kindergardens and neighborhoods--help!?

Well, good luck to you!!! it's quite difficult to get space in any kindergarten in Vienna, usually people apply for it before they even get babies. There are few good (and expensive as hell) EN kindergartens like:
http://www.montessori-vienna.at/
http://www.kindercompany.at/
there are also kindergartens at Vienna International School and Danube International School but those two are really very, very expensive (I know from my own experience). I don't know where are you planing to work but if you have some diplomatic job or something like UN or EPO, OPEC.... then you have preferential treatment as far as international schools (and kindergartens) goes... otherwise, you might be having a bit of a problem here. And honestly, if I would have a 3 year old, I would give it into German speaking kindergarten and not English, this is unique possibility for such kid to pick up a language of a country he/she leaves in a heart beat. You can still teach and speak with them English at home. My daughter was to big so she had to do English. Not that German or French or Japanese..... are not full as well. By the way, there are more of those in Vienna but those are the ones I know about.

Anyway, it is a practice to reserve a space few years in advance so I hope you will be lucky and get it somehow or if you have a job as mentioned then you should get it sooner.

Regards

As far as areas, most of them have good and not so good parts, it all depends where you would like to be and where you work.... Every district in Vienna had very nice parts and other parts that are maybe not so great but there are no real "ghettos" or dangerous parts really. You just need to know that some of them are very expensive, like 1st, 19, 18, 13, 15... even part of 22.... you should come here and drive around for a day of two and then see what suits you the best and start looking there, I guess. I have chosen 22 because it's international one and the part that I leave is known as recreational area of Vienna and I just love it here. with metro I have 10 minutes from where I leave to Stephansplatz, what would be middle of Vienna.