The most pressing challenge for the City of Thessaloniki is the lack of affordable and adequate housing for its most vulnerable communities (homeless, elderly, refugees, other citizens in precarity) and the urgent need to implement a climate adaptation and mitigation plan that will also support the city to reach its zero net emissions goals.

UP2030 will focus on the area of “Dioikitirion Urban District”, a neighborhood located in the western end of the city’s historic center. The district was for years a flourishing commercial and residential part of the city. The economic crisis in 2010 caused dramatic changes. Many economic activities were closed, especially the basement retail shops, leaving behind empty buildings and an overall sense of devastation and depopulation. During recent years, real estate investments turned most of the available vacant building stock into short-term dwellings for tourist exploitation. Furthermore, the population of the area is ageing, as young people move abroad or to the suburbs. while many households are susceptible to energy poverty due to the ageing and energy-intensive building stock.