Urban Regularisation of Belgrade, 1867: Trace vs. Erasure

Abstract

A gradual urban transformation of Belgrade from Oriental into Occidental city in the nineteenth century in a way prefigured its political change of status from an Ottoman Empire border town into a capital of a European nation state (i.e. the Principality of Serbia internationally recognised in 1878). This paper will explore this process, and will focus on the analysis of the plan of regularisation of Belgrade (1867), by Emilijan Josimović, the first Serbian urbanist. Josimović’s plan laid down proposals for a total reconstruction of the Ottoman urban structure, and consequent transformation of Belgrade into European planned city. Radical though it was, the Plan gave urbanistic rationale and formalisation to what already lasted as an informal process of re-urbanisation parallel to the liberation from the crumbling Turkish rule and the related political processes.