Urban and National Identities in a Post-Conflict City

Ten years after the end of the 1992–1995 war, Mostar was awarded World Heritage status as ‘an exceptional and universal symbol of coexistence of communities from diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds’. International organizations, politicians and others argued that the city and its reconstructed Old Bridge represented multicularism and reconciliation. But the widespread lack of interest locally in these values has been ignored. In this book, Emily Makaš argues that on the ‘architectural front’ conflict continued long after the war ended: the struggle between Bosnia’s possible multicultural identity and its three particular nationalisms – Serb, Croat, and Muslim – has been consciously and unconsciously articulated through the rebuilding of destroyed heritage and the construction of new buildings and memorials. Through careful analysis of wartime and postwar changes in the built environment in Mostar and the relationship between different identity groups’ interpretations of the war and their differing perspectives of symbolic sites in the postwar period, Makaš examines the processes by which meaning is assigned and transferred and by which identities (both urban and national) are constructed. Although focused on one city over a period of two decades, this book offers an innovative way of looking at relationships between national and urban identities and the built environment.