This comparative study on the urban re-imagineering performed through large-scale urban refurbishment focuses on the specific post-socialist and post-conflict contexts of former Yugoslavia. Through the analysis of legislative and planning documents, expert interviews, reports, and media coverage, this study shows how initiatives for the implementation of grandiloquent urban megaprojects (UMP) in the capital cities of Serbia and Macedonia became extreme examples of national image reconstruction, carried out through autocratic state-led interventions that disregarded public input. The two main insights that the study provides classify these cases as rather particular in the European framework. First, the national governments have played a decisive role in conceiving entrepreneurial strategies for national rebranding through urban re-imagineering of its capital cities. Second, this politically orchestrated processes advanced through non-transparent decision-making, in spite of the rising opposition by the civic alliances. In conclusion, autocratic implementation of UMPs in the urban contexts of the Yugoslavian successor states played out much more forcefully, overriding the imperative to satisfy genuine public interest.

This article highlights the (post) transitioning urban context as an emerging market for powerful international real-estate development companies, supported by an authoritarian planning trend aiming to secure foreign investments. Such a pattern is particularly noticeable in the implementation of the large-scale redevelopment project Belgrade Waterfront in the Serbian capital city, causing many controversies due to state-led regulatory interventions, investor-friendly decision-making, and a general lack of transparency. Although proactive but fragile civil society organizations in Serbia failed to influence the implementation dynamics of this megaproject, it inspired contestation by professional and civic organizations elsewhere, which finally led to significant disputes over similar developments. This study highlights similarities of this project to the initiatives emerging in other cities of the ex-Yugoslav countries: Zagreb Manhattan, announced to settle on the waterfronts of the Croatian capital, and more recently the Novi Sad Waterfront in the second largest Serbian city. The article concludes with a general overview of the effects and consequences characterizing the emerging trend in the production of space and highlights the rising role of the civil sector in more inclusive and democratic urban planning in ex-Yugoslav cities.

After the fall of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the socialist legacy became a matter of contested discourses, coming from the new national governments. However, with the recently awakening nostalgia for socialism and growing international interest for the socialist pasts, the approaches to its legacies began gradually to change. In this paper, the focus is on some recent international trends with regards to the socialist heritage for evaluating the share of their influences in the process of de-contestation occurring at the local/national levels. There are two processes standing in juxtaposition to be observed; on the one hand, official nation branding distances the state from socialist pasts to emphasize, often contrasting, post-socialist national identity. On the other hand, the development of communist heritage tourism attempts to reconsider and appropriate socialist legacies in the national frameworks for identity construction. Using the examples from Hungary, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia, the author demonstrates the role of international media and the tourism industry for meeting the objectives of economic development while maintaining post-socialist national identity senses, but also their potentials in reconsiderations of the contested history chapters.

Many scholars have discussed urban decline, and one of the emerging discourses has called for redefining the crisis as an opportunity to establish new urban governance models. This paper evaluates the outcomes of such innovative approaches to managing urban decline by identifying its major implementation challenges, effects and outcomes, and pointing out long-term development perspectives. The focus was on Detroit, the ‘greatest failure’ among the troubled large cities in the US, whose municipal government, policy makers and elites have invested a great deal of effort to stem the city’s rapid decline. Of particular interest was the period since 2013 when the city government declared bankruptcy. An innovative strategy based on stabilisation, recovery, and irreversible degrowth was then embraced. The research method to investigate the efficiency of its implementation is centered on analysis of the secondary literature, strategies and official documents designed by the local government and private foundations in Detroit, as well as of supporting news reports. In conclusion, besides the importance of redefining approaches to urban policy-making in declining cities, the study illustrated the necessity of developing equally innovative alternative ways for their successful implementation.