How do we engage the young people in the green transition? One way could be a hackathon like the one arranged at the Desire demonstration site BTC City Ljubljana in Slovenia. As a part of the Desire project, the younger generation is asked to develop ideas for shaping the green future of BTC City Ljubljana, one of Europe’s largest shopping, business, and leisure centres. Back in February, the Slovenia Desire partners, BTC and CER - Sustainable Business Network arranged a hackathon with Generation Z. Have a look at the Desire film, created by Benjamin Hesselholdt.
BTC City, Ljubljana, Slovenia
BTC City (Ljubljana, SI) aims at a transformation of the city center to become a regionally leading green, climate resistant and attractive symbiotic business city with shared value for different stakeholders (users, businesses, city, local community) by integrating nature and non-human species more directly in strategies for future investments.
Desire principles: Belonging, Movement, Biodiversity (learn more)
Stories and photos
The site
We have prepared a Design Manifesto and five design principles (engagement tools) to steer us and the activities. This site has been chosen: Principle: Belonging | Principle: Movement
Learn more here
BTC City, Ljubljana consists of different programs, customer and business segments, as well as construction, traffic, and technological infrastructure, it attracts more than 21 million visits per year (visitors, guests, daily workers, tourists). BTC City covers a surface area of 475.000 m2, which include 300.000 m2 of business premises (with 32 buildings): shopping halls with more than 450 shops, 70 bars and restaurants, food market and other services e.g. banks, post offices, carwash, pharmacy, diagnostic centre, dance studio, two tower buildings for offices and parking space, Atlantis Water park, Sports centre Millenium, SiTi Theatre, parking garage, 11 km of roads (streets) with infrastructure for cyclist and pedestrians, 15 roundabouts, more than 4.000 m2 of green area, 1.500 trees.
The BTC City Ljubljana’s successful growth and development are based on a broader and clear vision of our management board. They have pursued an intensive restructuring of the storage facilities into a diverse, carefully planned urban space created as a response to the changing demands of modern times.
With a new long-term strategy which is based on sustainable development, BTC is pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral City by 2040. By that, we are addressing a global challenge concerning climate changes as well as local challenge of being recognized as a heat island in the summer time.
The vision
The vision of BTC City is to become the most innovative and attractive hubs (districts) in CEE to foster green transition and achieve climate neutrality.The goal is to prepare the strategy and action plan:
For redevelopment and future investments in the district which will support the DESIRE principles (+New European Bauhaus concept), BTC’s strategic sustainable goals, city of Ljubljana in EU Mission: Climate-Neutral and Smart Citiesfor climate mitigation and climate adaptation of the district: increase of green spaces, energy efficiency of buildings, renewable energy, sustainable mobility, circular economy, reducing climate footprint, improving the microclimate, the comfort and well-being of visitors, employees and business partners.
With the partnership of CER and Knauf Insulation, we are currently preparing the strategy and action plan called green transformation of BTC City Ljubljana which includes the creation of a sustainability hub, green community, and communication plan.
Future activities will also be planned based on the measures of our current climate footprint as well as on the basis of our ESG evaluation (Green Star certificate). The focus will be on collaboration with the different stakeholders (stakeholder mapping) to develop new innovative and sustainable solutions based on DESISRE principles. We will use different methods like workshops, interviews, contests, hackathons and conferences.