Besides transportation, housing was also a major problem. Franz had thought that cracking the Portland Cement formula, combined with the application of reinforced concrete structures, would spur progress in the Austrian Empire's construction industry and thereby solve the housing problem.
But he had still underestimated human nature. Vienna's population growth far exceeded everyone's imagination, Franz's included.
As the population exploded, some wealthy nobles invested their capital in this new land and became new landlords. This so-called new land was Vienna real estate.
The nobles' enthusiasm for becoming new landlords revealed a business opportunity to the merchants. They began commercial operations, and clever people quickly discovered that land was the fastest-appreciating asset.
These people moved first, followed by large-scale copycats. In their scramble for more land, they could be said to have stopped at nothing.
Violent evictions, arson, and poisonings sprang up one after another. The gangs Franz had once wiped out had risen from the ashes over the past two years.
They were the ones making money; commoners were the ones suffering. But commoners were not the only victims. Some minor nobles whose ancestral homes stood in the inner city also met with disaster.
With their families in decline, they had been unable to hold on to their estates back then, and now they could not hold on to their ancestral homes either. Yet ancestral homes were different from estates. Most nobles were unwilling to give them up. They were not merely witnesses to past glory, but also the foundation upon which they stood in Vienna.
Once they left the core circle, getting back in would be as difficult as climbing to heaven. In a single day here, they might meet more important figures than they would outside in an entire year, and their chances of winning favor were countless