Vienna, seen differently
Vienna without people
What would grow here if nobody had ever built? Scroll through the story: we take Vienna apart layer by layer until only nature without us remains, and look back to Vienna around 1830, before the Danube regulation. Or look at the map yourself right away.
Left today, right the chosen layer. Drag the line.
This is Vienna
Houses, streets, fields, dams, even the straight bed of the Danube: almost everything here was made by people. What if nobody had ever built? Keep scrolling and we take Vienna apart, layer by layer.
Every house, every tree
This is how the BEV laser scan sees the Inner City: every roof and every treetop in a one-metre grid, flown in 2023 with leaves.
First the houses go
Without houses and trees, the ground the city stands on remains: the BEV terrain model, also in a one-metre grid. The Danube Canal and the Wien river lie deep in their beds.
Then the dams
Now railway and road embankments and cuttings, the walled bed of the Wien river, the Danube Island, flood dams, landfills and pits are taken out as well. In the Danube valley lies the bed of 1825 again, rebuilt from the cadastre, with arms, islands and gravel bars.
Then let it grow
On this ground, forest would grow almost everywhere: without people, 91 % of Vienna would be wooded. Only water, gravel bars, reeds and glades would stay open.
The Prater would be floodplain forest
From above almost everything here looks equally green, so we colour the forest types. At the Lusthaus there would be willow floodplain forest, at the Riesenrad poplar floodplain forest, and where floods come less often, hardwood floodplain forest.
- Willow floodplain forest
- Poplar floodplain forest
- Hardwood floodplain forest
- Old floodplain forest on the higher terraces
The Vienna Woods
In the Vienna Woods, height, slope and rain decide. Up on the Kahlenberg there would be beech forest, lower down at Steinhof oak and hornbeam forest, and on the valley floors of the streams alder and ash stream forest.
- Beech forest
- Oak and hornbeam forest
- Lime and maple slope forest
- Alder and ash stream forest
Schönbrunn in the stream forest
Around Schönbrunn there would be alder and ash stream forest: black alder and ash on the valley floors. Upstream, the cadastre of around 1830 still records gravel bars in the Wien river.
By 1830 we had long been here
Around 1830, 39 % of today’s Vienna was fields, 18 % meadows and pastures and only 21 % forest. Without people it would be 91 %.
- Fields
- Meadows and pastures
- Forest
- Vineyards
- Buildings
Then came the Danube regulation
Around 1830 the Danube still flowed in many arms through a wide floodplain. The line shows what became of it: where UNO-City and DC Tower stand today, there was water back then.
Your turn
Switch layers yourself, compare with today and tap the map: what would grow where you live, and what was there around 1830?
Move and zoom the map with two fingers.
What grows where (model)
- Oak and hornbeam forest
- Old floodplain forest on the higher terraces
- Open oak woodland
- Hardwood floodplain forest
- Beech forest
- Poplar floodplain forest
- Danube, side arms and streams
- Alder and ash stream forest
- Willow floodplain forest
- Glade and dry meadow
- Gravel and sand bar
- Lime and maple slope forest
- Reed beds
- Downy oak scrub
- Rock
From above, the forest types look almost alike. “What grows where?” paints them in these colours.
Around 1830 (cadastre)
- Field
- Pasture
- Waste land
- Dry meadow
- Meadow with fruit trees
- Floodplain meadow
- Orchard
- Vegetable garden
- Ornamental garden
- Park
- Cemetery
- Vineyard
- Deciduous forest
- Mixed forest
- Coniferous forest
- Marsh
- Gravel bank
- Rock
- Quarry
- Brick pit
- Clay pit
- Embankment
- Dam
- Line wall
- Ditch
- Danube and rivers
- Stream
- Pond
- Mill race
- Well
- Bridge
- Timber building
- Stone building
- Military
- Public building
- Church
Today
Today’s map of the city, for comparison.
Ground today
Only the ground from the BEV laser scan (terrain model 1 m), without buildings and trees. Channels are darker: old arms of the Danube often lay there.
Ground without us
The ground without us: railway and road embankments and cuttings, the walled bed of the Wien river, the Danube Island, flood dams, landfills and pits taken out (5 m). What OpenStreetMap does not know as such a form stays, for instance some industrial sites. With “Compare” you drag it against the ground today.
Laser scan
Every house and every tree, shaded from the BEV laser scan (1 m). Tinted by terrain height:
Tap the map or search an address: what would grow there, what was there in 1830, how far the Danube was and how high the spot lies.
What stood where
Well-known places on the three maps. Values at the exact point; tap a place on the map for the same card.
| Place | Without people | Around 1830 | Elevation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephansdom | Open oak woodland | Church | 171 m |
| Rathaus | Oak and hornbeam forest | Dry meadow | 181 m |
| Karlskirche | Oak and hornbeam forest | Church | 173 m |
| Belvedere | Open oak woodland | Stone building | 193 m |
| Schönbrunn | Alder and ash stream forest | Stone building | 190 m |
| Riesenrad | Poplar floodplain forest | Park | 160 m |
| Ernst-Happel-Stadion | Poplar floodplain forest | Dry meadow | 159 m |
| Donauturm | Poplar floodplain forest | Deciduous forest | 165 m |
| DC Tower | Danube, side arms and streams | Danube and rivers | 167 m |
| Millennium Tower | Gravel and sand bar | Danube and rivers | 162 m |
| UNO-City | Danube, side arms and streams | Danube and rivers | 160 m |
| Hauptbahnhof | Open oak woodland | Field | 200 m |
| Karl-Marx-Hof | Hardwood floodplain forest | Dry meadow | 164 m |
| Kahlenberg | Beech forest | Deciduous forest | 483 m |
| Seestadt | Old floodplain forest on the higher terraces | Field | 156 m |
| Alte Donau | Willow floodplain forest | Deciduous forest | 156 m |
| Leopoldsberg | Beech forest | path, road or square | 426 m |
| Lusthaus | Willow floodplain forest | path, road or square | 159 m |
| Steinhof | Oak and hornbeam forest | Dry meadow | 327 m |
| Hermannskogel | Beech forest | path, road or square | 543 m |
| Lobau | Danube, side arms and streams | Danube and rivers | 154 m |
Vienna around 1830, in figures
Between 1817 and 1829 the Franciscan cadastre surveyed Vienna plot by plot. Converted to today’s city area (41,477 hectares):
Paths, roads and squares, which the cadastre leaves without a type, make up 5.4 %; the remaining 0.9 % are waste land, embankments, dams, pits, quarries, bridges and the Linienwall.
Around 1830, 21 % of today’s Vienna was forest. Without people it would be 91 %.
According to an overview by BOKU (2019), no detailed analysis of the cadastre exists for Vienna; the figures here are computed by wohnwahn from the 102,125 plots published by the City of Vienna.
How the map is made
- Without people is a model, not a measurement. Water: the Danube and its arms as surveyed around 1825. Floodplain: where the geological map shows young valley floors, willow, poplar and hardwood forest by distance to the water, calibrated to shares from the literature; on the higher, older floodplain (Marchfeld) old hardwood forest; in the stream valleys alder and ash. Hills and terraces: forest by height, slope, aspect and rainfall, beech on the cool slopes of the Vienna Woods, oak and hornbeam, open oak woodland in the dry east, downy oak on steep south slopes.
- The ground is the laser scan without us. Railway and road embankments, cuttings, the walled bed of the Wien river, landfills, pits, the Danube Island and the flood dams are taken out and the ground is filled in from the edges. In the Danube valley lies the bed of 1825, rebuilt from the cadastre.
- The look comes from real forests, the distribution from the rules. Every forest type wears cut-outs of the City of Vienna orthophoto (40 cm per pixel), taken exactly where the biotope mapping lists that type today: beech forest in the Vienna Woods, white poplar and hardwood floodplain forest in the Lobau, reed beds along the backwaters. Each patch of forest takes its own cut-out, turned and mirrored, so the forest stays patchy as it is in reality, and close up you see single crowns. Willow floodplain forest uses white poplar, because no willow stand in Vienna is wide enough. Water, gravel and rock are computed without any image template. The cut-outs show the forest in leaf.
- Cross-check. Where the cadastre still records forest in 1829, the model says forest on 99.3 % of the area (across all of Vienna it is 91.3 %); floodplain meadows of 1829 lie in the model’s floodplain to 99.9 %.
- Around 1830 is drawn from the cadastre. 102,125 plots with their use, in our own style: stone buildings red, timber buildings yellow, vineyards with vine rows, forest with trees.
- The laser scan is the BEV surface model. 1 m resolution, flown in 2023 with leaves, tinted by terrain height.
What the map does not know
- The water shows the Danube around 1825. Without people it would have moved its arms again and again; there is no fixed natural state.
- Borders between forest types are a model, not a finding. Single trees and glades are picture, not measurement.
- The fill below the Inner City (up to more than 10 m) is not removed: there is no open data for it.
- The cadastre covers today’s Vienna only, so the map ends at the city boundary.
- The Danube was not entirely natural in 1825 either: the Danube Canal and the first dams already existed.
Sources for the video “Vienna without houses”
Watch the video:wohnwahn on TikTokwohnwahn on Instagramwohnwahn on YouTube
Data
- Data source: Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying (BEV) · ALS DTM elevation raster 1 m (terrain model) (CC BY 4.0) · terrain to one metre, buildings and trees removed (flown 2023)
- Data source: Federal Office of Metrology and Surveying (BEV) · ALS DSM elevation raster 1 m (surface model) (CC BY 4.0) · buildings and trees of Vienna today
- Data source: geoland.at (Austrian provinces) · Digital Terrain Model (DGM) Austria, 10 m (CC BY 4.0) · terrain in the distance
- Data source: City of Vienna – data.wien.gv.at · Franciscan cadastre 1817–1829, redrawn by the City of Vienna (CC BY 4.0) · the Danube around 1825, surveyed 1817 to 1829
- Data source: City of Vienna – data.wien.gv.at · biotope type mapping Vienna 2006–2011 (CC BY 4.0) · calibration of the forest rules
- Data source: City of Vienna – data.wien.gv.at · orthophoto 2025 Vienna (CC BY 4.0) · colours of Vienna today
- Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL), openstreetmap.org/copyright · names and positions of the places in the picture
For the film we cropped, converted and redrew the data.
Google 3D
Vienna today, the view from the Leopoldsberg: Google’s photorealistic 3D. In the film the credit stays in the picture for as long as Google’s image is visible: Google · Kartendaten: Landsat / Copernicus, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Airbus
Picture
- Johann Wachtl (draughtsman), „Panorama vom Leopoldsberge bei Wien“ mit topographischen Angaben, around 1830. Wien Museum, inv. no. 43971/1. Licence: CC0 1.0. Change: cropped, faded over the computed terrain.
AI, voice and music
An AI painted and animated the pictures following exactly these specifications; water, positions and horizon were checked against the data. Voice, music and sound effects are AI-generated (ElevenLabs).