Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Habitat International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint The phenomenon of shrinking illegal suburbs in Serbia: Can the concept of shrinking cities be useful for their upgrading? Branislav Antonić ∗ , Aleksandra Djukić University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture, Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra 73/II, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Illegal settlements Urban planning Suburbia Urban shrinkage Serbia ABSTRACT Illegal residential construction at the fringes of urban areas has been typical for Serbia and the other countries of South Eastern and Southern Europe, spanning through all periods of modern urbanisation. Illegal suburbs are currently so widespread that they cannot be omitted in any future policy or strategy regarding urban devel- opment and planning, land and property management. However, this phenomenon is being transformed over the recent years; after rapid and uncontrolled suburbanisation during the second half of the 20th century, the first shrinking outer suburbs around Serbian cities have appeared recently, with the post-socialist transition of the country. Yet, even more suburbs are in demographic and economic stagnation, emphasising the necessity to tackle it in the near future. This paper aims to open the debate about the future of illegal residential settlements with shrinking and stagnation patterns in Serbia, connecting this phenomenon with the concept of shrinking cities. Despite this concept being well-known, it is traditionally more oriented towards urban decline in well-developed and or- ganised countries, where it deals with shrinking inner urban areas. Confronting the existing knowledge from the concept with the problems that shrinking outer suburbs in Serbia are facing today, this paper seeks to revise and adjust it by proposing the creative institutional changes for these vulnerable areas that simplify legalisation procedures, better integrate involved stakeholders, connect different spatial levels to form a polycentric network, and support bottom-up initiatives for the socio-economic regeneration of illegal suburbia. Institutional changes can be important for understanding and dealing with expected urban shrinkage in the less developed part of the world, such as in the Global South and fast-developing countries in Eastern Asia, where the problems of illegal suburbia are acute, but which certainly can expect urban shrinkage in the future. 1. Introduction Serbia has had a long history of illegal spatial development, usually in the form of illegal residential settlements at the fringe of major urban areas (Tsenkova, 2005; UNECE, 2006). Illegality in spatial development is one of the major determinants that shape the ex-Yugoslav subtype of post-so- cialist city, which, together with the other Balkan-located subtypes, 1 possesses elements of Third World development (Petrović, 2005). This problem has been evident for decades, transecting all modern periods: interwar (WW1-WW2), socialist, and post-socialist. It is interesting to point out that illegal construction was present during both capitalist and socialist state systems, with somewhat different “symptoms” (Antonić & Mitrović, 2013). The problem with illegal development has continued during the ongoing period of post-socialist transformation, when territorial govern- ance and planning have had manifest problems with fragility and un- preparedness for new, post-socialist circumstances (Rink et al., 2014). They have thereby taken an auxiliary position to more powerful private investors (Hirt & Stanilov, 2014). Illegal settlements are so widespread in the cities in Serbia today that they trigger general urban development. Consequently, they cannot be omitted in any future policy or strategy regarding urban planning, land-use development or real estate market (Tsenkova, 2012). However, some new phenomena have recently occurred in illegal settlements. One is the issue of the ‘first’ shrinking illegal settlements around Serbian cities. Many of these cities witnessed rapid and in- sufficiently controlled urbanisation during the 20th century, which caused illegal construction in suburban areas (Petovar, 2003). These patterns have changed dramatically with the post-socialist transition, transforming many illegal settlements from the vibrant first “nuclei” of small and medium enterprises in the 1980s and the 1990s to more stigmatised places to live and work today (Tsenkova, 2005). It seems that national development policies have created a negative image of illegal settlements, without https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2018.03.010 ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: antonic83@gmail.com (B. Antonić), adjukic@afrodita.rcub.bg.ac.rs (A. Djukić). 1 Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian cities. Habitat International xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0197-3975/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Antonić, B., Habitat International (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2018.03.010