Critical Planning

On July 26, 1963, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake devastated the city of Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, one of the six Yugoslavian republics. This initiated a multilateral reconstruction effort that saw international experts lend support to local teams of architects and planners. The resulting plan (the Urban Plan Project, or UPP) focused on the development of neighborhood units, as well as the propagationof ample “open green spaces” to provide higher standards of living to the inhabitants. This paper draws a connection between the open spaces of Skopje andthe theories of Henri Lefebvre concerning concrete utopia and habitation, to show that beyond purely utilitarian reasons, the open spaces reflected a search for new socialist urbanities in Yugoslavia and allowed for architectural experimentation. The resulting plan reveals a model for planning and architectural practices as disaster relief, and illustrates a collaborative and self-managed working methodology, which makes it a valuable study for planning and architecture history in the face of current destructions related to climate change.