ABSTRACT
In contrast to Cerdà’s efforts to modernize the city, another great pioneer of urban planning from the 19th century, the Viennese Camillo Sitte, attempted to counteract the effects of the modern opening of the city. He points to a modern social disease, agoraphobia, as a psychological effect of this opening. As a concrete example, Chapter 20 focuses on Karlsplatz, a kind of laboratory for the later transformation of the ancient ramparts into Ringstrasse, but it is also indicated that public squares in general seem to play a rather small role in Viennese culture. Instead, the Kaffeehaus seems to have taken the place that public squares had in other capital cities. The so-called Kaffeehaus-Literaten, from Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus to Elias Canetti, bear witness to this. As an example of such a Kaffeehaus, the chapter discusses Café Museum Café designed by the modernist Adolf Loos and an important hub for artists around 1900 – and, by the way, located at a corner by Karlsplatz.
