The traffic engineer's most important task is to improve the economic, social and environmental living conditions of his/her fellow citizens. For over ten years now, this has been the main focus of village and urban renewal programmes in all Austrian Lander and in Lower Austria in particular. The redesigning of the space reserved for traffic plays a key role in this work. As part of the remit of the C9 EURO COST working group and in an attempt to determine 'best practices' in Lower Austria, the processes used there to increase the quality of urban areas were systematically evaluated. To this end, it proved useful to differentiate between two different definitions of quality: formal quality, which covers the design of the area and, in particular, that of the space reserved for traffic, and functional quality of the urban area in terms of the variety in the area and its surroundings. In all examples analysed, the quality of urban areas was enhanced by reducing the amount of cars and the spaces reserved for car drivers in these areas. It is worth noting that moving traffic has a less negative effect on urban quality than cars parked on streets. However, reducing the amount of space reserved for parked cars has adverse effects on urban quality because it shifts urban functions to suburban areas. The analysis of the aforementioned processes has shown that if urban quality is to be restored, both legal practice and part of the legal basis will have to be changed. Parking facilities cannot be treated according to the amount of ground and space they take up but rather should receive equal treatment according to their function. For example, the same parking rates should be charged for all supermarket car parks, whether they are located in an urban centre or outside it. This is one way of improving economic, social and environmental conditions for residents. The analysis of formal quality showed that in development areas, high levels of urban quality are no longer reached because the streets are too wide, the alignment of the streets too straight and the size of the meshes in the traffic system too great. Moreover, urban areas lack the squares that create quality in high-quality areas. The functional quality of urban areas is under threat from suburban supermarkets, specialised discount stores, leisure facilities, jobs and monofunctional residential areas. Recommendations for restoring urban quality were drawn up on the basis of the analysis of these processes. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
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