Paper short abstract:

The paper interprets the dynamics of place-making and the creation of the sense of place in urban neighborhoods in Zagreb, which were built during the socialist period.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on urban neighborhoods in Zagreb, which were built during the socialist period. Although usually represented as "a dormitory", a non-place and a non-city, these labels implying generally the lack of social bonds among its inhabitants, the research shows that urban neighborhoods have become culturally meaningful places. Two complementary perspectives organize the paper. The first perspective includes factors that influenced the shaping of actual physical environment, such as town-planning and architectural, but also political and ideological factors. From this perspective, every aspect of future life in the neighborhood has been envisioned and planned, from consumption and leisure to the "sense of place". The second perspective is a processual and phenomenological one; it draws on time span and lived experience, embodiment, spatial practices, social interaction, narration and emplacement which result in creating attachments to a particular neighborhood, as well as forms of urban belonging and identity.

Ethnographically, the paper is based on a long-term research and fieldwork in Zagreb neighborhoods. The material will be interpreted through the prism of processes of place-making, and by juxtaposing perceived, conceived and lived space. Furthermore, some wider issues will be discussed as well: how the sense of place which is locally defined (in this particular case "the urban local") relates to a broader - real and imagined - community ("the city")? With what kind of urban "heritage" could such neighborhoods contribute to city's representations? How alternative the history of the city would be if written from the phenomenological perspective of place?