Europe’s renowned human-scale urban gem – with its Top 10 rankings for both Biking and Theatres & Concerts – is still drawing people in and treating them right. Fortunately, the development pipeline is anything but small. North of the historic centre, the 40.9-hectare Nordbahnviertel is filling in with mixed-income housing, community facilities and offices, plus more than 10 hectares of parks and play streets. By build-out it will host around 5,500 apartments stitched into the tram and S-Bahn network and designed to keep most daily needs within a short walk or ride. Out at Aspern Seestadt, one of Europe’s largest lake-side new towns continues to rise on the U2 line, aiming for more than 25,000 residents and 20,000 jobs anchored in mobility, construction tech and urban services.
Underneath it all, the U2xU5 project is Vienna’s biggest climate-infrastructure bet. Twelve new stations and nine kilometres of tunnels will ultimately create capacity for an extra 300 million public-transport journeys per year and deliver the fully automated U5 – Vienna’s first – from Karlsplatz towards Hernals. Closer to the Gürtel, the 11-hectare “Village im Dritten” is turning former railway land into a climate-friendly district with about 2,000 flats, offices, a school campus and generous green courtyards, with completion targeted for 2027. East in Landstraße, Vienna doubles down on its role as a life-science capital: more than 750 organisations across the city now employ over 49,000 people and generate some €22.7 billion in revenue. Expect the current #19 spot for Business Ecosystem and #17 for Large Companies ranking to improve in the coming years.
Tourism is surging, too. Vienna logged a record 18.9 million overnight stays in 2024 – up 9% year-on-year – and more than €1.2 billion in room revenue, with roughly four-fifths of visitors coming from abroad. The expanded Wien Museum on Karlsplatz, which drew some 650,000 visitors in 2024 – its first year after reopening – helps the Top 10 Museums ranking, as did city-wide celebrations in 2025 for the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II and a new museum experience dedicated to the “waltz king.” Looking ahead, Eurovision 2026 at the Wiener Stadthalle will stress-test the city’s event infrastructure – and very likely set new records for overnight demand.