What had to come besides homes

In Red Vienna, roughly as much thought went into what stood between the buildings as into the buildings themselves, and this park is a descendant of that idea.

The city laid out playgrounds, opened open-air pools and summer camps, built kindergartens into the housing courtyards, and set up clinics where young mothers could get help for free. Every newborn Viennese received a package of nappies and baby clothes, delivered by the city, because otherwise child mortality would never come down.

Alongside all this came public libraries, adult education centres, and workers' bathhouses, each built on the same conviction, that a family given only a better home stays poor.

Opponents called it state upbringing and meddling, and in a way they were right, because the city government openly wanted to raise a different kind of citizen than the old tenement blocks had produced.

We cross over to the Wienzeile and keep to the large corner building of the district office.