Urban transition and sustainability. The case of the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract:

The paper analyses the historical trajectory of development processes in the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), in order to offer insights into newly shaping planning systems in South East Europe during the late phase of post-socialist transition. The paper argues that slow development of small transitional cities can suggest new models of sustainable urban development, but societal complexity makes transition more difficult and creates boundaries to a sustainable path development.

The paper shows that sustainability has appeared as the new leitmotif of urban planning in the late post-socialist transformation of BiH, but due to many ongoing problems it is reduced to a vague set of fragmented development strategies more open for project-based development, while the country goes through a mainly neoliberal transformation. For BiH cities, locally adapted sustainability seems to be the suitable development path.