Dubrovnik Urban Regeneration Challenge (TUP NEB Project)
Published on
15/12/2025
About this challenge
Croatia
Challenge description
The core challenge is the reclamation of local life and civic space from mass tourism pressures, manifested across housing, identity, and sustainability for the TUP Factory New European Bauhaus (NEB) project.
1. Housing and Social Displacement Crisis
The exceptional profitability of short-term rentals has created a systemic housing affordability crisis, eliminating the long-term rental market and driving essential workers and young families out of the city. The challenge is preventing TUP's success from triggering further gentrification in Gruž, demanding innovative affordable housing models (e.g., land trusts, housing subsidies) to stabilize the local population and address social equity.
2. TUP Regeneration and Identity
The transformation of the former TUP factory must adhere rigorously to the NEB principles:
Sustainability (Green Deal): Applying costly circular economy practices and high energy efficiency standards to complex, large industrial heritage architecture.
Inclusion (Together): Ensuring the revitalized space (library, co-working, studios) becomes a genuine accessible "parallel city center" for local residents, artists, and entrepreneurs, safeguarding it from tourist commercialization. The goal is to preserve the site’s working-class memory while fostering a non-tourism-dependent economy.
3. Systemic NEB Integration
The TUP project must serve as a catalyst for city-wide policy change. The challenge is leveraging this project’s visibility to inspire and fund broader policy actions: activating vacant properties for affordable rent, establishing robust participatory governance, and fundamentally diversifying the local economy away from hyper-tourism dependence, thereby fulfilling the NEB mandate for holistic urban transformation.
1. Housing and Social Displacement Crisis
The exceptional profitability of short-term rentals has created a systemic housing affordability crisis, eliminating the long-term rental market and driving essential workers and young families out of the city. The challenge is preventing TUP's success from triggering further gentrification in Gruž, demanding innovative affordable housing models (e.g., land trusts, housing subsidies) to stabilize the local population and address social equity.
2. TUP Regeneration and Identity
The transformation of the former TUP factory must adhere rigorously to the NEB principles:
Sustainability (Green Deal): Applying costly circular economy practices and high energy efficiency standards to complex, large industrial heritage architecture.
Inclusion (Together): Ensuring the revitalized space (library, co-working, studios) becomes a genuine accessible "parallel city center" for local residents, artists, and entrepreneurs, safeguarding it from tourist commercialization. The goal is to preserve the site’s working-class memory while fostering a non-tourism-dependent economy.
3. Systemic NEB Integration
The TUP project must serve as a catalyst for city-wide policy change. The challenge is leveraging this project’s visibility to inspire and fund broader policy actions: activating vacant properties for affordable rent, establishing robust participatory governance, and fundamentally diversifying the local economy away from hyper-tourism dependence, thereby fulfilling the NEB mandate for holistic urban transformation.
This city is looking for
The ideal EUI peer city for Dubrovnik’s TUP NEB project must master the intersection of Industrial Heritage, Housing Affordability, and NEB principles. We seek partners for high-impact knowledge transfer across three profiles:
Industrial Heritage Transformer: Expertise in adaptive reuse of large brownfield sites, integrating circular economy and historical authenticity while fostering non-tourism-dependent creative clusters. This provides the technical blueprint for TUP’s sustainable renovation and job creation.
Affordability Innovator: Proven success with scalable social/affordable housing models (like Community Land Trusts or subsidized rental schemes) to permanently decouple housing prices from speculative tourism and stop resident displacement in the Gruž area.
NEB Methodology Expert : Experience in rigorous co-creation governance and using data/digital infrastructure to link the TUP site to broader social services and urban regeneration goals, ensuring the project is genuinely inclusive and transferable.
The overall goal is acquiring transferable operational methodologies to ensure TUP becomes an affordable, inclusive civic heart, fulfilling the NEB mandate.
Industrial Heritage Transformer: Expertise in adaptive reuse of large brownfield sites, integrating circular economy and historical authenticity while fostering non-tourism-dependent creative clusters. This provides the technical blueprint for TUP’s sustainable renovation and job creation.
Affordability Innovator: Proven success with scalable social/affordable housing models (like Community Land Trusts or subsidized rental schemes) to permanently decouple housing prices from speculative tourism and stop resident displacement in the Gruž area.
NEB Methodology Expert : Experience in rigorous co-creation governance and using data/digital infrastructure to link the TUP site to broader social services and urban regeneration goals, ensuring the project is genuinely inclusive and transferable.
The overall goal is acquiring transferable operational methodologies to ensure TUP becomes an affordable, inclusive civic heart, fulfilling the NEB mandate.
City size
Towns (< 50,000 inhabitants)
Author
NATASA MIRIC
Croatia
SENIOR ADVISOR
City of Dubrovnik
