Vienna -- The Green Capital
THE ECOTOPIA 2121 PROJECT OUTLINES THE SUPER-GREEN FUTURES OF 100 REAL WORLD CITIES. THIS MONTH WE FOCUS ON THE GREEN CAPITAL; VIENNA
Vienna, the capital of Austria, is one of the United Nations’ official cities, hosting the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs. It also hosts the International Atomic Energy Agency and OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Each of these industries — the space industry, the nuclear industry, and the oil industry — is likely to decline as its core business dwindles and its costs grow. Thus, the agencies that represent them in Vienna, now so influential on the international scene, will become less so until they eventually decay into irrelevance by the end of this century.
By 2121, the UN offices in Vienna will be closed down. The city politicians there then become a little worried about the international standing of the city. They are keen to rectify Vienna's slow slide into international obscurity by pushing for the opening of an alternative body; the UN Agency for the Green Society. This new UN agency would strive to “Greenify” every economic sector in the world, in order to encourage Green economics, Green banking, Green management, Green education, Green welfare, Green farming, Green mining, Green labor, Green leadership, Green mobility — Green everything!
Alas, the global uptake of all these ideas is very limited, though. Many national and world leaders aren’t interested in being told how to govern their states differently according to 'Green ideas and practices'; they just want vibrant GDP figures and tangible things to show off to their publics. So, to sell the Green Society, Vienna has to rebrand it as being all about "commerce, technology and education" and that it has nothing to do with governance and politics.
World leaders are far more receptive to this kind of message -- and they approve setting up the new UN agency.
In 2121, its offices emerge on the banks of the Danube as an iconic state-of-the-art 'eco-campus'. All of the buildings are veneered with a skin laden with algae that not only capture solar energy but also feed on carbon dioxide and fix it into the building walls, rendering the campus, agency, and Vienna, too, carbon-negative and eco-friendly.
Vienna 2121
THE ECOTOPIA 2121 PROJECT OUTLINES THE SUPER-GREEN FUTURES OF
100 REAL WORLD CITIES.
FOR OTHER CASE STUDIES, CHECK OUT THE ATLAS.
