Tunis Faces Key Decisions as Duplicate Urban Image Replacement Reaches Critical Stage

The Municipality of Tunis must decide before September 30 whether to extend or terminate contracts with three signage and public display firms currently handling the replacement of outdated and duplicated urban imagery across the city's central districts. The program, which began under the municipality's 2024 Urban Beautification Framework, has removed more than 340 redundant or damaged public images — including faded murals, duplicated wayfinding panels, and deteriorating heritage photographs — from sites between Avenue Habib Bourguiba and the Medina's Bab el-Bhar gateway.

The timing matters. Tunis is approaching its peak autumn tourism window, when visitor numbers from Europe and the Gulf states historically spike. City planners and local business associations along Rue de la Kasbah have repeatedly flagged that confused, repetitive, or degraded public imagery undermines the first impressions visitors form of the capital. The duplicate image problem is not cosmetic. It reflects a structural gap in how the municipality has historically coordinated between its urban planning directorate, the national heritage body Institut National du Patrimoine, and private advertising concessionaires operating across different arrondissements.

What the Program Has Done — and What It Has Not

Since January 2024, the replacement initiative has focused primarily on two zones: the commercial corridor running from Place de la Victoire toward the Ville Nouvelle, and the tourist-facing facades around Sidi Bou Said's access roads in the northern suburbs. Workers have replaced duplicated directional panels that showed the same destination listed twice within 50 metres — a common complaint from international visitors — and have pulled down at least 28 oversized commercial prints that had been installed without current municipal permits, according to records filed with the city's urban affairs office.

What the program has not yet tackled is the deeper digital dimension. The municipality's own online mapping portal, launched in March 2025 at a reported cost of 1.2 million Tunisian dinars, still carries duplicate thumbnail images for roughly 60 public landmarks, including the Zitouna Mosque and Bab Souika market. Correcting those requires a separate data audit, which has not yet been formally commissioned.

The Decisions Ahead

Three choices are now pressing. First, the municipality must decide whether to fold the digital audit into the existing physical-replacement contracts or launch a standalone tender. Procurement rules under Tunisia's Public Procurement Code require any new contract above 500,000 dinars to go to open competitive bidding, a process that typically takes four to six months — meaning a standalone tender begun in August would not deliver results until early 2027.

Second, the Institut National du Patrimoine and the municipality must agree on editorial control over replacement imagery in the Medina, a UNESCO-listed site. Any new image installed within the historic boundary requires INP sign-off, and the two bodies have not yet formalised a joint review committee. Without one, contractors risk installing replacement panels that then face INP objections and a second round of removal.

Third, and most immediately, the three incumbent contractors — whose agreements expire on September 30 — need clarity on scope. Sources familiar with the contracts indicate the firms have been operating under quarterly extensions since March rather than a renewed full agreement, creating uncertainty about their ability to hire seasonal workers for the autumn push.

For residents and businesses, the practical upshot is straightforward: the next eight weeks are the window in which these decisions must be made if the program is to show visible results before October. Business owners along the Rue Charles de Gaulle shopping strip have a direct interest in pushing the municipality to act. The municipal council's urban development committee is scheduled to meet on July 22 — that session is the most likely venue for a formal decision on contract extension. Anyone seeking to influence the outcome has roughly two and a half weeks to make their case.