Concept of urban village: the application of the concept as a foundation for new typology of urban villages

Whole 20th century was marked with many new movements (“-isms”) in urbanism and architecture. Some of them, such as modernism and post-modernism, were especially important and influential. But, current situation is a bit different; there is no prevalent movement or concept. Many actual theories and concepts are the “mixes” of previous movements, so they can be described as “hybrid” ones. One of these hybrid concepts is the concept of urban village. The “hybridity” of the concept is visible in its name, which looks confusing at glance. But, the meaning of the concept is clear; it should be understood as a construct of sustainable community based on mixture of advantages from urban and rural/suburban life. The definition and main principles of the concept of urban village have been quite general, which has led to its wide application. Consequently, there are a bulk of new or renewed neighbourhoods and communities named as “urban villages” all over the World today. They often have various or even opponent characteristics. Thus, this gap between theoretical fundaments and application “in situ” has made the whole idea doubtful and unstable. This research tries to clarify this gap by the way of possible typology of urban villages. This proposition will be checked through theoretical explanation and the analysis of two different cases of urban villages. The research should present the stability of proposed typology hereof. Finally, whole research will accent the complexity of the concept of urban village in global context

Tendencies in newly-built multi-family housing in Serbia : outlook of urban experts

Post-socialist period have brought the myriad of new socio-economic changes for states in Central and Eastern Europe. Knowing that all such changes mirror in space and settlements, they have also made an unavoidable impact on housing as the most prominent urban function. In the case of Serbia, these post-socialist changes in housing have been more severe due to postponed and more complex transition. On the other side, the uncommon model of qualitative socialist housing in the former socialist Yugoslavia has left a positive legacy to present-day situation. Hence, Serbian post-socialist housing has some unique features comparing to other post-socialist countries. This uniqueness is reflected in Serbian reality. A good illustration is a newly-built, “transitional” multi-storey collective housing as dominant type in local typology. However, the data relating to these unique characteristics are rare and insufficiently accurate. The aim of this paper is to improve the research of the urban dimension in newly-built collective housing in Serbia from the point of the planning of housing in new urban plans for Serbian cities. This will be researched by analyzing the professional knowledge and experience of local urban experts. Therefore, the method......... expected that the results of the survey will enlighten some mutual issues in Serbian housing and related urban policy which can be better customised and adequately addressed to enable synergy in the future development

Spatial patterns of serbian migrants in Vienna and in the settlements of their origin in Eastern Serbia

At this moment, the question of immigration became a pan-European issue and it overlaps with other emotional matters such as ethnicity and identity. As a consequence of an increasing globalization, international migrants are targeting primarily larger cities as they provide more opportunities and support networks which are so crucial to newcomers. In the same time, such an immense emigration is significantly influencing development of communities and their places of origin. Vienna has a long tradition of multicultural population, where immigrants from Serbia the largest minority group in the city. Researching Serbian immigrants in Vienna can be used as a reference point in establishing specific characteristics of the group and determine the scope of the idea of „Balkanization” as an urban pattern. The proximity and accessibility of Vienna to homeland is also an important factor for vivid reciprocal influences. Majority of Viennese Serbs is spending holyday time in settlements of their origin. They are also bringing new-acquired habits in this environment, transforming old spatial patterns. This process is especially observable in the case of Eastern Serbia, as a part of country with the highest level of emigration. Thus, specific spatial patterns are recognizable in both cases - as well in Vienna as in Eastern Serbia. The aim of this paper is to present these “mixed” patterns. Finally, the contribution of the paper is to open academic and scientific debate about spatial patterns of migrants’ life in these complex spaces that they can be used as a role-model for further research of spatial patterns of “migrant culture”

Environmentally-Friendly Planning for Urban Shrinkage

Urban shrinkage has become a widespread phenomenon in contemporary urbanisation. Shrinking cities present multiple shrinkage-connected problems, where the most acute ones are demographic and social decline caused by bad economic performance. These problems are usually mirrored in urban space and thereby matters for urban planning, which, predictably, proposes mainly economic- and demographic-based models and solutions for shrinking cities. The other factors, such as environmental issues, are not well-established both in relevant theory and practice. Generally, environmental issues play a minor role for shrinking cities. However, they can be the factors to cause or to display the consequences of urban shrinkage, but they can also contribute to overcome related challenges. Therefore, environmental issues are unavoidable in any future agenda or policy in urban planning towards shrinking cities. The first step in the process of linking these two scientific fields – the concept of shrinking cities and environmental science – is certainly to check which environmental issues are relevant for the phenomenon of urban shrinkage. This is the main purpose of this research. It aims to collect and systematise the current knowledge about these links. The findings of this investigation bring new interrelations for the multi-face character of the concept of shrinking cities. Therefore, this research presents a new input how to strengthen currently weak links between the concept and shrinking cities and environmental studies, to facilitate a more adaptive planning for urban shrinkage

The possibilities of the application of the concept of healthy city in illegal settlements in Serbia

The importance of healthy life has become important issue in cotemporary settlements in last decades. Thereby the meaning of “health” has been transformed from strictly sectorial view to a wider interpretation, being used in the context of local community and city development. This broader prospect has resulted in the creation of healthy city concept as a recognisable theoretical concept, based on the striving for healthy environment and good quality of life. Globally, communities face pressing health challenges related to the built environment, so the awareness about the need to make the link between human health and development has grown, as well as the urge of establishing the concept for a healthy city. While the framework and general goals are being recognised internationally, the local adjustments and characteristics, related to the national and regional context, have not yet been made. Further, special challenge is how to approach to less developed communities and areas in developing countries in transition, such as Serbia. Even bigger challenge is to examine and test the possibilities of the application of the healthy city concept for the illegal settlements in Serbia. In such settlements, which lack basic infrastructure, amenities and services, the need for improving the quality of life is even bigger. This paper aims to contribute to the advance of practice and policy for healthy places and cities, by defining a local sensitive approach for the informal areas in Serbia

The Beauty or the Beast? Can Illegal Housing Tackle the Problem of Social Integration and Social Housing?

Serbia as a neighbouring EU country is, like some other countries, facing the problems of incoherent urban and regional development, of tackling the urban growth and of deficit of integrated urban strategies. On the other hand, specific problems of Serbia are related to the possibilities of integration of special socioeconomic groups, such as low income citizens, refugees etc. Having this in mind, it is understandable that Serbia is coping with even bigger problem of affordable and social housing, which has become an emergency even in cities with a weak demographic growth in developed countries. The problem of the lack of adequate affordable housing and its capacity is often followed by the problem of real social integration of vulnerable social groups. The pressure of these problems is more visible in Belgrade, Serbian capital since it deals with the demographic pressure and growth for a long time, and especially in past two decades. As a consequence of this pressure many previously agriculture areas at the fringes of the city have become illegal settlements. Being a developing country severely hit by economic crisis in past few years, Serbia will not easily reform its housing policy and enable growth of the affordable housing which will meet demands. It is also not very likely to expect that the problem of illegal settlements will vanish or even lessen since the actual Serbian political framework is encouraging legalization process. So what is to be done? Is it realistic to treat such big issues of urban development separately? Or maybe it is possible to change the prospective and try use problems in the way they partly solve each other? This paper will enlighten the problem of illegal housing in unconventional way – by trying to understand the illegal settlements as areas of social/affordable housing and social integration. It will also discuss the possibilities of urban upgrading and regeneration of illegal settlements making them liveable places and areas which can be integrated into the Belgrade development

How the atlas should be understood?

This atlas combines data from different scientific fields, such as geography, history, economy, demography or sociology, by innovatively presenting this content through urban morphological maps and plans, as well as through regional maps, but including also the other, up-to-date forms of the presentation for an atlas, such as the schemes and diagrams of urban morphology. Apart from the already underlined focus of the atlas on shrinking urban areas along the Danube River, it is important to clarify the other key issues for its prospective readers and users. One of the aims of the atlas is to explore (still) undiscovered urban heritage along the Danube. Therefore, it is oriented to the region of the MIDDLE AND LOWER DANUBE, which is generally less developed and more physically isolated than the Upper Danube Region; thus, the region is more attached to traditional life and culture and with a lot of preserved cultural heritage, which is still less visited by globetrotters

Survey-based research as a scientific answer to the deficiency of qualitative data regarding micro-urban level of new multy-family housing in Serbia

In socialist era, multi-family housing played an important role in creating decent life for proletariat as the main social class in cities. Mass-construction of this type of housing put forward the creation and implementation of standards in housing, which consequently formed a specific urban fabric in socialist cities. Socialist Yugoslavia was a bit unique example due to decentralization during its last decades. This enabled the existence of regional and local housing standards. The differentiation in space was reflected thereby in every local unit, with locally-set relations between buildings and their plots as well as neighbour street and buildings. Therefore, different micro-urban characteristics appeared in housing. This situation was just intensified with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, leaving a lot of freedom to local level to do its own housing “policy”. These local “policies” have been significantly influenced by growing market economy and private incentive in housing. Multi-family housing has been favourable type of housing construction for new private investors due to the best exploitation of all related resources. Therefore, it has become a dominant type of housing construction. In the case of micro-urban conditions, this approach has triggered the entire urban development and has sparked public opinion in some extreme cases. Nevertheless, the relevant legislative and statistical data adopted and published by official institutions, such as competent Ministries and Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, is scarce, inaccurate and scientifically limited. Thus, the aim of this research is to find solutions to overcome this gap by using the knowledge and experience of local experts in urbanism. Taking in account that this research is based on their opinions regarding micro-urban conditions in housing, selected methodology is a survey. It was conducted among the participants of the Summer school of urbanism in Kragujevac, Serbia, in May 14-15 2015. Their professional opinion is analyzed to form recommendations and guidelines for the improvement of current state in housing planning and development in Serbia

Shrinking and Non-Global Cities: Similarities and Differences

The concept of shrinking cities has become well-known among both scientists and practitioners in urban planning and design. Basically, shrinking cities experience many downturn trends due to structural problems in local economy. The most notorious trend is certainly population shrinkage, by which the concept got this name two decades ago. The other ones, such as a brain drain, limited employment opportunities or population ageing, are not less problematic for the future urban prospects, too. Nevertheless, the focus in the current research on shrinking cities has changed last decade. The overall focus on the effects of deindustrialisation has slowly receded to other subtopics related to various socio-economic constraints, such as relation between regional and urban shrinkage, suburbanisation vs. central city development, spatial peripherality, etc. Many such new subtopics touch the huge theme of globalisation and global cities, as well as connected topics of spatial networking, centrality, and multi-layer connectivity. Interestingly, the opposite phenomenon – non-global cities – has not been adequately addressed within it despite the most of cities globally belongs to this group. This research is dedicated to explain the term of non-global cities as a new paradigm in urban studies and tries to link it with the phenomenon of shrinking cities. The comparison of the tenets of shrinking cities are compared with the general elements of non-global cities to fi nd the main similarities and differences between them, enshrining additionally the phenomenon of non-global cities. The conclusion of this research reveals that both of them, although present independent concepts, overlap in the certain regional and typological contexts

The possibilities of survey to collect and use micro-urban data about new collective housing in Serbia

Urban dimension of housing is an important topic in the research related to post-socialist urbanism. Nevertheless, the level of “micro-urban” research of housing, which deals with the relations between housing buildings and their plots, nearby structures and streets, is certainly less represented in research. The reasons for this consideration probably arise from the specificities of local context. In Serbia, this is evident in the case of new collective housing, which has been dominant type of newly-built housing in the last years. Knowing that it is often developed for free market, the influence of investors, who tend to maximise built capacities, is immense. In result, there are many open questions and challenges about the suitability of this housing at “micro-urban” level. The aim of this paper is to find solutions to overcome the gap between current state in new collective housing in Serbia as a dominant type and the general lack of adequate research in the micro-urban characteristics of this housing type. Thus, the proposed paper will use the methodology of a survey to collect the information which has not been achieved by other scientific methods. The survey was conducted among the participants of the Summer school of urbanism in Kragujevac, Serbia, in May 14-15 2015. Therefore, respondent group were Serbian experts in urbanism and related professional disciplines. Their professional view and experience in this topic is analysed to form recommendations and guidelines for the improvement of current state in the practice of housing as the main contribution of the paper