Post-militarised spaces in post-socialist cities : the case of the military domain in Bitola

In this paper I discuss the particular actors and agencies in the post-socialist cities which attempt to re-use the post-militarized spaces – a process that involves the local urban designers of the late socialist and early transitional generation mostly. In a nutshell, the transformation process of the large scale Cold War military heritage brings particular challenges, due to the dual nature of the military institutions in this period, that is being both 'invisible' and 'omnipresent'. Such double figure comes from the prominence of the restricted access areas designated for exclusive military use and the involvement of the military institutions in multitude aspects of the local civil societies, including the spatial planning itself. The changing role of the military allows for a critical observation of the fundamental shift throughout which ‘taskscapes’ dissolve – leaving spatial and functional voids as areas where new urban features are eventually produced. In this paper I will present the case study of the military domain in Bitola, a small city in former Yugoslavia. The city has a history of strong military presence, and yet during the socialist period the area of the military domain itself became a secluded area – a situation that continued well into the post-socialist period up until few years ago.