In between formal and informal approaches

The role of urban planning departments and institutions in contemporary cities has recently been contested for several reasons. In general, the development of public spaces is confronted with its questionable economic profitability, in terms of strategic position and land value. Additionally, the accelerated processes of deindustrialisation and urban transformation, followed by shady privatisation processes, have led to a situation in which local planning authorities are struggling to find financial support for their numerous development projects. These circumstances led to a new entrepreneurial approach from local governance, in which competitiveness and the desire for economic growth are the dominant forces, and ruthlessly displace the notion of public interest: “Deindustrialization and suburban growth have meant that cities must compete against one another to attract itinerant, or ‘footloose’, capital investment by making themselves as attractive as possible to potential suitors. Many planning departments now serve primarily as economic development agencies, intent on attracting the top firms and the best and the brightest residents. These fundamental shifts in the political economy of cities have resulted in a transformation in how public space is produced” (Schmidt & Németh, 2010). The traditional top-down, tabula rasa approach to urban planning introduced by the modernist movement was most efficient in European countries destroyed by World War II. The weaknesses of this kind of institutional planning are currently emerging, especially due to long-term planning and a high level of vertical subordination between local master plans and governmental strategic plans. Local master plans and regulatory plans are often unable to follow real-time urban dynamics. This lack of planning (Hirt & Stanilov, 2009) is becoming more and more obvious especially in transitional countries, like those Balkan states characterised by post-socialist/postwar restructuring. According to Hirt & Stanilov’s report Urban Planning

in Transitional Countries, the performance of municipal governments during the transition period has been significantly below the level of urban challenges (Hirt & Stanilov, 2009). These countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina included, have become testing grounds for neo-liberal development experiments that largely ignore the concept of strategic spatial planning. According to Oswalt, this planning concept manifests as island urbanism: sites that are interesting to investors are planned as projects – enclaves developed according to plans – while the territory in between disappears from the public consciousness. What was once a continuum of urban space ultimately disintegrates into two areas with virtually opposing characters (Oswalt, et al., 2013).

The points raised in the previous discussion show that traditional planning institutions alone cannot cope with the needs and dreams of their citizens. We are currently entering a post-institutional period, characterised by a new paradigm of development defined by smaller projects and more fragmented spaces (Ibelings, 2002). The role of planning and design professionals should be reconceived, with emphasis on catalysing collaborations between public, private and non-profit entities. Instead of relying on traditional solutions of formal planning via institutionalised channels to create urban transformations, we should be focusing on a combination of top-down, less formal, less permanent initiatives and alternative practices of place-making (Whyte, 1980). The spaces left out of island urbanism (often referred to as urban voids, in-between, liminal, lost or residual spaces) stand out for their special urbanity (Oswalt, et al., 2013) and reinsert the possibility of urban making, or poesis, in a way that large projects do not (Sassen, 2006). These small- or medium-scale interventions, often created modestly through neighbourhood initiatives or small architectural interventions, promote the genuine idea of common space. Such initiatives are frequently encompassed by another interesting phenomenon, commonly defined as temporary urbanism (Madanipour, 2017). This form of ephemeral intervention initiated by public, private

Figure 47. Various spontaneous and organized public activities taking place at the Gezi park.

or civil society actors is an emerging urban trend, an opportunity to change rigid rules, and to introduce something new to the urban context. However, since the early 2000s there has been an increasing intention to integrate these bottom-up initiatives and temporary interventions into the course of formal planning. Temporary interventions are employed to investigate new programs and functions for vacant sites, to promptly re-activate underused urban sites and to explore alternative planning procedures and new collaborative practices that are able to connect immediate needs with strategic plans.

Gezi Park in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli illustrates the major characteristics of the shift from the traditional approach to the planning of public spaces to a post-institutional and collaborative one. The idea of this project was to create a public neighbourhood park rather than a private residential complex. The neighbourhood of St. Pauli is historically

Figure 48. Gezi Park Fiction after the urban transformation.

and culturally rich, though many of its buildings are neglected, and the area has fostered a considerable squatters’ movement since the 1980s. It is highly populated and relatively devoid of green and other communal areas. The project site was one of the few remaining unbuilt sites along the area’s waterfront, and in 1994 the Ministry of Urban Development proposed a development plan for private housing and offices. At this point, the Harbour Edge Association presented a counterproposal: plans for a public park. It is particularly interesting to analyse the gradual strategy of appropriation and transformation that the citizens performed on the site. One of the most successful strategies was to not only protest for a public space, but to act as if one already existed (Figure 48).

To this end, the citizen group organised a series of public events on the site, including concerts, exhibitions, open-air screenings and talks (Spatial Agency, 2009). Consequently, the Ministry of Culture invited the association to enter its plans in a competition for art installations, where they received the green light to continue planning. The neighbourhood network had succeeded in bringing two city departments into conflict: the Ministry of Urban Development continued to insist on developing the land, while the Ministry of Culture endorsed the planned park (Seeds Project, 2013). In 1997, the movement seized the opportunity of elevated neighbourhood tensions and imminent elections to clean up the site. Its members placed benches, planted flowers and declared it a park. Eager to win the election, the city authorities approved the park idea. The planning process was envisaged as a collective production of desires (Spatial Agency, 2009), a collaborative activity performed in an on-site shipping container, and including clay models, discussions, lectures, sketches, and interviews with over 1500 people over a two-year period.

After numerous bureaucratic delays, the park was inaugurated in 2005 and soon became one of the city’s favourite spots. It is dominated by thematic islands (Dog Garden, Flying Carpet, Open Air Solarium, Palm Island and Tenants) and various temporary and informal interventions (Figure 48).

Gezi Park is an important example of a public space developed collaboratively by including a range of local actors (Table 7). It illustrates various modes of participatory planning and a non-institutionalised approach to city making. The inclusive planning strategy did not originate from local planning institutions as a test ground for further developments. On the contrary, the authorities were forced to concede under constant public pressure, and the idea of the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1968).

Table 7. Analysis of the socio-spatial attributes of Gezi Park prior and post transformation. Source: Authors

ATTRIBUTES INSTITUTIONALIZED APPROACH COLLABORATIVE APPROACH

1. TYPOLOGY

2. SCALE

3. ENCLOSURE UNDEFINED COMMUNAL GREEN

MEDIUM

OPEN MEDIUM

OPEN

4. URBAN ACTIVITY PASSIVE

5. ACCESSIBILITY CONDITIONALLY ACCESSIBLE ACTIVE

ACCESSIBLE

6. URBAN ATMOSPHERE INTROVERTED EXTROVERTED

Conversely, many Northern European countries, headed by Denmark, are promoting calls for new collaborative planning models. The Danish Town Planning Institute, under the Network for Private-Public Urban Cooperation programme, is exploring the potential of public and private partnerships in urban development. Similarly, in the Smart Urban Intermediaries programme, they are seeking individuals who are strong anchors of their communities to bring people and resources together in creative or interesting ways, to solve shared problems for the common good.

Over the past few years, the number of non-institutionalised urban interventions into public spaces with the intention of common benefit has been rising in Sarajevo. In 2013, the Crvena association for art and culture, in cooperation with the LIFT Spatial Initiative, launched the City and Nature programme to create an experimental modular web map of Sarajevo, called Gradology. Gradology is an online activist platform that helps citizens of Sarajevo discover and map urban open spaces like parks, squares, abandoned buildings and unused spaces. The programme’s goals were to: accumulate and disseminate knowledge on the issues of collective action in space; encourage involvement in decision-making processes through formal and informal organisational mechanisms

Figure 49. Informal initiatives of urban sites transformation launched by Dobre kote.

and forms; and develop democratic, participatory approaches to the analysis and practice of urban planning (LIFT, 2015). Similarly, a group of self-organised young activists gathered under the name Dobre kote has operated since 2015 with the aim of reintegrating abandoned and neglected public and semi-public spaces into everyday life (Figure 49). Their scope is to turn discarded and unwelcoming urban spots into gathering spaces for the local community, especially children, through joint collaborative action.

These informal activities, as well as the protest against the 2019 appropriation and conversion of part of the Hastahana park in Sarajevo in in a construction site, testify to the gradual rise of citizen awareness of their right to public space, and to the city in general. Sadly, local authorities are still reluctant to respond to citizen initiatives, and do not sufficiently recognise the potential value that the collaborative planning approach can contribute to the quality of Sarajevo’s urban environment.