Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
111
UDC: 712.25:347.25:004.383.6
DOI: 10.5379/urbani-izziv-en-2021-32-02-04
Received: 17 June 2021
Accepted: 9 September 2021
Dina ŠAMIĆ-MUSEMIĆ
Nermina ZAGORA
The right to urban public spaces in Sarajevo:  
Everybody’s, somebody’s, anybody’s, or nobody’s 
spaces?
Multiple socio-political and economic factors have grad-
ually led to widespread neglect, decline, misuse, and loss 
of public spaces in Sarajevo. The clash between private 
and public interests has left physical traces in the city, 
recalling the importance of Lefebvre’s notion of the right 
to the city. In the context of the contemporary urban 
development of Sarajevo, this is translated into the right 
to shape, use, recycle, and reactivate the city’s neglected 
shared spaces. As implied by the title of this article, the 
key question addressed is to whom public space really 
belongs. This research proceeds from the identification of 
the key issues of degradation of public spaces, followed by 
the valorization of mainstream planning approaches and 
occasional bottom-up initiatives. It is argued that one of 
the key origins of the problem lies in dispersal and the 
lack of pertinent geospatial data on public spaces, as well 
as in the dissonance between all the relevant stakeholders. 
This article establishes a methodology for introducing a 
comprehensive, open, and interactive geospatial database 
as a platform for strategic planning, design, development, 
and maintenance of urban public spaces.
Keywords: urban public spaces, Sarajevo, strategic plan-
ning, geospatial database, digital place making
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
112
1 Introduction
The topography of Sarajevo, a city in a narrow valley with 
mountains to the north and south, has limited expansion and 
influenced its morphology. In addition, due to historical and 
cultural factors, the strategic development of large squares, 
parks, or other public spaces did not receive adequate atten-
tion in theoretical discourse, practice, or public activism in the 
past. Today, the city of Sarajevo (an administrative unit within 
the Canton of Sarajevo) has an area of 142 square kilometres 
and an estimated population of 413,593. It is composed of 
four municipalities: Stari Grad, Centar, Novo Sarajevo, and 
Novi Grad.
The architectural image of contemporary Sarajevo reflects its 
rich and complex history (Figure 1), in which public urban and 
architectural typologies stand as a memory of past political and 
ideological systems (Figure 2). The religious buildings echo the 
Ottoman period, the civic palaces and urban blocks epitomize 
Austro-Hungarian rule, and the cultural and sports centres 
symbolize communist Yugoslav ideology, in the same way as 
the shopping centres have become the “places of worship” of 
the contemporary age (Zagora & Šamić, 2014).
As a result of the radical political and socioeconomic shifts in 
the 1990s, the subsequent privately led urban developments 
and transformations have mostly overlooked the common, 
collective values in the city. The urban identity of contempo-
rary Sarajevo can be associated with post-war developments, 
which are mostly indifferent to the layers of previous epochs, 
lacking a general strategy or site-specificity. They thus result in 
discontinuities in urban form (Husukić & Zejnilović, 2017). 
A similar situation was detected in the other countries of the 
western Balkans. Neoliberal economic and political forces in 
the post-communist countries have appropriated public assets 
and expended them solely for private interests. According to 
Figure 1: Aerial view of Sarajevo, showing its topography, urban 
morphology, and cultural history (source: Internet 2).
Figure 2: a) religious buildings (source: Internet 2); b) civic buildings 
and urban infrastructure (source: Internet 2); c) cultural and sports 
centres (source: Internet 3); d) shopping centres (source: Internet 2).
a
b
c
d
D. ŠAMIĆ-MUSEMIĆ, N. ZAGORA
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
113The right to urban public spaces in Sarajevo: Everybody’s, somebody’s, anybody’s, or nobody’s spaces?
Budapest. The transition from the top-down planning of the 
communist era to capitalism was uncritical and uncontrolled, 
resulting in increased urban density in central areas, negative 
effects of gentrification, commercialization and homogeniza-
tion of the urban environment, and marginal public partici-
pation. Another common feature that can be encountered in 
all post-communist cities is the discrepancy between plans and 
developments in the urban environment, which is often man-
ifested only in formal acknowledgment of the public interest, 
but is not accompanied by actual construction (Zlatar Gam-
berožić, 2019). Transition has affected not only the society of 
the post-conflict, post-communist, and post-modern era, but 
it has also left physical and spatial traces and led to a crisis of 
public spaces in Sarajevo. This description refers to the dete-
riorated physical condition in which many public spaces can 
be found today, as well as their vague programmatic, accessi-
bility, and ownership status or a lack of correlation with the 
context, and, finally, detachment from the local communities. 
As a result of the absence of a strategic approach or vision, the 
public spaces of Sarajevo have been discarded in a transitional 
limbo, passively standing between the past, present, and future, 
disengaged from their context. To reclaim the precedence of 
the topic of public spaces and its relevance for Sarajevo among 
the local authorities, researchers, professionals, and the general 
public, this article proposes a methodology and tools that may 
facilitate systematic urban development and maintenance of 
the shared spaces in the city.
2  Focus on public spaces
This article analyses the public spaces in Sarajevo, identifies key 
issues, and proposes innovative possibilities for their improve-
ment. The classic and yet idealistic concept of public spaces as 
democratic, open, and accessible to everyone has changed over 
the last decades due to globalization and technological shifts. 
Some theorists claim that commercialization has challenged 
the very publicness of public spaces, and that we are witnessing 
the loss of public space (Sorkin, 1992; Zukin, 1995; Koolhaas, 
1997; Putnam, 2001; Sennett, 2002), whereas others regard 
this transformation as its evolutive phase (Carr et al., 1992; 
Loukaitou-Sideris & Banerjee, 1998). Instead of proposing a 
new definition, this research concentrates on essential attrib-
utes of public spaces, based on theoretical insight into various 
typological classifications (Carr et al., 1992; Carmona, 2010); 
namely, 1) function/typology, 2) scale, 3) enclosure, 4) acces-
sibility, and (5) urban atmosphere.
This article consists of four sections. The introduction, pres-
entation of research objectives, methodology, and hypothesis 
formulation under the header “Focus on public spaces” are 
followed by the section “Status quo”, which presents the key 
Figure 3: Examples of private appropriation and neglect of public 
spaces: physical obstacles in the streets and squares of Sarajevo 
(photo: authors).
Seferagić, the originators of these social shifts manifested in 
public space are the neoliberal economic actors, sometimes 
referred to as the nouveau-riche or tycoons. Unlike the ty-
coons of the nineteenth century, who contributed to the 
development of civil society and the cultural scene through 
endowments for parks, museums, theatres, and so on, the new 
economic elites only care about privatizing and often destroy-
ing the commons (Seferagić, 2007). Parallel activities and pro-
cesses have yielded similar results in the urban environment in 
many post-communist cities, such as Belgrade, Zagreb, and 
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
114
economic, political, ideological, economic, technical, and 
organizational issues that have caused the decline of public 
spaces in Sarajevo. The third section analyses a range of ref-
erence cases of geospatial databases of public spaces and pos-
itive international practices of merging urban planning and 
information technologies. The fourth section, “Mapping urban 
public spaces”, provides a methodological outline for creating 
a future digital platform, explains the roles of the potential 
stakeholders, and illustrates the analytical possibilities of such 
a digital tool in selected locations of public spaces in Sarajevo. 
The research is based on the premise that one of the key pre-
requisites for developing open public spaces is publicity and 
open access to information. Most of the urban issues identified 
in Sarajevo have emerged, directly or implicitly, as a result of 
the dispersion of information and relevant data on the history, 
ownership status, accessibility, function, management, physical 
conditions, and context of public spaces. It is hypothesized 
that the technological advancement and evolution of digital 
media can enhance collaboration of professionals, the public 
sector, the private sector, and the community through creation 
of an open, democratic, and comprehensive platform focusing 
on the vision, development, and management of urban public 
spaces in the city. Application of such methodology togeth-
er with other tools of digital place-making is anticipated to 
improve the quality of public spaces and to regenerate urban 
voids in Sarajevo.
2.1 Status quo
The latest social, political, and economic transition at the 
turn of the millennium has challenged the public sphere and 
shared values in general, leaving the public initiative behind 
(Ibelings, 2010). Consequently, urban public spaces were left 
at the margins of theory and criticism, practice, and civic en-
gagement. Some of the most frequently recurring issues include 
private appropriation of public spaces, vague ownership status 
and accessibility, low maintenance and neglect, inactivity and 
fragmentation, and a lack of relation to the urban context 
or community (Figure 3). Reflecting their historical and so-
cio-political context, the current status of public spaces may 
be defined as unstable and transitory (Zagora & Šamić, 2021). 
Similarly, the residents and institutions of the city are in a state 
of in-betweenness, living between the past and recent memo-
ries, the present day, and awaited life (Harrington et al., 2017).
Furthermore, within the last few years, as some local govern-
ments are starting to notice the importance of creating public 
and community spaces, there is a noticeable phenomenon of 
ad hoc public interventions, some which did not involve pro-
fessional or public consultation, competitions, or discussion 
(Figure 4). A number of interventions have emerged without 
prior strategy or correlation with their context, and they most-
ly remain as monuments to political figures or systems, strug-
gling to find their real purpose. On the other hand, local com-
munities long for purposeful small-scale public interventions, 
such as playgrounds for various age groups and infrastructure 
for the elderly. However, there seems to be a lack of efficient 
communication channels to link community inputs with plan-
ners and the municipality, city, and canton administrations.
In the past decade, municipalities have launched urban design 
competitions at selected public sites in Sarajevo, such as small 
Figure 4: a) random granite monoliths lacking relation to their urban 
context (source: Internet 4); b) a tourist kiosk criticized for being over-
priced and never opened (source: Internet 8); c) a promenade lacking 
a programmatic definition, aesthetic identity, or urban atmosphere 
(source: Internet 5).
a
b
c
D. ŠAMIĆ-MUSEMIĆ, N. ZAGORA
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
115
plazas or parks, mostly for memorials to victims of the 1990s 
war. However, due to tender procedures, in most cases the 
winning concepts either are not completed or are only partly 
implemented without due consultation with the designers of 
the winning projects. In most cases, the programme of these 
competitions focused on designing monuments and memori-
als, whereas the solution for the public space was of secondary 
importance. For instance, in 2020, a memorial design compe-
tition was launched for one the most prominent locations in 
Sarajevo, Alija Izetbegović Liberation Square (Trg oslobođenja 
– Alija Izetbegović). The winning design entries were never 
publicly presented, and the governing municipality recently 
announced the construction of underground parking in 2021, 
which subsequently caused public debate. This case demon-
strates the absence of a strategic approach and synchroniza-
tion between the processes and actions designated for a par-
ticular site. Regarding non-institutional initiatives targeting 
urban public spaces in the country, there have been several 
auspicious activities in Sarajevo and Banja Luka in the past 
decade. In 2013 the Crvena Association and LIFT Spatial 
Initiative launched the Gradology Project, an online activist 
platform that helps residents of Sarajevo discover and map 
urban open spaces such as parks, squares, abandoned buildings, 
and unused spaces (LIFT, 2015). Another group of activists 
organized under name Dobre Kote (Good Spots) has carried 
out several informal urban intervention projects since 2015, 
transforming discarded urban spots into gathering places for 
the local community. Some of the instances outside of Sara-
jevo that demonstrate a distinctive bottom-up approach in 
reactivating public spaces can be found in Banja Luka, where 
a group of professionals and activists gathered in the Small 
SCALE Team–Centre for Spatial Research have been holding 
workshops, creating and implementing concepts of small-scale 
interventions in the city (Karan et al., 2017).
The title of this article is inspired by Lefebvre’s 1968 right to 
the city (Lefebvre, 1968), and it focuses on the issue of pub-
lic spaces in terms of rights and responsibilities, identifying 
the key stakeholders: who owns, accesses, designs, develops, 
maintains, uses, activates, and transforms public spaces in Sa-
rajevo. The dominance of private interests over public ones in 
the recent history of the city has distorted the perception of 
the local population toward its heritage, caused an aversion 
toward the communist legacy, and ultimately generated a dis-
crepancy between the individual and the collective (Zagora 
& Šamić, 2021). Recalling the communist ideology of shared 
and collective values, some public spaces have even turned 
into grey areas of the city or urban voids (de Solà Morales, 
2003), and they generally represent low-priority goals in offi-
cial planning policies. In response to the identified problems 
of neglect, fragmentation, and appropriation of public spaces 
by private interests, this article explores the prerequisites for 
creating a strategic approach to planning, designing, develop-
ing, and maintaining shared spaces by bringing together all the 
stakeholders, assigning responsibilities, and raising awareness 
among the general public.
3 Methodology and analysis
3.1 Geospatial database of public spaces
The problem of increased urbanization complemented by a 
disregard for public spaces has been recognized at the global 
level. For this reason, one of the sustainable development goals 
set by the United Nations is as follows: “By 2030, provide uni-
versal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public 
spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons 
and persons with disabilities.” To this end, UN-Habitat (2018) 
has issued recommendations on the desired percentage of ur-
ban land allocated to open public spaces, according to which 
45 to 50% of urban land should be allocated to streets and 
open public spaces, which includes 30 to 35% for streets and 
pavements and 15 to 20% for open public space “The value of 
public spaces is often overlooked or underestimated by policy 
makers, leaders, citizens and urban developers. There are sever-
al reasons for this, such as the lack of resources, or understand-
ing or capacity to use public space as a complete, multi-func-
tional urban system. Often the lack of appropriate enabling 
frameworks, weak political will and the absence of the means 
of public engagement compound the situation. Nevertheless, 
fundamentally, the lack of a global measurement indicator has 
hindered the local and global appreciation of the value of the 
public spaces” (United Nations Statistics Division, 2020).
When it comes to planning and management policies, one of 
the methods proposed by UN-Habitat for local governments is 
adopting a systemic approach that includes collecting accurate, 
timely, disaggregated data and information. The sources for 
collecting data mainly rely on satellite imagery (open sources), 
documentation outlining publicly owned land, and communi-
ty-based maps. The major step forward proposed by the project 
is the methodology of mapping available and potential public 
spaces all over the globe. In like manner, the Jan Gehl Institute 
together with its partners – the Municipality of Copenhagen, 
City of San Francisco, and Seattle Department of Transpor-
tation – has introduced the Public Life Data Protocol (Gehl 
Architects, 2020). It is an open protocol created to make public 
space data collecting more comprehensible, compatible, and 
scalable across urban planning departments all over the world. 
The Public Life Data Protocol proposes several surveys and 
monitoring tools such as People Moving Count or Stationary 
Activity Mapping, which are easy to implement and follow. 
Similarly, the KTH team led by Setha Low created the Public 
The right to urban public spaces in Sarajevo: Everybody’s, somebody’s, anybody’s, or nobody’s spaces?
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
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Figure 5: Structure of the interactive digital platform of urban public spaces in Sarajevo (illustration: authors).
Figure 6: Potential groups of users of the open-source database of public spaces in Sarajevo (illustration: authors).
Space Database Project (Centre for the Future of Places, 2020) 
to collect relevant research data from various fields and merge 
them into one body of knowledge with common terminology, 
accessible and comprehensible to the general public.
The analysis of cases presented reveals an unambiguous con-
clusion: a multidisciplinary approach and access to all relevant 
data is the prerequisite for realizing more sustainable and in-
clusive public spaces. Hence, for Sarajevo to have more quality 
shared spaces for public use, the first step would be creating 
and implementing a framework for classifying urban public 
spaces in Sarajevo, comprising multiple layers of (real-time) 
information or metadata, such as history, function (hybridity), 
ownership, management, infrastructure, adjacent facilities and 
spaces, involved stakeholders, and metrics (patterns of use and 
performance of public spaces), as well as allowing performance 
D. ŠAMIĆ-MUSEMIĆ, N. ZAGORA
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and maintenance monitoring and reporting on technical and 
safety issues, thus facilitating public participation (Figure 5).
Such a comprehensive open-source database would gather all 
the relevant data from disparate bodies, such as municipalities, 
spatial planning institutes, local community councils, NGOs, 
and activist groups engaged in public space topics, and make 
the date open and available. The collected data would be sys-
tematically classified according to typological criteria (func-
tional, spatial, and social sets of data) and subsequently divided 
into different layers with the possibility of activating and over-
lapping them to better understand the specific site. Moreover, 
the database should perform as an interactive platform desig-
nated at the same time for collecting and sharing data. One of 
the most important benefits that such digital tools can provide 
is a unique meeting place for all the stakeholders willing to 
create better public spaces. This involves bringing together the 
four key stakeholders whose interaction is crucial for the future 
of public spaces: the economic sector (industries, landowners, 
and banks), the political sector (political leaders and parties), 
spatial development experts (urban planners, architects, and 
engineers), and the civic sector (the general public, NGOs, 
and urban social movements; Seferagić, 2007). This open plat-
form would encourage and inspire public participation, social 
cohesion, and trust in community, developing values that seem 
long forgotten in the post-transitional society.
Public participation will not only signify democratization of 
all processes related to urban space, but will also change cur-
rent mindsets. It is important to emphasize that community 
participation in decision-making via digital tools should go 
beyond the formal level, and the voice of the public should 
be acknowledged from the very beginning of the process: 
“Therefore, in the future it is very important that citizens’ 
participation begins at early stages of urban planning as they 
are the key players in all urban revitalization efforts” (Zlatar 
Gamberožić, 2019). In this way, “nobody’s spaces” may ulti-
mately be replaced by “everybody’s spaces”. In this process, the 
data gathered would be converted into a tool for intervention 
and guidance for the local authorities. It would also provide 
real-time monitoring of the physical state of public spaces and 
urban equipment in the city.
However, it is important to bear in mind that the platform 
users are different, ranging from urban planners, architects, 
researchers, developers, and other professionals to private 
investors, communal companies and funds, NGOs, activists, 
the general public, and tourists, each looking for and sharing 
different types of data (Figure 6). Therefore, it is extremely 
important that common terminology be used, although the 
platform itself would be structured into various sections ac-
cording to user requirements, knowledge, and skills.
3.2 Mapping urban public spaces
Public spaces in Sarajevo were mapped to obtain overall insight 
into their distribution. This process was channelled by using a 
selection of relevant criteria that define the character of public 
spaces, such as typology, scale, enclosure, urban activity, acces-
sibility, and urban atmosphere (Table 1).
A similar methodological approach may be applied in the case 
of developing an interactive database of public spaces of Sara-
jevo. The resulting geospatial platform would allow grouping, 
overlapping, or decomposing multiple layers of data, either 
showing the distribution of the public spaces within the city 
or expounding the correlation between all spatial and social 
aspects of a particular site.
In urban mapping, each public space was associated with a par-
ticular spatial or social attribute, within the predefined set of 
criteria. Therefore, the essential part of the process consisted of 
collecting all the available geospatial data and their association 
with the surveyed land and official planning documents. In this 
way, urban mapping was used as a methodological research tool 
to classify public spaces in Sarajevo. Developing a future digital 
geospatial platform or database can be structured on a set of 
predefined criteria to be used for urban mapping, and the data 
layers may subsequently be grouped into categories or over-
lapped or intersected. The criteria for urban mapping discussed 
below are 1) function and accessibility, 2) urban morpholo-
gy, and 3) the social dimension. Following the elaboration of 
each of the groups of criteria listed, the functionality of the 
potential digital platform is simulated by showing the maps 
or excerpts for four empirically selected locations in the city, 
each depicting the relevant urban and social topic.
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Function and accessibility
The function or use of space is the fundamental criterion for 
classifying types of public spaces. In other words, the typology 
of public spaces is generally determined by the social activities 
they accommodate and generate. Traditionally, public space 
provides a zone for social interaction as well as a stage for 
cultural and political proliferation. However, in contemporary 
society, as individualism and social media grow stronger, the 
traditional role of public spaces has been challenged. “Active 
presence, participation, and experience can now be substi-
tuted with passive picture watching, seeing what others have 
experienced elsewhere. The automobile has made it possible 
to replace active participation in spontaneous local social ac-
tivities with a drive to see selected friends and attractions” 
(Gehl, 2011).
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Pursuing the functional classifications of public spaces pro-
vided by Carr et al. (1992), Oldenburg (1997), and Carmona 
(2010), the mapping method was used to record the distri-
bution of the six functional types of public spaces in Saraje-
vo: 1) green spaces, 2) civic spaces, 3) communal spaces, 4) 
transportation/circulation spaces, 5) public interiors, facilities, 
and other places, and 6) undefined spaces. Physical and psy-
chological accessibility are one of the most important aspects 
that define the public dimension of city spaces. The topic of 
accessibility underlies the title of this article, and it addresses 
the entitlement and utilization of public spaces. Levels of ac-
cessibility, together with ownership, determine the privacy or 
publicness of urban areas. In contemporary cities, the bound-
aries between public and private spaces are often blurred. 
This phenomenon is often criticized for causing the erosion 
of public spaces (Sennett, 2002), whereas the hybridization 
described may be regarded as an evolutionary state of public 
spaces (de Solà Morales, 1992; Kohn, 2004). Considering the 
variations of accessibility in the city, urban mapping has iden-
tified two categories of public spaces in Sarajevo, 1) accessible 
and 2) conditionally accessible public spaces. The correlation 
of function and accessibility is a fundamental aspect of analysis 
of the existing status and potential of public spaces in a city.
Hence, the primary role of the digital platform of urban pub-
lic spaces is to provide access to information regarding the 
functions, accessibility, and ownership status of public spac-
es as underpinnings for further analysis of potential urban 
transformations. Furthermore, the platform will allow better 
insight into the wider urban context and the relationship be-
tween different typologies, open up perspectives on creating 
networks of public spaces, adjacent sites, and facilities, and 
enhance interactions between all stakeholders. For instance, 
mapping public spaces in central Sarajevo has revealed the 
heterogeneity and hybridity of functions, with Susan Sontag 
Theatre Square (Pozorišni trg – Susan Sontag) as the focal point 
and Jurislav Korenić Culture Square (Trg kulture Jurislav Ko-
renić) as secondary civic space, yet both of them lack the suf-
ficient functional articulation they actually merit (Figure 7). 
The main theatre plaza is surrounded by three rather inactive 
public areas, characterized by unclear functionality and acces-
sibility: an archaeological site to the west, private parking to 
the east, and a vacant early-twentieth-century hotel building 
to the north. In fact, due to years-long controversies, the Kalin 
hadži-Alija Mosque archaeological site has been converted into 
a veritable urban void, an undefined and physically inaccessible 
and neglected space, unrelated to its urban context, and it has 
deteriorated over the course of years of prolonged incomple-
tion. Another adjacent potential public space is the privately 
owned parking area east of the theatre square. According to 
the multiple media announcements, this area has been await-
ing development of an underground parking for decades. If, 
on the other hand, the site were converted into a pedestrian 
zone, it could have potentially acted as a lateral extension of 
the theatre square, opening up a new perspective to and from 
the site and creating an area for numerous urban activities. The 
origins of this fragmentation, the conflicts in urban space, and 
the oscillations in the patterns of its use lie in the vague pro-
grammatic and accessibility status of the zone analysed. One 
way to overcome these problems and reconnect the disparate 
urban sites into a potential network of vibrant public spaces 
is through systematic and transparent collection and mapping 
of all the relevant data as a basis for a vision of the urban 
transformation of the entire zone.
4.2 Urban morphology
Geometrical and physical properties, such as scale, configu-
ration, and the three-dimensional enclosure of public spac-
es, are important aspects of any urban analysis. In the case 
of Sarajevo, the urban morphology of the built environment, 
including open public spaces, was largely affected by its natural 
topography. The hills north and south of the city guided ur-
ban development in an east–west direction, along the Miljacka 
Valley. In the early stage of its development, dating back to 
medieval and Ottoman times, the scale of the urban matrix 
was intuitively affected by the human scale, corresponding to 
the range of intimate urban public spaces as defined in urban 
theory (Lynch, 1971; Gehl, 2011). Moving from east to west, 
matching the chronological timeline of the development of the 
city during the Austro-Hungarian, royal Yugoslav, and commu-
nist Yugoslav eras, the scale of the urban matrix increases from 
the human to vehicular scale (Figure 8). Mapping public spaces 
by the criteria of urban morphology distinguishes three scalar 
Table 1: Criteria for mapping public spaces in Sarajevo.
Criterion Attributes
Typology Green, civic, communal, transportation, public interiors, undefined
Scale Large and extra-large, medium scale, small and extra-small 
Enclosure Open, semi-open, enclosed
Urban activity Active and seasonally active, passive
Accessibility Accessible, conditionally accessible
Urban atmosphere Extroverted, introverted 
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119
Figure 7: Mapping central Sarajevo: 1) theatre square, 2) youth theatre square, 3) archaeological site, 4) parking area, 5) park, 6) vacant building 
(illustration: authors).
Figure 8: Mapping public spaces by scale in the old town of Sarajevo (illustration: authors).
categories, 1) large and extra-large, 2) medium-sized, and 3) 
small and extra-small public spaces and zones. The urban con-
figuration and its three-dimensional form is another important 
geometrical feature of public space. Even though public spaces 
have traditionally been perceived as spatial negatives, they are 
in fact contained to a certain degree within their urban ma-
trix, and defined by the “edges”, planes, and volumes of the 
surrounding buildings and blocks. Depending on their level 
of enclosure, in mapping Sarajevo three categories were found: 
1) open public spaces, 2) enclosed public spaces, and 3) semi-
open public spaces.
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The prevalent scale in the Ottoman parts of the city is the 
intimate, human scale, consisting of extra-small and small 
interior courtyards and streets. The scale increases along the 
chronological line of development, toward the west, ranging 
from medium-scale public spaces in the Austro-Hungarian and 
early Yugoslav neighbourhoods to the large-scale urban areas 
in the neighbourhoods developed during the communist Yu-
goslav and contemporary era. Mapping the historical and cen-
tral parts of Sarajevo by urban morphology yielded particular 
small- to medium-scale categories of semi-open public spaces 
(Figure 9). The areas correspond to interior courtyards within 
Ottoman-era public facilities in the old bazaar, or Baščaršija, as 
well as with the atriums of Austro-Hungarian buildings. The 
function and accessibility of some of these spaces are vague 
and undefined, but at the same time they hold significant po-
tential for urban transformation and possible reclaiming of 
public spaces in Sarajevo. Taking a systematic approach, and 
recording, mapping, and correlating all the relevant data as-
sociated with the indicated typology of spaces would lead to 
a strategic vision for urban redefinition and transformation of 
these sites and their urban context.
4.3 Social dimension
According to major urban theorists, social activity, quality 
of public life, and an urban atmosphere are the key value 
of public spaces (Carr et al., 1992; Varna & Tiesdell, 2010; 
Gehl, 2011). Beyond their physical dimension, public spaces 
are truly defined by their social value, or the types and lev-
els of social activities and interactions they induce: “Public 
space affords common ground – for social interaction, inter-
mingling and communication: it is a site of sociability. It is 
a stage for information exchange, personal development and 
social learning (i.e. about ‘the other’) and for the development 
of tolerance” (Varna & Tiesdell, 2010). According to Jan Gehl, 
on-site observation and measurement of social activities, such 
as walking/cycling, standing/staying, sitting, seeing, hearing/
talking, and playing/exercising/entertaining, provides the ba-
sis for improving and developing public spaces (Gehl Institute, 
2017). The study of urban activity in public spaces in Sarajevo 
yielded the following two categories: 1) active and seasonally 
active public spaces, and 2) passive public spaces. Mapping 
the Marijin Dvor downtown area of Sarajevo revealed unbal-
anced levels of social activities (Figure 10). The observation 
of the area revealed that public activities mainly gravitate 
around business and commercial facilities. Passive zones are 
associated with institutional buildings such as the parliament 
or residential blocks due to physical and mental barriers in 
accessibility. Other passive zones include the urban voids along 
the Miljacka River designated as future construction sites, as 
well as numerous atriums in Austro-Hungarian buildings, with 
limited public accessibility and vaguely defined ownership sta-
tus. On the other hand, the enclosure and intimacy of these 
semi-enclosed public spaces and their urban atmosphere may 
be regarded as advantages in potential urban transformation 
projects.
This leads to another important aspect that is closely relat-
ed to users’ response to certain urban spaces; namely, urban 
atmosphere. The phenomenological approach in architecture 
advocates spatial concepts that transcend visual perception, 
in which the atmospheric qualities of architectural and urban 
Figure 9: Mapping public spaces in downtown Sarajevo by level of enclosure (illustration: authors).
D. ŠAMIĆ-MUSEMIĆ, N. ZAGORA
Semi-open spaces Enclosed spacesOpen spaces
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
121
public spaces trigger the entire perceptive apparatus, including 
touch, smell, and hearing (as discussed by Gaston Bachelard, 
Martin Heidegger, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Juhani Pallas-
maa, Peter Zumthor, and others). Proceeding from the study 
of urban atmosphere in public spaces in Sarajevo (Zagora & 
Šamić, 2021), the potential of public spaces to generate multi-
sensory atmospheric experience is closely connected with their 
scale and enclosure, and can be categorized as 1) extroverted 
public spaces, characterized by their formal atmosphere and 
urbanity character, and 2) introverted public spaces, charac-
terized by their intimate atmosphere and sense of interiority. 
The social dimension of public spaces may be regarded as the 
software, and the physical space as its hardware. Interpreta-
tion and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data on urban 
activity and the urban atmosphere in a real-time interactive 
geospatial database of public spaces can cast a new light on the 
understanding and potential transformation of selected sites, 
together with their larger urban context.
5 Conclusion
One of the effects of the prolonged transition in Bosnia 
and Herzegovina and its post-conflict, post-communist, and 
post-modern society is the crisis of urban public spaces in 
Sarajevo. The effects are manifested in physical deterioration, 
negligence, and dysfunctionality of public spaces, along with 
pending issues regarding accessibility and ownership, and de-
tachment of shared urban sites from their local context and 
the community. In this regard, the essential rights of people 
to shape, use, maintain, recycle, and reactivate the city’s shared 
spaces have been highly contested. The most recurrent cases 
include the degradation and loss of public spaces, as well as 
illegal or dubious private appropriations of common proper-
ty. The spatial manifestations of the latest political and soci-
oeconomic shifts are accompanied by an acquired aversion of 
people toward communist values, even with ambiguity toward 
the notion of shared space.
The current problems in the urban environment of contem-
porary Sarajevo can be associated with a lack of collaboration 
between professionals, the public sector, the private sector, and 
the community, as well as the scarcity of publicly available 
data and debate focusing solely on public spaces. This study 
hypothesizes that one of the key prerequisites for developing 
successful public spaces is the availability of information. Most 
of the urban issues identified in Sarajevo have emerged, direct-
Figure 10: Mapping the Marijin Dvor area of Sarajevo (illustration: authors).
The right to urban public spaces in Sarajevo: Everybody’s, somebody’s, anybody’s, or nobody’s spaces?
Urbani izziv, volume 32, no. 2, 2021
122
ly or implicitly, as a result of the dispersion of information 
and relevant data on history, ownership status, accessibility, 
function, management, physical conditions, and the context 
of public spaces. In response to the problems identified, this 
article proposes a methodology for developing a digital geo-
spatial database of public spaces in Sarajevo. Learning from 
successful projects that have employed digital tools and pro-
active management of public spaces, the proposed platform is 
anticipated to be comprehensive, open-source, and interactive. 
The continuous process of collecting and disclosing all relevant 
and up-to-date information on public spaces in the city should 
serve the purpose of sharing gains, responsibilities, and rights 
between the local authorities, professionals, the private sec-
tor, and the local community in a transparent and democratic 
manner. As the title of this article suggests, this research aims 
to ultimately substitute the ambiguous concept of “nobody’s/
anybody’s/somebody’s spaces” with a democratic and genuine 
designation: “everybody’s spaces”. One way of attaining this 
standard is using the methodology of urban mapping: system-
atically harvesting and geolocating various layers of data on 
public spaces. The mapping proceeds from essential clusters 
of data related to function and accessibility, urban morphol-
ogy, and the social dimension of public spaces, allowing the 
possibility of adding more categories and layers. An important 
utility of the platform is to allow overlapping and combining 
different types of information on public spaces, opening up 
new multidisciplinary perspectives on how they can be im-
proved, transformed, reactivated, and, ultimately, reclaimed 
by the public.
Dina Šamić-Musemić
Općina Centar Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
E-mail: dina.samic@centar.ba
Nermina Zagora
University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Archi-
tectural Design, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
E-mail: nerminaz@af.unsa.ba
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