Municipality's plans and why we criticize them
One year after the occupation - in 2007 - the municipality began planning the renovation of the area into a “Creative centre Rog”, putting the emphasis on redeveloping the surroundings in order to build an attractive area for international artists and tourists. With the help of an EU-led project devoted to revitalization of ex-industrial zones, they propose a public-private partnership to renovate the main factory building, the construction of a design hotel, up-standard apartments and commercial programs. The public-private ration is 20-80%. One of the proposals also suggests a relocation of 3 art academies to Rog, but their deans deny it, because of non-defined relations between academic and commercial programs and because they don’t want their students - who are active in the factory - to lose their studios/ateliers. The municipality could never find an investor because of global recession, so they down-scaled the project into an all- publicly financed “centre for architecture, design and visual arts” stressed on developing the creative industries economic sector and helping young designers into entering the labor market.
Latest petition
With the renewed escalation of pressure from the City Municipality of Ljubljana, we turn to you with a public appeal to the city administration to agree to an open dialogue with the users of AT Rog, which we’ve been trying to establish in vain for three years. Instead of violent confrontations or closed negotiations we are striving for an open discussion about the future of the Rog Factory in cooperation with the interested professional public. We ask you to contribute to our petition and help find a common, transparent and non-violent solution to the conflict.
Support the struggle for Autonomous Factory Rog
Autonomous Factory Rog is still under attack. After the attempted eviction of the factory in the summer of 2016, the municipality of Ljubljana filled lawsuits against eight individuals from Rog, for whom the legal costs are estimated to be between 40.000€ and 50.000€ at the end of the court processes. Let’s not let the municipality destroy lives who struggle for a different and better city.
Latest expert opinions and critiques
"As Ljubljana continues to transform itself, it should be careful not to become overdetermined, homogeneous, and brittle. The city would be wise to not only allow places like Rog to exist but to collaborate with them as partners and value them as the assets they are. Without such initiatives, Ljubljana would be a lesser city."
In the discussions about sustainable urban development the idea of compact cities is of major importance: new developments, in order to minimize their land-take, should be placed within the existing borders of the city and should be directed towards already developed but under-used areas and empty staying buildings. The URBACT Second Chance network deals with a very important part of this problematic, highlighted in the Baseline Study in the following way. The aim of the network is : (...) the reactivation of larger vacant buildings, building complexes or areas with many vacant buildings, that have lost their original purpose, are in decay and constitute in their current state a problem / challenge for the city and the property owner. At the same time these buildings present a unique opportunity for the sustainable urban development. As these buildings are vacant, they can provide space for needed functions and uses, which so far could not “find their place” in the city or in the neighbourhood ... space for a variety of social, economic, ecological or cultural functions... the network is about reactivating these buildings and embedding the reactivation in the city / neighbourhood development context ... to provide space in the buildings for functions and uses which are needed in the neighbourhood or in the city in general; to support strategic uses of the premises, which bring the interests of the property owner together with the public interest (i.e. interest of the community; notion of common goods). (Second Chance Baseline study).
Bertram Schultze, revitalizator: Izgubili boste veliko denarja. Morda ga tudi zaslužili, a le morda.
Bertram Schultze je družbenik nemškega podjetja MIB AG. To razvojno podjetje je najbolj znano po revitalizaciji starih industrijskih objektov v Leipzigu in Nürnbergu. Schultze obe mesti predstavlja v razvojnem projektu Second Chance, v katerem so poleg obeh nemških mest še Krakov, Benetke in Ljubljana.
Pogovor z urbano sociologinjo Lio Ghilardi o preoblikovanju nekdanjih industrijskih območij in njihovi kulturni revitalizaciji.
“V vseh skupinah, razen v FS javna uprava, ki se je zaradi pomanjkanja osnovnih, vhodnih podatkov vzdrţala oblikovanja oz. podajanja mnenja, prevladuje enotno stališče, da je trenutni koncept strukture, strategije dejavnosti za razvoj CSU Rog nejasen in nedodelan. /.../ V grobem za vse fokusne skupine velja, da je načrt na trenutni ravni zamišljen preveč eklektično, z velikim številom in brez jasnih usmeritev oz. s prevelikimi razponi, ekstremi v določanju funkcij, dejavnosti in storitev, ki naj bi bili zastopani v CSU Rog.” (str. 24)