Adriatic Projects Revisited

Abstract

The Adriatic Projects (1967-72) was a United Nations international exchange program in regional planning founded to transfer urban planning knowledge to Yugoslavia (1945-91). Established during the Cold War era in the non-aligned socialist Yugoslavia, the program brought together professionals from Eastern and Western cultural traditions to draft the urban development plans for the Adriatic coast. While these plans for extensive urbanization were never implemented, the planning technology was adopted into local urban culture engendering a spatial-economic development model that has dotted the small coastal towns with modernist urban forms. This thesis examines the international exchange established in Yugoslavia from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s through two parallel historical narratives: the prism of the transfer of Western planning technology on the one hand, and the local Adriatic urban culture on the other. While tracing different spheres of influence, this study reveals how Adriatic development produced an alternative urban model under the socialist state that continues to inform the present spatial reality. After Croatia gained independence from Yugoslavia, a thirty-year-long transition to market economy has shaped coastal landscapes of abandoned modernist structures, informal urbanization, and speculative development. Today, it is clear how the post-socialist spatial reality has reversed the concepts of public and private, preservation and development, planning and informality. Using the lens of the Cold War urban development diplomacy, this thesis disentangles the formation of global planning epistemology, local traditions, and aspirations raised in the post-socialist era.