HUMAN CITIES Civil Society Reclaims Public Space D. Nedučin, D. Ristić, V. Kubet
participation is mutual. On the other hand, the consequences of a decade marked by civil wars, war-caused migrations and almost complete social, economic and cultural isolation, which preceded the beginning of transition, make Serbian society different from the neighboring ones in many aspects. Major problems triggered by continuous political instability and great poverty, which were occurring on a daily basis, led to an almost complete disregard of many important social and cultural issues, and the suggestions on how to solve them are still missing from current political agendas. Additionally, it may be noted that they are hardly recognized by the citizens as essential segments of urban life dynamics, which points to a lack of urban culture. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate, through a case study of the Initiative for Preservation of the Fifth Park, the causes of civil actions in public spaces under these conditions, as well as the reasons why Serbian citizens do not see themselves as equal actors in the process of urban development. A general overview of the impact of underdeveloped urban culture and the conflict of interests that transformation of public spaces result in, is given in order to emphasize the distinction between Serbia and other post-socialist countries in this context.
2. General context 2.1. Urban culture of the post-socialist Serbia For a deeper understanding of the actions civil initiatives in Serbia utilize in order to reclaim public space, it is necessary to take into consideration a broader context, especially from the aspect of problems that can be identified within the domain of urban culture. This term reflects the way people understand the meaning, importance and cultural dynamics of urban life. Since it derives from the values, attitudes, beliefs and lifestyles of urban residents, urban culture can be viewed as a basis for social transformations in a city. If defined in this manner, it also includes a complete and integral way of observing various cultural practices in an urban context. It is difficult to truly understand urban culture and its social environments in contemporary Serbia without having a brief insight into the general political context. As a consequence of the politics from the period of Yugoslavian state socialism, but also as an effect of the economic crisis, civil wars, collapse of the socialist regime and major political changes on a national level that occurred at the end of 1990s, Serbian society has entered the process of distorted modernization, which is 54
characterized by a phenomenon that acts as a limiting factor of modernization and is known as “the cultural lag” (Koković, 2003: 51). It does not only imply the social value orientations typical for traditionalism, but also indicates a lack of certain kinds of cultural practices characteristic for Western European societies. Furthermore, the process of modernization of this post-socialist country is impeded by an apparent domination of politics or so-called “egalitarian syndrome” (ibid.: 50). The rigidity of its political system, as well as the emergence of new interest groups and players on the Serbian political scene, do not allow for important social processes to occur in a more flexible and thus democratic manner, or in other words, without state control. Serbia has recently entered a period of transition. Almost all transitional processes that this society is currently going through are marked by a specific “culture of anti-urbanity” (Pušić, 2010: 381-383). It is primarily a consequence of rapid and poorly planned urbanization, which presents an important factor of modernization and a prerequisite for achieving a sustainable social development. According to Pušić (2010: 382), this “anti-urban atmosphere” is the result of at least three different influences: firstly, there is “an anti-urban offer of spatial articulation and the use of space by those who see the city exclusively through the ways of personal profit”; secondly, there are “professionals who have accepted the imposed role of designers and executors of deurbanization by planning, designing and construction of non-urban physical structures in our cities”; finally, there is the passiveness of citizens who agree to live in a devastated urban environment. Under assumptions that “the design and spatial organization of the public space tell us a lot about cultural ambitions” of urban residents and that the “decisions about the way that the public space will be filled in are an expression of the way we deal with the shaping of the society” (Hajer and Reijndorp, 2001: 73), then we may claim that urban culture represents various social values of a particular community and provides cultural context for a variety of citizen initiatives related to promoting multiple usages of public spaces or their publicness. Unfortunately, Serbian urban culture of 2000s has not developed enough to back them up. Due to the elemental character of modernization processes and the rigidity of economic and political systems, the underdeveloped urban culture is a logical product of the disregard of certain social values and cultural practices on one side, and of the impossibility of their continuous “stimulation” on the other. That is an argument for defining urban culture as a dynamic concept that emphasizes the cultural dimension of using public space.
2.2. Public spaces in Serbian cities The socialist economy used to rely on a range of non-economic factors of production, such as political, social, symbolic or ideological, and their aim was to display the superiority of communism over capitalism, most often through “gigantism” in spatial organization and urban planning (Kostinskiy, 2001). Consequently, urban practice typical for Central and Eastern European socialist systems succeeded in changing the nature of public spaces in the majority of cities within a couple of decades after the World War II. In a comparison with Western European cities, Stanilov (2007) recognizes three important fields of distinction that defined the character of public space in socialist societies: 1) much larger share of land in public use, particularly in Yugoslavia where urban land was in state ownership and public by default; 2) abundance of public space and the diffused pattern of its allocation; 3) limited functional content of public space and relatively low intensity of its use. The socialist urban matrix has thus left Serbian cities with a profusion of large, abandoned, neglected and undifferentiated public spaces in Le Corbusier-style residential districts that, according to their size, structure and organization, did not correspond to modern demands and seemed as very appealing urban features to be transformed. Due to a shift in internal market forces in mid 1990s, private entrepreneurs became the principal investors in the postsocialist urban development (Tosics, 2005b). Their appearance at the time of a great socio-economic crisis resulted in the significant profit-oriented alterations in building and planning practices, radical interventions within inherited urban fabric, and a phenomenon in Serbia known as “the investor-oriented urbanism”. Recent urban transformations guided by these private interests introduced and defined two new types of public spaces: commercialized public spaces located in the old urban centre or its vicinity, and fictional public spaces that emerged as byproducts of the boom in housing construction during 1990s and 2000s. Although the first type of public spaces is characteristic for Western European cities, it presents a novelty for the post-socialist ones. In brief, the influx of private investments undoubtedly contributed to the improvement of their overall appearance, but infusing them with predominantly commercial and entertainment-based amenities did not result in creation of multifunctional and multilayered public spaces, but in production of quasi-public places of consumption. As for the second type, it came out as a consequence of the privatization of urban land, especially public spaces inherited
CLAIMING PUBLIC SPACE IN A POST-SOCIALIST SERBIA: A STRUGGLE FOR THE FIFTH PARK