Post-Socialist Housing Policy Transformation In Yugoslavia And Belgrade

In this article, housing policy changes are observed within a theoretical background that relies on social structure analysis and the path dependency approach. Consequently, determining factors of socialist housing policy principles and outcomes have been analysed as relevant for housing policy transformation in post-socialist countries. Further, new patterns of social structuring caused by post-socialist transformation, have been discussed with special consideration of adaptive elite reconstruction for Yugoslav society and the (de)regulation of its housing policy. Yugoslav housing policy belonged to the East European housing model under socialism, which has now collapsed, although important elements have been retained and no new strategy formulated. In Yugoslavia, the housing sector has performed the role of a shock absorber, not due to the high social costs of radical socio-economic transformation but due to anomie and blocked transformation in the post-socialist period. Belgrade, as the capital of Yugoslavia, is chosen for analysis, as more data are available at the city level, particularly on illegal construction, a phenomenon inherited from the socialist era that has acquired new characteristics in the post-socialist period, and on the second-hand housing market that has been developing since housing privatization.