Divided cities as complex cities: transition and complexity in city of Mostar

ABSTRACT

The article analyses planning processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in order to offer insights into newly-shaping planning systems in South-Eastern Europe during the late phase of post-socialist transition. The article argues that societal complexity impedes a multifaceted transition (i.e. post-war, post-socialist, and neoliberal) in BiH, creating obstacles on the multifaceted transition path. Through a thorough literature review and a series of semi-structured interviews, the article shows that due to these, and many other, complexities, BiH is moving slowly on its transition path. However, it appears that the bottom-up processes are challenging the embedded notions of division.     

The politics of landscape as ways of life in the ‘divided’ city: reflections from Mostar,Bosnia–Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

‘Divided’ cities – places of extreme exclusion and polarization – are sites where the paradox of both fragmentary and cosmopolitan capacity of the city comes to the fore. This article asks: What practices-in-landscape consolidate, construct and deconstruct the impression of a divided city? Drawing insights from the post-conflict Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the main argument I put forward is that urban infrastructures are a crucial medium through which social divisions and cohesions are performed and rearticulated on the ground. The article attends to the everyday of youth in Mostar turning to the politics of landscape as ways of life in the city.