The City of Ljubljana experiences a serious lack of land available for dwellings in the non-profit rental sector. Also, a marked decline of residential uses within the inner city has been observed.

The architectural and urban planning public competition for the reconstruction on Nove Poljane in 1988 was part of a wider tendency to move military programmes out of the urbanised inner-city area. The opportunity to realise the project arose only after the Federal Armed Forces left Slovenia in 1991.

Prior to demolition, the barracks site presented a fenced area along the river in the inner city. It was encompassed by a residential area (predominantly single units). The barracks site degraded the wider area in functional as well as in aesthetic terms. The vacant land abandoned by the army within the inner city offered an opportunity to develop an area offering residential units, business premises, services as well as public spaces which serve wider community.

Summary The 4,8 ha site was a degraded area previously occupied by a military barracks, located in a potentially attractive environment in the inner city area by the Ljubljanica Rriver. The construction of dwellings for the non-profit rental sector has aimed to improve the overall housing shortage in the rental sector.

The project also aimed at tackling the issue of a marked decline in residential uses in the inner city area, which was a consequence of restructuring of urban activities in the period of transition.

The project intended to serve as a model case of cooperation between the public and private sectors. The land which initially belonged to the former Yugoslav Army (Ministry of Defence) was first transferred to the ownership of the Municipality of Ljubljana. The Municipality of Ljubljana transferred part of the land into the ownership of a private construction company. The construction company in turn transferred a some of the newly built dwellings into the ownership of the Municipality. The dwellings were then rented out as part of the non-profit public rental stock. Even though this kind of public-private partnership could be hardly seen as an innovative practice in the pre-1994 EU context, it was certainly a new practice in the Slovenian context.

The Nove Poljane project was in line with the concept of city redevelopment. The main aim was to propose a further restructuring (remaking) of the city with respect to the reinforcement of cultural identity and continuity of the urban structure. The guidelines for the city centre emphasise the rebuilding of the degraded urban sites - paying respect to the contextual motto of each characteristic urban area - and establishing an enhancement of identity and legibility of public urban spaces.

The project measures included:

Main results of the project:

The major beneficiaries are the residents in the area. The development also presents considerable environmental design improvements and an upgrading of the location which, together with the functional aspects of the development (office premises, services, etc.), constitute benefits that extend to the wider inner city area.

The project was executed on a public-private partnership basis with the municipality supplying the land while the private investor provided the necessary financial resources for construction. Either input was crucial to the realisation of the project.

Housing Fund of Ljubljana
Tonka Grgič, B.Sc. (Architect), tel. +386 1 306 1417

//1998

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Urban renewal

City centre development