirements