Everything fulfilled, nothing gained

The starting point

Anyone walking through our villages and towns today – in North Tyrol as in South Tyrol – finds a result that nobody wanted in this form. Sprawling edges, hollowed-out centres, settlement patterns with no discernible middle, townscapes that have become interchangeable. And at the same time: housing has never been so expensive, while land consumption per head continues to rise.

The obvious reflex is to look for individual culprits. That falls short. No single actor decided on these townscapes. They are the result of many individual decisions, each reasonable in itself: every client optimises their plot, every municipality its revenue, every planner compliance with the standard. Nobody wants the result, but everyone has had a hand in it.

The thesis

What gets built today is essentially decided by three forces – and none of them is design:

First, land. For centuries, land was a means of production; with tourism it has become an investment asset whose value has become decoupled from what it yields. Municipalities hold the zoning authority (Widmungshoheit), but hardly ever the ownership.

Second, the logic of subsidies. What gets built is what qualifies for funding. Subsidies steer through criteria, and criteria have to be calculable: insulation thickness, energy performance figure, square metres. Townscape, existing fabric and embodied energy do not feature in this calculation – which is why demolition and new construction often yield a better figure than a good refurbishment.

Third, standards and liability. Standards have in effect turned from recommendations into obligations, because liability hangs on them. Deviating from them takes courage and expert reports. In existing buildings they systematically collide with what is already there.

All three instruments have achieved what they were meant to achieve. The technical quality of our buildings has measurably improved – safety, sound insulation, energy consumption. Nobody wants to go back.

The real finding lies elsewhere: the quality of place was never a criterion in this system. It was not missed – it was never formulated. In building, we measure everything that can be counted, and nothing that counts.

Why cross-border

The comparison between North, East and South Tyrol is the substantive core of the proposal. Here two states, two legal systems, two subsidy regimes and two planning cultures sit side by side – and produce strikingly similar results in the townscape.

This disarms the usual objection that it all comes down to the particular set of rules, and shifts the question to where it belongs: to the yardstick by which we measure quality. A comparison that only we can make – and one that, as far as I can see, nobody has made so far.