Housing for the new socio-economic elite - a case study of novi sad

Abstract

This paper examines the spatial dimension of economic inequalities that occurred in Serbia over the last 2 decades. The paper presents a case study of a city of Novi Sad, which has undergone radical changes both within its social and spatial structure that even today remain unparalleled in the region in terms of their nature and rate. In the 1990s, the specific political and economic conditions have led to the great transformations in demographics and the overall social structure, since the city, formerly experiencing negative population growth rates, has been rapidly populated by refugees from the wars in former Yugoslavia. At the same time, a large gap between the poor and the wealthy was created as the result of changes that marked the transition to the post-communist society. This has caused great changes of the built form that previous master plans could not anticipate. The implications of this process for housing involved the spatial segregation of diverse socio-economic groups. The paper presents 2 urban fragments where the houses for the new economic elite were built, both of which represent inadequate models. Both cases represent monotonous environments that lack spatial complexity and not encourage community binding. Therefore the paper also includes a proposal of a new concept for the housing for the inhabitants with higher-incomes.Rad se bavi istrazivanjem prostorne dimenzije ekonomske nejednakosti stanovnika koja se pojavila u poslednih nekoliko decenija. U radu je analiziran Novi Sad, u cijoj urbanoj formi su se desile velike promene prostorne i socijalne prirode, sto veoma utice i na stanje u kom se grad danas nalazi. Devedesetih godina dvadesetog veka specificni ekonomski i socijalni uslovi vodili su do znacajnih transformacija u socijalnom i demografskom pogledu, posto je grad, koji je prethodno dugi niz godina imao negativan prirodni prirastaj, bio rapidno naseljen izbeglicama iz bivsih republika Jugoslavije. U isto vreme, velika razlika izmedju siromasnih i bogatih nastala je i kao posledica promena, koje su na gotovo istovetan nacin zahvatile i druga post-komunisticka drustva. Ovakav splet faktora izazvao je velike promene u urbanoj formi koje prethodni urbanisticki planovi nisu mogli da predvide, a kao jedna od posledica javila se i prostorna segregacija po ekonomskom principu. U radu su prezentovana dva urbana fragmenta u kojima zive pripadnici nove socijalne elite. Oba slucaja obrazuju neadekvatne modele i monotone urbane sredine, u kojima nedostaju ambijentalni kvaliteti i elementi koji bi mogli da obezbede socijalnu integraciju. U radu je, takodje, predlozeno moguce resenje integracije socijalne elite u urbane prostore u sirem centru grada.