Social inequality was empirically lower in Slovenia than in other parts of Yugoslavia - and also faded by the 1980s.

36. Mihelič, Urbanistični razvoj Ljubljana, 56.

vi. Historical development of the neighbourhood unit

The idea of the neighbourhood as an organised social community was already being developed by English and American urban planners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an aim to revive the old way of community organisation in crowded and chaotic cities. The development of the neighbourhood was strongly influenced by Ebenezer Howard, who, as early as 1889, introduced the concept of the “garden city” as a self-sufficient area consisting of residential, industrial, and agricultural land. It was to be developed on the outskirts of an existing city, with which it would be connected by rail and road. The city, suitable for 32,000 residents, was divided into quarters for 5,000 people, supplied with all the necessary services. Following this concept, Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City were soon built in England.35

The term “Neighbourhood unit” was first used by American urban planner Clarence A. Perry when he upgraded Howard’s idea in developing the 1929 New York Regional Plan, which defined the neighbourhood as a unit of the city. He proposed a primary school for its centre, which was at most 500m away from individual apartments. He limited the population to 5000, a community whose children could fill one primary school. He emphasised the important role of pedestrians and the elimination of transit traffic in the design of the settlement, which was also being developed at the same time by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright in their project for the city of Radburn (New Jersey, USA). English urban planners adopted both models in the program of post-war construction of new cities.36

The English model was adopted shortly after the war in the Scandinavian countries, first in Sweden. In the early 1950s, a regional plan for Stockholm was drawn up, which provided the framework for “satellite cities”, self-sufficient neighbourhood units. The most resounding was the Vällingby neighbourhood (1952-1957). Compared to the “sleeping settlements” of functionalism, it reunites separated parts of the city with coning. The core of the settlement, which holds a church, school and kindergarten, community centre, jobs and shops, is connected to the city centre and other neighbourhoods by a subway. The centre is surrounded in concentric circles by residential buildings of various types, which allow for a diverse sociological composition of the population. The closest to the centre are high-rises, which, by concentrating the population, enable the proximity of central services to as many people as possible. Lower apartment blocks follow them, and in the farthest strip, single-family houses in greenery.

Figure 4: E. Howerd, 1889 Garden city Figue 5: C. Perry, 1929 neighbourhood model

37. Malešič, “Od naselja do soseske,” 33-44.

38. The first Slovene architecture magazine “Arhitekt”, published in 1951, followed the international housing developments.

39. Mihelič, Urbanistični razvoj Ljubljane, 56. Such typological diversity enabled the establishment of the visual identity of individual smaller neighbourhoods. The design encourages the integration of nature and ensures a clear separation of pedestrian and motor roads. All of the above contributed to the pleasantly designed residential neighbourhoods, which soon became a reference example for many imitators all over Europe, including in Slovenia.37

vii. Ravnikar’s seminar

In the mid-fifties, the neighbourhood as a new form of organisation of residential settlements became one of the central themes of Slovenian architects. It began to be thoroughly discussed and studied mainly in the context of theoretical studies in Edvard Ravnikar’s seminar on architecture and urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. According to Ravnikar’s student Vladimir B. Mušič, two circumstances encouraged the seminar towards developing the neighbourhood concept. The first was the discovery of Perry’s neighbourhood principles, a good twenty years late - they became acquainted with the teachings of the neighbourhood through Perry’s book “Housing for the Machine Age” and Mumford’s “Culture of Cities” - and the second was following the development of the profession in Sweden.38 They conducted numerous studies that influenced the development of the neighbourhood concept. An important example is the 1952 study of the districts of school and pre-school institutions in Ljubljana by Branka Tancig, which dealt with sizing the distance between the apartment and the school according to the child’s capacity and emphasised that the school network must become the framework of the settlement structure.

Under Ravnikar’s leadership, the neighbourhood concept was applied for the first time in a study project for the construction of the “Na Jami” area in Šiška. It was made by V. B. Mušič and A. Pibernik. With it, they participated in the 1955 Student Competition for the Neighbourhood unit, held at the Hague UIA Congress. In their project, following the Swedish model, they revitalised the idea of a street as an interior park area bounded in two lines by apartment blocks. The concept of the “green street” played an important role in the further development of Slovenian housing construction.39

In the project for The Hague, they mainly studied the spatial model of the neighbourhood, while a second group from Ravnikar’s seminar, consisting of Mitja Jernejec, Majda Dobravec, Janez Lajovic and Janja Lap, dealt with

Figue 6: B. Tancig, Study of the districts of school and preschool institutions in the city of Ljubljana, Arhitekt, 1952.

Figue 7: Marta Ivanšek and Edvard Ravnikar (1907-1993), in Vällingby, 1955