First Vienna Residential Market Report | 2018

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

FUTURE RESEARCH

THE SINUS- MILIEUS ®

SINUS-MILIEUS ® CONSTITUTE a model that groups people according to their basic attitudes and lifestyles. Sinus Milieu groups differ with regard to their consumer behaviour, lifestyle, and living environment. The illustra tion shows the current milieu landscape as well as the positions of the different milieus in Austrian society. Further details on Sinus- Milieus ® are given on page 75.

LIVING IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW THE FUTURE OF HOUSING IS VERSATILE, FLEXIBLE AND INDIVIDUAL

1) UPPER CLASS / UPPER MIDDLE- CLASS

High Achievers

Established

Conservatives

Digital Individualists

Postmaterialists

2) MIDDLE, MIDDLE-CLASS

New Middle Class

Adaptive- Pragmatists

Traditionals

Neighbourhood quality and the amount of shared space available will play decisive roles. This might be a community kitchen, a library on the ground floor, or a gym for the residents in an apartment block. Is there a co-working space available? Does the residents’ community do co-gardening? Gradually hiving off living comfort into the public and semi-public domain is not only an effective economic step, but also a necessity for social communications. Single households are increasing in numbers at a share of more than fifty percent in some cities. We will become an increasingly lonely society if we don’t share.

Which particular target groups merit particular consideration in the future?

Escapists

3) LOWER MIDDLE- CLASS / LOWER CLASS

Consumption Oriented

TWO GROUPS WILL BE ALTERING the face of housing especially heavily in the future: the famous Generation Y and the “young at heart”. Members of Generation Y have grown up in a digital, networked, globalised world, and have been the main drivers of new social sharing forms that already exist in major cities today – co-working, co-living, co-gardening. This began with the fundamental concept of a sharing economy based on digital networking supported by the principle of “using instead of owning”. Homes and neighbourhoods provide child care, elderly care, and community gardens through intelligent utilisation in apartment blocks and residential estates. The future living environ ment will be a heterogeneous mix of different groups of individuals with freely formed family structures. In particular, this also applies to the growing group of the “young at heart”.

Basic Orientation

C) RE-ORIENTATION

B) MODERNISATION Individualisation, Self-actualisation, Pleasure

A) TRADITION Sense of Duty and Order

Multi-options, Pragmatism

Re-focussing, new syntheses

TRADITIONAL MILIEUS

What will be the challenges for the housing of tomorrow?

MAJOR CHALLENGES in the coming decades will be population growth, progressive ageing, and growing urbanisation, together with an increasing variety of ways of living. Cities cannot grow in height and width to an infinite degree, but the way we use buildings will change: hybridity, heterogeneity, and flexibility will be the major construction trends in the coming years. Cities will need relief for them to be liveable again, and this will be most effective when living in the outskirts gains attractiveness. A variety of mobility options promising a high level of quality service will ensure this, options such as self-driving minibuses in public transport, car sharing, and carpooling. ×

What will the apartment of tomorrow be like?

THE FUTURE WILL SEE US talking more about living rather than housing. We live in ever increasingly crowded cities with growing pres sure on prices and quality housing; we will need to rethink our functional relationship with housing, not only our emotional relationship with it. The drive towards more floor area will diminish in favour of shared spaces.

CONSERVATIVES

TRADITIONALS

Trendsetters in the traditional sphere with high ethics of respon- sibility – strongly characterised by Christian ethics, high estima- tion of education and culture, sceptical towards current social development. Home is an expression of upper or middle-class lifestyle in clear distinction from current attitudes. Members of this group adhere to traditional, dignified interior design styles as reflected in a keen sense of style.

Emphasis on security, order and stability – rooted in the old petty-bourgeois world, in the traditional blue-collar culture, or in the rural milieu. Home tastes are based on traditional cosiness and rural aesthetics with conventional furnishings and fittings prevailing.

Christiane Varga Housing trend researcher & freelance writer at the Vienna Zukunftsinstitut institute of future studies