Nikola Samardžić
1 The article is part of the research project “Modernisation of the Western Balkans”
(No.177009), financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia.
2 Vukmirović, Milena/Mira Milaković/Nikola Samardžić: City Building and Urban Failure.
Why Urban Development in Serbia Doesn’t Achieve Planned Results? In: Schrenk, Man-
fred/Vasily Popovich/Peter Zeile/Pietro Elisei (Ed.): Proceedings REAL CORP 2013 Tagungs-
band, 20 - 23 May 2013, Rome, Italy, pp. 160.
3 „The attacks on Dubrovnik, the Old Bridge in Mostar and the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja
Luka offered iconic representations of the violence unfolding across Croatia and Bosnia.
Underlying these iconic instances of violence, however, there was a more widespread
campaign against the building stock of the former Yugoslavia. In the towns of Croatia and
Bosnia (and later of Kosovo) the more mundane architecture that comprises the everyday
built environment (houses, shops, squares, car parks) were also a subject of widespread
and deliberate destruction. Observing the destruction of such buildings a minority of
observers contended that these attacks should be regarded as a distinct form of political
violence. These observers - principally architects and scholars - argued that the build-
ing stock should be understood to be a target in its own right and, as such, its destruc-
tion should be irreducible to the other, extant conceptual categories being deployed to
understand the violence attending the dissolution of Yugoslavia. For example, Bogdan
Bogdanović, architect and former mayor of Belgrade, argued that the destruction of Vu-
kovar was the work of ‘city haters’ who sought to extinguish urbanity by the destruction
of the built environment”. Confer: Coward, Martin: ‘Urbicide’ Reconsidered. In: Theory &
Event. Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, https://muse.jhu.edu
4 Herscher, Andrew: Urbicide, Urbanism, and Urban Destruction in Kosovo. In: Theory &
Event. Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, https://muse.jhu.edu
5 Istorija Beograda. 3. Dvadeseti vek. Prosveta: Beograd 1974, 559-683.
6 Živković, Miroslav, Beograd: sociološka studija, Institut za kriminološka i sociološka
istraživanja: Beograd, 1977, pp. 8-21; Backović, Vera: Socioprostorni razvoj Novog Beo-
grada. Beograd : Institut za sociološka istraživanja Filozofskog fakulteta : Čigoja štampa,
2010; Petrović, Mina: Diferencijacija urbanog susedstva/The Differentiation of Urban
Neighbourhoods. In: The Differentiation of Urban Neighbourhoods, Belgrade, 2009, 34-41;
Petrović, Mina/Backović, Vera: Istraživanje susedstva u Novom Beogradu/Researching
Neighbourhoods in New Belgrade. Belgrade, 2009, 63-86.
7 Bogunović, Slobodan: Arhitektonska enciklopedija Beograda XIX I XX veka, II. Arhitekti.
Beogradska knjiga, Beograd, 2005, 761-769, with literature.
8 Recently Terazije were affected with even more bizarre episode by raising the scenes of
that area in New Belgrade. „The Thematic Park Terazije“, made up of scenes stored in one
of the wastelands of New Belgrade, became the guiding example of spiritual involution
in the time when an increase of simulacra provides supremacy above reality“. Confer:
Bogunović, Slobodan: Terazije na Novom Beogradu. http://aas.org.rs/terazije-na-novom-
beogradu/
9 Kulić, Vladimir: Architecture and the Politics of Reading: the Case of the Generalštab. In:
Belgrade. Fondazione Bruno Zevi: http://www.republika.co.rs/476-477/21.html