A restriction sign that itself looks a bit out of order

Photo
Vienna 2013

Last days of summer here in Vienna and a small green retreat in a growing city

A part of the staircase and the golden ceiling of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), which was designed in Neo-Renaissance style by Heinrich von Ferstel (1877).

“This is something everyone knows: A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.”
Jane Jacobs

The scenery above reminded me so much of Jane Jacobs’s concept of ‘Eyes on the street’. Jacobs argued that streets are safer when more people are on them and/or being watched by residents from their windows. She introduced this principle for a liveable and secure neighbourhood in her great publication ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York 1961)’. Her phenomenology of urban sace was an important influence on the so-called ‘New Urbanism’ movement and is still widely received.

Might sound like a joke, but actually is not. In Vienna every tree in a public park or next to a road, has an official number. So the one above is registered ovbiously under the number 1007. This system was established to facilitate the work of the so-called tree doctors (aborists).