Designing Tito's Capital: Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism in Belgrade

Three. The Lost Decade and the Dawn of a New Era

73 three The Lost Decade and the Dawn of a New Era THE CONCEPTUALIZATION of a transfigured socialist Belgrade took place during a particularly difficult period characterized by severe material shortages and political instability. Until 1947, the Yugoslav Communist Party concentrated on rebuilding the city’s shattered infrastructure and industry and securing basic housing for a swelling population, while consolidating its power. That year, Tito’s regime officially transitioned from reconstruction to building socialism, launching the state’s first five-year plan, based on the hypercentralized Stalinist model for modernization. It was in this context that urban planners began to work on Belgrade’s master plan and that architects began to imagine how workers might live in a society that was building socialism . Because the five-year plan directed nearly all of Yugoslavia’s resources into capital investments rather than the production of consumer goods, the initial focus of realizing the master plan would obviously be on infrastructural projects, while investments in improving the standard of living would largely be postponed to a later date. Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Soviet Bloc the following year, however, further squeezed the availability of resources for urban renewal and expansion. Not only was this an event of immense political significance, but it also severed Yugoslavia’s economic relations with the Bloc, 74 THE LOST DECADE AND THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA creating an economic crisis. Having lost its export partners and now obliged to focus on the military threat of Soviet invasion, the regime once again postponed investment in housing and urban development. Belgrade’s Town Planning Institute was prevented from putting into practice its Athens Charter− inspired vision for Belgrade. The event also led to Yugoslavia’s ideological redefinition. After an initial period of confusion, Tito’s regime redefined itself as a different kind of socialist state. Starting in 1949–50, party ideologues developed a new economic, administrative, and political model for Yugoslavia around the concept of workers’ self-management. This concept was initially applied to the economy, allowing workers to have a say in the operations of their workplaces. It was then extended to government and administration, enshrining local self-government in a new constitution in 1953. Interestingly, the political and economic turmoil would not lead to major changes in the urban planning sphere. Belgrade’s Town Planning Institute continued to adhere to the Athens Charter approach through the period of austerity that followed the Tito-Stalin split. Architect planners seized the opportunity of Yugoslavia’s ideological redefinition as an opportunity to reaffirm the relevance of the functionalist approach by deploying the new language of self-management. As in Brasilia, the functional city proved adaptable to different ideological contexts. In the 1950 master plan, Belgrade’s socialist planners had repoliticized the functional city, which Le Corbusier and others had taken such pains to depoliticize, as a socialist concept. Now socialism itself was being redefined as self-management, and because this version of socialism placed such emphasis on the well-being of workers, the master plan took on an increased importance. Starting in 1956, policy makers adopted and promoted the concept of the residential community (stambena zajednica) as an instrument for implementing self-management for consumers and thereby raising the standard of living. The residential community, which had noticeable affinities with the Soviet microraion and the American neighborhood unit, made it possible to argue that modernist urbanism was in fact an indispensable tool for furthering self-management. When the state’s economic priorities changed in 1957 to focus on increasing the standard of living, architects, urban planners , and administrators were empowered to begin building the city of their dreams. The turning point of 1955–58 announced a new golden era of prosperity for Belgrade, during which the Athens Charter would provide the model for the city’s rapid expansion. 75 THE LOST DECADE AND THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA An Era of Prolonged Austerity The end of the war had inaugurated an era of austerity, first due to the need to rebuild the shattered city and then as a consequence of the first five-year plan. Following the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, Yugoslavia’s economic situation became even direr. The loss of economic ties with the Eastern Bloc and the need for increased defense spending to ward off a potential Soviet attack resulted in a sharp drop in spending on consumption. Two major droughts, in 1950 and...