Tischlereiquartier Melk: Neighbourhood Resource Communities & Shared Mobility for a 15-Minute City

We are developing a project proposal for DUT Call 2026 (15mC Topic 3, with links to Topics 1 and 2) around "Tischlerei Melk" — a former joinery site in the small Austrian town of Melk (Lower Austria) that has been transformed into a living lab of adaptive reuse: co-working, a hostel, craft workshops, cultural events, and a family support centre, with a co-housing and other refurbishments and building changes in planning.

The Tischlereiquartier is set to become one of first New European Bauhaus neighbourhoods in an urban but also rural setting. It has already received several awards (klimaaktiv, NEB Compass, NEBKrit) and features a range of innovative solutions: an energy-efficient heating system, a newly developed triple heat-pump system, flexible energy management for electricity and heat, and comprehensive ecological measures such as water retention, circular-economy principles, and microclimate improvement. The project combines high-quality living and working space with offices, gastronomy, and art and culture spaces — built around the three core values of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) initiative: aesthetics, sustainability, and inclusion.

Lukas Fürst, owner of Tischlerei Melk and project partner in the proposal: "We are transforming an old joinery into an exemplary new urban neighbourhood. Together, we are shaping a climate-neutral district — and with it, a vibrant future for rural urban areas."

Our goal is to extend this momentum from the site itself to the surrounding neighbourhood — the car-dominated area between a shopping centre, the district administration building and the way to the historic city center — turning it into a walkable, 15-minute neighbourhood.

Core research question: why does cooperative mobility / neighbourhood carsharing so often fail in practice despite technical readiness? We want to investigate how trust-building, viable business models, and conflict-management tools can sustain resource communities long-term — including the role that emerging autonomous/robotaxi mobility could play in reducing car dependency in rural-urban transition areas.

Austrian consortium so far:

• realitylab GmbH — social research, commons governance, community engagement

• Tischlerei Melk — practice partner, physical living lab, strong New European Bauhaus network

• Other partners in Austria are currently being consulted

We are looking for international partners to join the consortium, ideally with expertise in:

• Neighbourhood/shared mobility schemes & governance models

• Impact evaluation and data-driven assessment of urban transitions

• Public space transformation, adaptive reuse, and New European Bauhaus approaches

• Autonomous/shared mobility piloting in small-town or rural-urban contexts

Feel free to contact us at ts@realitylab.at if you are interested in collaborating.