Informal housing as routine? Multiple urban transitions in the Belgrade metropolitan area (with Kaluderica as an example)

Abstract

Informal housing in Southeast Europe is not a new phenomenon by any means. The problem of informal settlements in Belgrade [Beograd] and the rest of post-Yugoslavia goes back to the 1960s, when growing Yugoslav cities suffered a massive housing shortage. Housing policies tolerated private, individual, and often informal construction activities of rural-urban migrants and low-medium income households. These activities continued and intensified during the late Socialist and early transitional periods. According to the 2002 masterplan of Belgrade, informal settlements covered more than 40% of the total residential area. As a result of these long-term, intensive informal developments, this paper concludes that its case study, Kaluderica and the surrounding area, has grown to become one of the biggest informal settlements on the Balkans. This paper analyses these developments with the path-dependency approach. Sub-urbanisation of this kind is characterised by a high degree of informality and social marginality and differs greatly from both the well-known Western pattern, as well as the East-European pattern. Referring to the long-term development, informality is interpreted as a multiple (post-)Communist routine.