Sarajevo’s longstanding image has been one of a functioning multiethnic spatiality where diverse identities harmoniously co-exist and share common public spaces in their everyday life. The ethnically mixed urban population of prewar Sarajevo lived multiethnic spatiality as ‘zajednicki zivot’ (common life). This notion referred to neighborliness, cooperation and trust within and across groups. The structural factors which fostered this condition of neighborly spatiality are assessed through a study of a residential building in central Sarajevo. The thesis argues that the apartment building under study was a concrete manifestation of the ideology and political economy of Tito’s Yugoslavia. It was a space made possible by an authoritarian political system and an economic order subordinated to the interest of the Yugoslav League of Communists. However, the war shattered this world and dispersed the multiethnic spatiality that characterized it. The ensuing disruption of the social, institutional and economic fabric marked the state’s transition from a socialist to a capitalist society. It led to heightened ethnic awareness as well as isolation and alienation that altered the prewar multiethnic spatiality of the city in ways that are still unfolding. / Master of Public and International Affairs

Nicholas Adams (1993) suggests that the destruction of the built environment and architecture of a city during war is an effective way of demoralizing and even eradicating the enemy. Goonewardena and Kipfer (2007) suggest that the built environment helps establish not only the common shared spaces in which individuals live their lives, but a sense of place and community identity. When buildings and public spaces are anthropomorphized, their destruction affects every aspect of a community. Urbicide as a tactic of urban warfare has changed the look and feel of many places such as the Balkans, Germany in World War II, and The Gaza Strip. The many faces of war have changed the landscape and homogeneity of the areas affected. Long-term, continual bombardment, precision attacks, and incursions by armies have in many cases all but destroyed the pre-existing physical environment. In its stead, is created a non-permanent built environment on the verge of destruction or change by non-civil forces. This investigation uses The Gaza Strip as a case study and looks into the impermanence of the built environment. The continual violence of change has greatly affected the resident Palestinian population. I will also examine how the temporary nature of the built environment and constant threats of change and destruction have affected everyday spaces. Although the population understands the potentially transitory nature of the structures, this does not deter them from rebuilding, when materials are available. Using data obtained from different nongovernmental organisations and aid agencies, this paper examines how repeated bombardment, precision attacks, and incursions reconfigure space, buildings and the functionality of the built environment in The Gaza Strip. Changes in the form and functionality are conceptualized as continuous processes that produce constant rounds of rebuilding. The shape and composition of the built environment is evaluated after specific bombardments, attacks and incursions in order to assess the extent and form of rebuilding. The results show that each round of destruction is followed by differing degrees of reconstruction that again restructure the look of the built environment. / Geography

This dissertation discusses the rebuilding of cities after war in the context of the changing character of warfare and the increased expectations for societies to deal with difficult pasts. Departing from studies that approach post-war reconstruction focusing on the functional dimension of infrastructural repair and housing relief or on debates about architectural form, this dissertation examines reconstruction through the lens of the process of 'coming to terms with the past'. It explores how understandings of victimhood and responsibility influence the rebuilding of urban space. Conversely, it argues that cities and architecture, through the meanings ascribed to them by various actors, play an important role in dealing with the past. Building on the moral philosophy of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, it discusses the potential of reconstruction for societies to work through the past, then it engages with frictions highlighted by three situations of rebuilding after different types of war. First, it examines the rebuilding of Belgrade as the capital of socialist Yugoslavia after the aerial bombings typical of the Second World War. Second, it analyses reconstruction debates in the same city after the 1999 NATO bombings, a high-tech operation, framed by NATO as a preventative, humanitarian intervention against a 'perpetrator' state. Third, it discusses rebuilding processes in Sarajevo, where destruction was inflicted between 1992 and 1995 by actors internal to the country, albeit with international ramifications, exemplary of Mary Kaldor's 'new wars'. Based on thirteen months of fieldwork conducted in Belgrade and Sarajevo between 2012 and 2015, it analyses intentions and consequences of reconstruction acts. It suggests the potential and the challenges of a reflective reconstruction, which engages critically with the past, and of a syncretic place-making reconstruction, which focuses on place and its agonistic promise. Its main contribution is to highlight the essential relationship between reconstruction and coming to terms with the past, arguing for an understanding of reconstruction with regards to conflict itself.