engleski

Informal Housing in Post-Socialist Croatia – Trends and Perspectives

This paper analyses urban development and housing policy in post-socialist Croatia, with the emphases on informal housing. During socialist period a serious housing shortage in Croatian cities was caused by the inflow of migrants from rural areas, induced by intensive industrialisation. Former Yugoslavia implemented a housing policy based on the dominance and control of the state, which organised, built and allocated large housing estates in the cities, and at the same time did not restrict individual housing construction. Significant part of this individual housing construction was informal, especially on the outskirts of large cities, without proper planning permit and without essential infrastructure services. This have become a serious problem since the state wasn’t able to fulfill all housing demands ; informal housing was seen as one of the ways to deal with housing shortage for low-income households. This trend continued during post-socialist period ; it intensified especially during 1990s, as a result of lack of public investment in housing, and large inflow of refugees and internally displaced persons. Due to the fact that Croatia has no housing policy, and the rental sector is unorganised (the public rental sector barely exists and rents in the private rental sector are very high), and that the state did not sanctioned illegal housing construction, the legalisation of the informal housing has been seen as a solution. Informal housing first appeared and today is mostly present in larger Croatian cities. With tourism development and building of second houses in settlements on the Croatian coast, informal housing has become a big problem for planning and sustainable development in this part of Croatia.

urban development; housing policy; informal housing; Croatia

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