🏊 Living in special places

Living in the Alt-Erlaa housing estate — what is it like?

Short and honest: you live in one of three blocks, each around 400 metres long and 23 or 27 storeys high, with a pool on the roof, a park between the buildings and the U6 by the shopping centre. The trade-off: you do not choose your flat — it is allocated after years on the waiting list, and with it the side you live on.

updated September 2026

Living Snapshot — the area in numbers

The housing estate is not a Grätzl of its own in Vienna Living Map’s data — what is rated are the residential areas around it: Erlaa, Liesing Zentrum and Siebenhirten. Orientation for the surroundings, not a verdict on individual flats.

What shapes daily life

The Alt-Erlaa housing estate — often written Alterlaa — was built from 1973 to plans by Harry Glück with Kurt Hlaweniczka, Franz Requat and Thomas Reinthaller, by a subsidiary of the non-profit developer Gesiba. Block A was occupied in 1976, Block B in 1978, Block C in 1985. Three slabs run from north to south, each around 400 metres long. On the lower twelve floors they step back, and every flat there has a terrace garden; above that, every flat has at least a loggia. Around 9,000 people live in around 3,200 flats.

Much of what you would otherwise leave the house for is inside it: indoor pools and saunas in the blocks, seven pools on the roofs, more than 30 clubs, schools, kindergartens, doctors and the Kaufpark with shops, a library and restaurants. Between the blocks lies the Harry-Glück-Park, around twelve hectares of green. The estate has its own in-house TV channel and its own monthly paper.

What works surprisingly well

The U6 is at the door: Alterlaa station, open since 1995, sits by the Kaufpark — about five minutes on foot from the middle of the estate. The Wien Museum puts Karlsplatz at around 25 minutes away. Cars go into garages with around 3,400 spaces; the green spaces between the blocks are car-free.

Satisfaction is measured, not claimed: several studies found very high residential satisfaction here, among them one by the City of Vienna from 2004. According to these studies, residents also spend more time at home than those of comparable estates.

What you consciously accept

You cannot choose your flat. The waiting list is long — the Wien Museum mentions around five years — and flats are allocated by household size, between 50 and 149 square metres. Block, floor and side come with the offer, not with a wish.

The size has an inside: the blocks are reached through long central corridors that need artificial light even by day and allow no cross-ventilation. Because the slabs run north–south with the corridor in the middle, a flat usually faces one side only: east with the morning sun, or west with the evening. And tall slabs make wind — wind-tunnel tests found considerable wind speeds for the estate.

20 minutes of everyday life

Five stops, one evening after work — every observation is true exactly here, not everywhere.

1. U6 Alterlaa 18:05
   Getting off by the Kaufpark. The station has existed since 1995, almost twenty years after the first residents moved into Block A.
2. Kaufpark 18:08
   Shopping without leaving the estate: shops, restaurants and the library under one roof, on the way from the U-Bahn to the stairwell.
3. Harry-Glück-Park 18:15
   Between the blocks, around twelve hectares without car traffic. Since 2015 the park has carried the architect’s name.
4. The terraces 18:20
   From below you see how the blocks step back: on the lower twelve floors every flat has a terrace garden, above that a loggia. Glück called the principle the stacked single-family house.
5. The rooftop pool 18:30
   Up in the lift: seven pools on the roofs, around 70 metres above Liesing. The water doubles as a firefighting reserve for the high-rises.

Who is it for?

For anyone who wants infrastructure inside the building — pool, sauna, clubs, school, U-Bahn — and does not mind neighbours, including families who need space. If you want to pick a particular flat, side and floor included, or an old Gründerzeit Grätzl with cafés outside the door, you will not find that here.

Check the light before you accept

An offer comes with a side: east or west, twelfth or twentieth floor. The light check calculates, for the address and the floor, when direct sun reaches the windows — on 21 June and 21 December, from the officially measured heights of the neighbouring buildings. The preview for one room is free. To the light check →

The Erlaa Grätzl portrait · Liesing Zentrum · Housing types in Vienna · Liesing district · Karl-Marx-Hof · Arsenal

Method & sources

History, buildings and amenities: Wien Geschichte Wiki (City of Vienna), article “Wohnpark Alt-Erlaa”; Wikipedia, article “Wohnpark Alterlaa”; dasrotewien.at, entry “Alt-Erlaa, Wohnpark”; Wien Museum Magazin, “Wohnpark Alterlaa” (all read on 30 September 2026). The Living Snapshot shows the scores of the Grätzl Erlaa, Liesing Zentrum and Siebenhirten from open data (City of Vienna OGD, OpenStreetMap, Wiener Linien, Statistics Austria) — orientation, not a rating of individual flats. Walking minutes: straight line from the middle of the estate × 1.3 at 80 metres per minute.

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