Following the projects “Stories and Talents of Diversity” and “Transform Ternitz,” the project “Kooperativ Ternitz – New Cooperative Models for Climate-Resilient Settlement Revitalization” has been supporting the future development of the Dreiersiedlung, a former workers’ settlement in the Lower Austrian municipality of Ternitz, since the beginning of 2025.

Kooperativ Ternitz is developing innovative cooperative models for settlement development as a contribution to a climate-neutral city. These models are being implemented in the Dreiersiedlung with a focus on sustainable mobility, green and blue infrastructure, as well as the revitalization of the settlement center, and the results are being made available to interested stakeholders.

Current evidence shows that even more comprehensive innovations in settlement revitalization will be required to address challenges such as center development and local amenities, climate-resilient microclimate, and sustainable mobility. The municipality of Ternitz, which successfully applied to become a pioneering small town “Climate-Neutral City,” is part of the consortium and sees the project as a pilot project on the path to climate neutrality for the municipality.

“Kooperativ Ternitz” aims at the cooperative transformation of the settlement center, its infrastructure, public spaces, and forms of mobility. New concepts, as well as new operational, legal, and financing models, are to be developed for these topics.

Some of the methodological tools, in addition to the initiation of cooperative practices and co-creation, include particularly innovative elements that go beyond the state of the art in terms of participatory processes in rural communities and, more generally, in terms of shaping socio-ecological transformation.

Of particular note is the further development of the “Volkshaus” as a neighborhood center with the involvement of artist residencies, as well as the use of tactical urbanism methods in the form of open space experiments that test diverse uses of communal and public spaces, redesigns of streetscapes, and new infrastructures for climate resilience.