Alexander Mahr, Die Stadtrandsiedlung (1933)

Alexander Mahr’s 1933 Die Stadtrandsiedlung is a policy-economic pamphlet on Austria’s unemployment crisis, centered on Vienna but using German and American comparisons. It moves from crisis diagnosis to program: why urban-fringe settlement matters, how much land it needs, how buildings and materials can be cheapened, and how the scheme can be financed. Its thesis is that Stadtrandsiedlung is both emergency aid and long-range adaptation to an industry that rationalization will keep from employing everyone full time.

Heute liegt das Schwergewicht eben auf den Erträgnissen der Bodenbearbeitung. Es kommt heute mehr auf die Begründung zusätzlicher Erwerbsgelegenheiten als auf die Schaffung zusätzlicher Wohnungen an.

English translation: Today the emphasis lies precisely on the yields from cultivating the soil. What matters today is more the establishment of additional earning opportunities than the creation of additional dwellings.

This revises prewar suburban reform. The settlement is not mainly a healthier dwelling, but a productive household unit. Mahr does not seek to turn city workers into peasants; for most, land is Nebenerwerb, a supplement producing vegetables, fruit, potatoes, poultry, rabbits, perhaps goat milk. Its value is lower living costs, fewer imports, and greater stability for households facing unemployment or short-time work.

The diagnosis is structural. Trade barriers make domestic food production urgent, while rationalization means that even renewed prosperity may raise output without restoring the eight-hour day for all.

Aller menschlichen Voraussicht nach wird die Industrie weder in Österreich noch in Deutschland und den meisten anderen stark industrialisierten Staaten auch im Falle einer gebesserten Wirtschaftskonjunktur imstande sein, das gesamte vorhandene Arbeitsangebot voll, d. h. acht Stunden täglich, zu beschäftigen.

English translation: By all human foresight, industry will be unable—neither in Austria nor in Germany nor in most other heavily industrialized states, even in the event of an improved economic situation—to employ the entire available supply of labor fully, that is, eight hours a day.

The pamphlet’s largest conceptual move is the mixed form between city and countryside. Shorter industrial hours, electric power, motor transport, and decentralized factories could join wage work to household cultivation. References to Seldte, Roosevelt, and Mullins place the Austrian proposal within a wider interwar search for spatial and occupational reorganization.

Die Vereinigung von landwirtschaftlicher und industrieller Betätigung würde so eine besonders wichtige Maßnahme nicht bloß zur Bekämpfung der strukturellen Arbeitslosigkeit in der Industrie darstellen, sondern auch zur Besserung der Lage der Kleinbauern.

English translation: The combination of agricultural and industrial activity would thus constitute a particularly important measure not only for combating structural unemployment in industry, but also for improving the situation of small farmers.

Mahr then specifies the settlement economy. A viable plot should have about 1500–2000 m² on good soil and 2000–3000 m² on weaker soil, enough for intensive self-supply and small surpluses. Around Vienna he points to public or semi-public land, especially holdings of the Kriegsgeschädigtenfonds, and favors lease, hereditary building right, or rent-purchase over costly acquisition. If industry decentralizes, land need not remain tied to the metropolitan edge.

Selection and construction are organized through voluntary labor service. Applicants prepare sites, roads, and buildings alongside unemployed craftsmen; in doing so they reduce costs and prove the discipline and skill required for settlement. Lobau, Leopoldau, and Mannheim show the power of self-help, though Mahr says mass settlement still requires planning, credit, and public backing.

Bei der Errichtung der Siedlerstellen müssen selbstverständlich alle Möglichkeiten der Kostensenkung energisch ausgenützt werden, soweit dies mit der Forderung nach dauerhafter Ausführung und normaler Brauchbarkeit der Wohn- und Wirtschaftsgebäude vereinbar ist.

English translation: In the establishment of the settler holdings, all possibilities of cost reduction must of course be vigorously exploited, insofar as this is compatible with the requirement of durable construction and normal usability of the residential and farm buildings.

This cost discipline is the technical heart of the book. Savings come from serial building, settler labor, local materials, reduced freight, tax and contribution relief, wage subsidies, and even an “industrial labor service” in which unemployed future settlers make bricks, timber products, doors, and windows, with part of their wage claim credited toward a house. The aim is solid normal use at radically reduced cash cost.

The financing chapter turns the scheme into credit policy. Since new taxes and ordinary budget funds are unavailable, Mahr proposes domestic loans, savings-bank credit under federal guarantee, settlers’ own contributions where possible, and federal assumption of interest only when unemployment continues after relief ends. With all economies realized, he estimates about 1500 Schilling per settler place: 30 million Schilling could create 20,000 smallholdings.

Against ordinary public works, Mahr argues that settlement leaves a lasting productive asset, improves food supply, reduces relief dependency, and restores agency to the capable unemployed. The pamphlet is thus a compact interwar synthesis of welfare, workfare, food policy, decentralization, and technological rationalization.

Aus diesen Gründen erscheint die Behauptung durchaus gerechtfertigt, daß die Förderung der Stadtrandsiedlung gegenwärtig unter den Zielen der staatlichen Wirtschaftspolitik an erster Stelle stehen sollte.

English translation: For these reasons, the assertion appears entirely justified that the promotion of suburban settlement should presently stand in first place among the aims of state economic policy.