Layers of Time in the Urban Landscape – Visions of Socialist Urbanity in Mitrovica

Layers of Time
in the Urban Landscape
Visions of Socialist
Urbanity in Mitrovica

LAYERS
OF
SOCIALIST
URBANITY
IN
THE
URBAN
LANDSCAPE

VISIONS
OF
TIME
IN
MITROVICA
Pieter
Troch
Thomas
Janssens

5
Pieter Troch
32 — 33
Map of Mitrovica and surroundings
34
Thomas Janssens

The Ambiguities of Socialist Mitrovica
Visions of Socialist Urbanity in Mitrovica

Pieter Troch
9
Urban Palimpsests
11
Socialist Modernity
14
Order
17
Compact
20
Collective
22
Egalitarian
26
Progress
30
Ambiguities in the urban landscape: alternative

The Ambiguities of Socialist Mitrovica
Tradition
Mixture
Intruded
Individual
Segregated
Ruination
or lost futures?

In a similar fashion, alternative meanings persistently pierce
through the apparent ethno-political division of the urban landscape.
Standing at the divisive central bridge, it is not the barricades
or flags but the typical, socialist housing blocks and the
Partisan monument that catch the eye. Two huge industrial ruins
define the edges of the cityscape. In the north, an iconic smokestack
towers above the valley. A vast dilapidated complex welcomes
visitors that enter the city from the south. Both zones were
part of the Trepča mining, metallurgical, and chemical industry
enterprise, the catalyst behind the radical transformation of the city
throughout the twentieth century.
An insightful study on post-socialist
urban development in the Balkans
is Sonia A. Hirt, Iron Curtains: Gates,
Suburbs and Privatisation of Space in
the Post-Socialist City (Oxford, 2012).
The demise of Trepča after the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia in
the 1990s deprived the population of Mitrovica of its primary source
of socio-economic prosperity and spatial identity. The overwhelming
majority of the population is either unemployed or precariously
employed. The built heritage of the industrial city is in a state of
decline and overwritten by post-socialist trends of privatisation,
individualistic and piecemeal urban solutions, informal building, and
commercialisation. New but apparently empty apartment buildings
in various styles sprout up at impossible places, advertisement is
everywhere, and there seems to be a coffee bar for every second
inhabitant. The result is a curious overlap of ‘posts’. The post-conflict
reconstruction of the city, characterised by spatial and ethnic
division, intertwines with post-socialist urban transformation and
post-industrial decline. The reconstruction of the central area
around the bridge over the Ibër, in that sense, is not only a material
form of post-conflict reconstruction, but also a representation of
the post-socialist transformation of the city centre into pedestrian
streets with small shops, coffee bars, and monuments depicting
figures from national and religious histories.
Regardless of the superimposition of ‘posts’, residents of
Mitrovica remain strongly attached to the socialist city. They
proudly remember its development under Socialist Yugoslavia,
economic prosperity, and progressive urban character. There is a
sense of nostalgia in this attachment to the place, but it goes beyond
souvenirs, museums, old miners, and the glorification of the
past against an even worse present. The socialist city is so obviously
present in the entire urban fabric that it makes the ongoing
transformations of the city seem as cosmetic and ineffectual as
the duplication of place names. Although not operating and dilapidated,
the industrial sites formally still function and both the
10

Serbian and Kosovan government lay claim to Trepča as a future
source of prosperity. A large part of the population of Mitrovica
continues to live in houses constructed by Trepča. The education,
healthcare, sports, and cultural facilities that are central to the
urban identity of the city are all associated to socialist urbanity.
Underneath the post-socialist, post-industrial, and post-conflict
city, the socialist industrial town persists in the built environment
and living memory.
My thinking on layered divisions in
divided cities relies on Jon Calame
and Esther Charlesworth, Divided
Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem,
Mostar and Nicosia (Philadelphia,
2009); Peter Marcuse, ‘The Layered
City’, in: Peter Madson & Richard Plunz
(eds), The Urban Lifeworld (London,
2005), 94–114; and Kimberly Elman
Zarecor, ‘Infrastructural Thinking: Urban
Housing in Former Czechoslovakia
from the Stalin Era to EU Accession’,
in: Edward Murphy & Najib B. Hourani
(eds), The Housing Question: Tensions,
Continuities, and Contingencies in the
Modern City (London/New York, 2013),
57–78.
This book stems from a broader historical project, in which I analyse
the transformation of urban society in Mitrovica under Yugoslav and
Kosovan socialism. My initial idea was to prevent the ethnopoliticisation
of the city from interfering in my historical research.
At first sight, indeed, the physical and nonphysical barriers in present-day
Mitrovica, the individualistic and informal urban solutions,
and the proliferation of commerce and consumption are the negation
of the socialist urban utopia. Urban studies often apply the
metaphor of the palimpsest to evoke the material and immaterial
traces of the past that are still present in the urban landscape. I set
out to dig for the layer of socialist urbanity and remove distortions
caused by superimposed post-conflict and post-socialist transformations.
However, during prolonged stays in the city, I found that a
clear distinction between temporal layers in the urban landscape
actually violates the constant intersections across temporal and
spatial lines of division that I noticed so clearly in the built environment
and in the minds of the city’s inhabitants. The traces of the
socialist transformation of the city are more than passive remains of
hopelessly outmoded visions of the future. They continue to define
post-socialist, post-industrial, and post-conflict configurations in the
city. The purpose of this book is to document the intersections of
layered meanings in the urban landscape.
Socialist Modernity
Tradition
Like every modernist policy, socialist urban planning created its
own traditional counter image. When the Yugoslav Communists
took power in Mitrovica in the fall of 1944, they encountered a
town that was the antithesis of socialist urban modernity. To the
Yugoslav Communists, the narrow, winding, maze-like character of
11

introduced daily garbage collection. Municipal authorities also forbade
the common practice of holding livestock in the urban area.
These concepts of cleanliness and order in the public space were
juxtaposed with images of dirtiness, lack of hygiene, mud, and dust
associated with the unregulated Ottoman city and the intrusion of
agriculture and peasant lifestyles in the city.
Massive rural-to-urban migration in the 1950s–70s challenged the
prospects of the compact city. The city’s population tripled from
slightly over 16,000 in 1953 to nearly 53,000 in 1981. Migration from
the surrounding rural areas grew exponentially. Whereas the urban
population amounted to 28.5% of the municipality’s population in
1948, its share had grown to 52.4% in 1981. Essentially, this migration
was a direct outcome of the clear delineation of the urban and rural
landscape and the prioritisation of the city as the site of socialist
transformation. So-called peasant-workers moved to the city in
search of work in the public sector, pushed by the huge overemployment
in private agriculture and the marked population growth.
They were also attracted by the high and stable wages in the public
sector industry and various related social benefits (child allowance,
health care, education, housing).
Regarding illegal house construction
in Socialist Yugoslavia, see
Rory Archer, ‘The Moral Economy of
Home Construction in Late Socialist
Yugoslavia’, History and Anthropology
(2017), 141–62. The above-mentioned
studies of Socialist Belgrade by Brigitte
Le Normand and Nicole Münnich analyse
wild settlements in the capital.
Urban development could clearly not cope with such a massive
migration. In 1965, there was a demand for over 3,000 house units,
while the municipality and Trepça constructed only 300 flats per
year. Due to under-urbanisation and the lack of access to housing
in social ownership, urban newcomers resorted to the illegal construction
of single-family houses. Although detached houses were
not incompatible with socialist urban planning—Mitrovica’s urban
plan anticipated that 25% of the urban population would live in single-family
houses in the urban periphery—the municipality failed to
develop land for individual house construction and lost control over
the phenomenon. So-called wild house construction arose in the
late 1950s and became massive during the peak of urban migration
in the 1960s. Illegal houses were typically built just outside the narrow
urban area, where land had not been nationalised. The houses
were of low quality and often remained unfinished. The authorities,
however, rarely intervened and entire wild settlements sprang up in
the city’s peripheral belts.
Rather than destroying illegal houses, the municipality attempted
to regulate and focus the phenomenon by designating large peripheral
zones for individual house construction and auctioning
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plots for single-family houses in line with municipal requirements.
The development of land for connection to public utilities was
subsidised from a municipal fund, and newly established commercial
banks were authorised to provide credit to private individuals.
However, because of measures by the municipal authorities to give
priority to urban residents with no access to adequate housing
over rural migrants, the pressure of urban migration from the rural
hinterland and the problem of illegal house construction remained
acute. As a result, individual house construction, which was often
informal, dominated the expansion of the city. Between 1965 and
1980, private individuals built around 10,000 detached houses.
At the same time, the construction of houses in social ownership
stalled, rising from 2,409 to 3,953 house units. Individual housing
was concentrated in Tavnik and Bair, the relatively favourable
terrain to the south and southwest of the city centre, ultimately
incorporating the villages of Zhabarë and Šipolje. One smaller zone
for individual house construction was located at the back slope of
Partisan Hill.
The literature on rurbanisation and
urban-rural divisions in East European
cities is extensive. The pioneering
study for Yugoslavia is Andrei Simić,
The Peasant Urbanites: A Study of
Rural-Urban Mobility in Serbia (New
York, 1973).
The periphery challenged urban order and norms, as captured in
the notion of ‘wild settlements’. The informal individual house construction
and horizontal dispersion in the periphery was the counter
image of the orderly residential blocks and compact verticality that
dominated the city centre and defined socialist modernity. The peripheral
areas also remained underdeveloped and poorly connected
to public utilities. In the early 1970s, there was no real road infrastructure,
no spatial planning, limited access to water supply and
sewers, and no garbage collection in Tavnik. As a result, cleanliness
guidelines never applied to the detached house settlements in the
urban periphery. The continuous and uncontrolled migration from
the rural hinterland into the city’s periphery also led to the merger
of urban and rural practices, known as rurbanisation. The periphery
did not develop into an area from where the urban way of living
would expand into the rural hinterland but was subject to rural invasions
that seemed to jeopardise the socialist transformation of
the urban environment. The municipality even abandoned its earlier
principle of strict delineation between rural and urban spaces and
lifestyles and allowed residents on the urban periphery to hold livestock.
Press and public opinion presented the periphery as an area
where urban norms and values were not upheld, which explained
the continuous dirt in the city, the persistence of conservative (including
religious and nationalistic) behaviour, and the rise of criminality
and social profiting.
19

ProgressRuination
For a detailed account of the material
and economic collapse of Trepča
from the 1980s onwards, see Michael
Palairet, ‘Trepča, 1965–2000.’ Report to
Lessons Learned and Analysis Unit to
the EU Pillar of UNMIK in Kosovo (No
place or date of publication).
Socialist cities were above all sites of production-based progress.
As the impetus behind urban transformation, industrial production
permeated the urban fabric. Trepča’s chemical industry site still
dominates the southern part of Mitrovica, stretching over a vast
area east of Bair Hill. The former headquarters of the enterprise and
the lead smelter tower over the north. The lead and zinc mines at
Stanterg are located some ten kilometres east of Mitrovica. Once
the spearheads of progress, these sites have relapsed into places
of industrial ruination that symbolise the despair of the deindustrialising
society. They also suffered badly from destruction, damage,
and armed conflict during the constant state of emergency and
conflict in Kosovo in the 1990s. Finally, they are sources of heavy
pollution and health risks due to flawed waste management, limited
oversight, and infrastructural failure.
The same patterns of industrial decay are evident in the factory settlements
on the periphery of Mitrovica. The miners’ settlements of
Stanterg and Prvi Tunel were labelled peri-urban settlements in socialist
urban planning. They kept strong economic and communal ties
with the city but were obviously not organic parts of the urban area.
Indicatively, it was allowed to hold livestock there. Most of the residents
were rural migrants from the mountainous Bajgora area to the
east of Mitrovica, and they resided in the dormitories, barracks, and
small individual houses. The stalled development of both settlements
indicates the limited prioritisation of these peri-urban settlements
and their inhabitants in socialist urban management. There was broad
dissatisfaction with the perishing housing fund, which stemmed from
the interwar and the immediate post-war years. Stanterg and Prvi
Tunel received only a small share of Trepča’s budget for housing even
though the mines were the basis of the production chain. There were
problems with drinking water, electricity was weak and irregular, and
the food supply was restricted. There was a shortage of schools and
medical care. Due to flawed and irregular public transport and poor
road connections, travelling to Mitrovica was hazardous, and many of
the miners seldom made the trip.
Today, both settlements visibly suffer from deindustrialisation and
war. Thanks to its relative proximity to Mitrovica and the construction
of rows of high-rise residential buildings to replace the interwar
26

arracks in the late socialist period, Prvi Tunel has retained its
socialist urban façade. However, the high-rise buildings are in a
decaying state, and the workers’ house, the anticipated centre of
communal life under socialism, is in ruins. Stanterg has shaken off
all traces of urbanity. The former centre of the settlement, which
boasted the seats of the mine management and trade union, a library,
cinema, museum, public canteens, dormitories, and shops,
is now ruined and abandoned. Internally displaced persons made
it their shelter. Two high-rise residential buildings from the 1980s
were heavily damaged by warfare. The miners’ colony up the hill
has the atmosphere of a rural mountain community, with small individual
houses and typical miners’ houses from the interwar period.
In all aspects, the city seems far away. In this process of gradual
decline, the ethnic balance in Stanterg and Prvi Tunel underwent
considerable shifts. In 1961, Stanterg had 1,511 inhabitants, of whom
717 were Serbs, 536 Albanians, and 121 Montenegrins. In 1981, the
total population remained stable at 1,479, but the number of Serbs
and Montenegrins dropped to 196 and 11, while the number of
Albanians increased to 1,239. In Prvi Tunel as well, the number of
Serb residents dropped from 679 to 323 and that of Montenegrins
from 378 to 67, while the number of Albanians increased from 313
to 834. Post-war developments have pushed existing trends to the
extreme as the Serb population of Stanterg and Prvi Tunel left and
Albanian migrants from the neighbouring areas moved in.
Zveçan is located some three kilometres north of Mitrovica along
the Ibar, near the lead smelter and enterprise headquarters. The
settlement developed in the interwar period as the residential area
for foreign management and engineers, who lived in English, cottage-style
villas on the gentle slopes above the headquarters and
smelter. Zveçan continued to enjoy a privileged position in socialist
urban development. The urban plan of 1962 envisaged it as a suburb
and constituent part of the city. The basic principles of socialist
urbanity applied in the same way they applied to the urban centre.
In the 1950s, Trepča built villas for engineers and managers and a
modern school in Zveçan. It also built sports facilities and the prestigious
Hotel No. 3, where Tito himself used to stay when visiting
the region. The new workers’ house was an important venue for the
entire city for cultural and social events. In addition, Zveçan had
a favourable location thanks to the limited exposure to pollution
from the smelter, which usually drifted in the valley of the Ibar towards
the city of Mitrovica. In many ways, Zveçan was the counter
image of the unplanned southern periphery of the city. Both had
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Trepça
Trepča
Lead smelter
and general
management
Tunel i parë
Prvi Tunel
Zveçan
Zvečan
Ibër — Ibar
Mitrovica
Partisan Hill
Sitnica
Ibër — Ibar
Tavnik
Bair
Trepça
Trepča
Chemical industry
Sitnica
Zhabarë
Žabare
Shipol
Šipolje
Lushta — Ljušta

Trepça
Trepča
Mines
Stanterg
Stari Trg
Notation Albanian
Serbian
Main roads
Railway
Rivers

Thomas Janssens
36
Comprehensive socialist urbanity
70
Fragmentary transformations
92
The industrial city I
98
Detached house settlements
108
The industrial city II
110
Factory settlement I
118
Factory settlement II
124
The industrial city III
132
Factory settlement III

Visions of Socialist Urbanity in Mitrovica
The northern part of the city
The pre-socialist historical centre and Bair
Trepça’s chemical industry site
The urban periphery (Tavnik and Partisan Hill)
Trepča’s general management and lead smelter
Zvečan
Tunel i parë
Trepça’s mining site
Stanterg

37

47

53

65

79

87

97

101

113

125

143