The WIFO Urban Sprawl Index for Austria

Soil consumption is very high in Austria and a further continuation of the observed development endangers important goals of society, including e.g. the production function of biomass and biodiversity, the storage function of carbon and the regulation of water run-off. Incentives to convert land previously used for agriculture into settlement and transport areas remain high. As the figures on building development show, the underlying mechanisms are increasingly better understood, but the economic consequences are hardly known. With a newly developed "Urban Sprawl Index", a further building block is to be developed to improve knowledge and make the problem situation visible from a wider perspective. In this project, a comprehensive overview of the extent of urban sprawl in Austria will be presented for the first time.