A new city for a new state. City planning and the formation of national identity in the Balkans (1820s‐1920s)

Abstract

During the 19th century the European provinces of the polyethnic Ottoman Empire were dismantled and a number of new national states were created in the Balkan peninsula: Greece, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria between 1829 and 1878, Albania and modern Greece in the 1910s and up to 1922. At the same time the Ottoman Empire was driven to modernize and reform its traditional theocratic institutions, following the model of the European states of the time. A prolonged interior unrest, national liberation movements/insurrections and successive wars, such as the two Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the first World War (1914–1918) and the Asia Minor Campaign (1920–1922), resulted in frontier changes, extensive damage to existing towns and countryside and millions of refugees in search of new homes. It is thus easy to understand that the establishment of a new network of settlements within new national frontiers acquired a distinct importance, and the reconstruction of cities was placed at the heart of the modernizing programmes of the states involved. In fact, new states sought to motivate production and economic activity, as well as emphasize a national identity, by effacing all memories of Ottoman rule, still persistant in urban fabrics (the Ottomans occupied the Balkans for four to five centuries). This paper examines the city planning operations and legislation in modern Balkan countries, including the modernization of Ottoman cities during the Tanzimat era of reorganization.

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