The Route to Acoustic City – Enactment of the Linz Charter

Press Conference
Thursday, 22 January 2009, 10.30 a.m.
Altes Rathaus, 1st Floor, Room 105

The Linz City Council will pass the Linz Charter today in its first session of the 2009 Capital of Culture year, and thereby make Linz the world’s first city to begin implementing a package of objectives and benchmarks for acoustic development and design.

“With the passage of the Linz Charter, this city is taking yet another groundbreaking step,” stated Mayor Franz Dobusch in commenting on the City Council’s expected enactment of the measure today, which spokespersons for the body’s respective factions expect to be unanimous. “Like other legendary firsts here—the Klangwolke [concert] and the Ars Electronica Festival—the Linz Charter has what it takes to establish the basis for our city’s promising longterm development in the direction of Europe’s acoustic model city.”

The Linz Charter was developed in cooperation with Linz09’s Acoustic City initiative. Planning Commissioner Klaus Luger, who submitted this measure to the City Council’s Planning Commission in September 2008, also regards the Linz Charter as a cornerstone for urban development that will serve as a model for other cities to emulate. “With the enactment of the Linz Charter, we have expressly declared that our acoustic environment is community property, and that it is the right of all this city’s inhabitants that it be kept fit for habitation by human beings. As far as we know, this has not been done in any other city as yet.”

This is a first step. The city administration’s expectations are realistic. The path leading to acoustic model city status is a long one. It starts with acoustic consciousness-building on all levels—in architecture, urban & traffic planning, and in everyday acts. People must be aware that everything we do has acoustic consequences. Taking them into account in our concepts and deeds has to become a matter taken completely for granted in the coming years.

Dobusch and Luger regard the lively interest displayed beyond this region’s borders for Linz09’s Acoustic City project and its commitment to actively designing the acoustic environment as confirmation that this initiative is on the right track. “The Capital of Culture year is still young, but the tremendous reception that Acoustic City has already been accorded—above all in Germany and Switzerland—strengthens our conviction that noise and its abatement constitute an issue of growing importance.”

Acoustic City initiator Peter Androsch has reported very intense interest in the Linz Charter in upcoming Capital of Culture Lüttich (Liège), Belgium: “After all, the Linz Charter concludes with an invitation to all municipalities to ratify the Charter and to make a commitment to achieving the objectives and benchmarks stipulated in it. The way it looks now, Lüttich could soon become the first city to accept this invitation.”