Publication: Local Community – A Place or a Community?

The publication entitled “Local Community – A Place or a Community?” / “Mesna zajednica - mesto ili zajednica?” was published within the framework of the project “City Spaces – Spaces for Citizens”.

Local communities represent a specific from of local self-governance, which saw its great development during the period of self-governing socialism and later its great fall following the collapse of a state system and the break-up of the very state that “patented” this model. Despite all the difficulties and ambiguities surrounding this concept, local communities still represents a good basis for upgrading and improving the level of openness, accessibility and citizen participation in decision-making processes, improving, in the end, the local government efficiency. The Collective Ministarstvo prostora (Ministry of Space), partner in the project “City Spaces – Spaces for Citizens”, published and promoted the publication “Local Community – A Place or a Community?” that you can find more information about in the text below.

Local Community – A Place or a Community?

During the first phase of the project a desk analysis was carried out in order to research the historical development of local communities and the legal frameworks that currently exist in Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro. In addition, the state of local community buildings on the territory of Belgrade was photodocumented. The analysis was followed by the preparation of publication by author Dobrica Veselinović.

During the second phase of the project a discussion about the possibilities of this type of local self-governance was organized, held in the Centre for Cultural Decontamination on 23 March 2017. The event ended with a presentation of the results from the publication Local Community – A Place or a Community? and a discussion about the current situation and possibilities for its improvement.

The discussion centred on the following questions:
- What is local self-governance?
- How were local communities created?
- What is the origin of their legal status?
- What are the problems the local communities encounter in their work?
- How to improve the work of local communities?

The discussion was attended by around 30 participants. In addition to introductory presentation by Dobrica Veselinović the participants had a chance to hear the president of the central urban municipality “Stari grad”, Marko Bastać, who presented this municipality’s ideas for the revival of local communities.