Naslov
Unfulfilled Promises of Yugoslav Socialism: Informal Housing as a Counternarrative of Post-war Housing Strategies and their Modernisation Agenda
(Unfulfilled Promises of Yugoslav Socialism: Informal Housing as a Counternarrative of Post-war Housing Strategies and their Modernisation Agenda)

Autori
Matijević Barčot, Sanja ; Grgić, Ana

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
15th European Association for Urban History (EAUH) Conference: Inequality and the City

Mjesto i datum
Antwerpen, Belgija, 31.08.2022. - 03.09.2022

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
informal housing, socialist city, inequality

Sažetak
The principles of egalitarianism are deeply embedded in the ideological basis of socialist societies. Among the issues in which those principles established their visible narratives in post-war Yugoslavia, the issue of housing was particularly significant. Beginning with the ideological premise that a flat, a place to live, was a basic human right, the socialist state assumed the obligation of securing this particular right for its citizens. The 'housing for all' agenda found its embodiment in numerous new residential neighbourhoods and modern, mass-produced apartment buildings, the result of a carefully developed architectural and technical discourse, which formed the representative image of a strong and prosperous socialist state. This study, however, shifts the focus from this representative and common image of the socialist city towards its edges. Here, one could discover that despite the official rhetoric, the housing issue was also, paradoxically, the agent of social and spatial inequalities. Namely, when the plan to provide each citizen with an apartment proved to be unrealistic, the official agenda of socialist egalitarianism was compromised, with some citizens receiving preferential treatment over the others, i.e. high-ranking employees over the low-ranking workers. Those who were left out thus turned to a deeply ingrained traditional mechanism – building a home completely on their own. This phenomenon of self- built informal housing appeared mostly in peripheral city areas that had remained outside the scope of socialist modernisation and urbanisation. Such informal settlements were supported by political discretion but lacked any kind of public investment. Today, these large albeit unspoken parts of the socialist city represent the challenging issue of the post-socialist city, in terms of their non-existent urbanity and lack of public infrastructure. This paper discusses the inequalities produced by official socialist housing strategies in the former Yugoslavia and traces the origins of informal housing construction. We argue that the inequalities in the cities were not only represented by the spatial dichotomy between planned and informal, but that their causes and effects were also economic and social, as well as political.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Arhitektura i urbanizam

POVEZANOST RADA