Dardania

Dardania

Since my last post, I have begun exploring Prishtina's urban spaces in order to gain a broad space of data for later use. So far, I've visited several areas during this trip, such as the city centre, Vellusha, Pejton, and Dardania. Drawing on descriptions and observations so far (and yes, including a photo), this post centres on the latter, Dardania, and its immediate vicinity. This will be the first in a series of posts on Prishtina's urban spaces. From these posts, I hope you can appreciate that, not only is my time being put to use, but cities contain a diversity of spaces which should be appreciated in order to paint a picture of urban life.

My first impression of Dardania, located just 10 to 15 minutes from the city centre, was of a massive apartment complex inaugurated by a statue of the former American president, Bill Clinton. Indeed, the symbolism goes further, where the neighbourhood is nestled next to a street named Bulevardi Bill Klinton. As an American, I can assure you that seeing both a street name and a monument dedicated to my country's former head of state has been a source of culture shock. However, one needs only to remember Kosovo's immediate history to know where the symbolism originates from.

Arriving into the complex from Bill Klinton, rows of looming concrete apartment buildings surround you, with a pedestrian causeway located between the buildings and on top of an automotive tunnel. Beside the tunnel, you then see an underground mall with a mosaic floor, cafes, shops, markets, and restaurants. All of this, from the imposing buildings to the causeway, has been built in concrete, giving the locale the image of an urban canyon. Indeed, as can be deduced from its moderately crumbling steps, Dardania was built by the Yugoslav government in the “modernistic socialist mode” during the 1960s and 1970s, and it remains an example of modernist architecture in Prishtina.

However, Dardania is more than an example of architecture from a time gone by; it is the site of a cohesive community. Because of the way the neighbourhood has been built, social activity centers on the causeway located between the apartments. Children play in the causeway's open spaces, and the numerous cafes, each with their own atmospheres, are regularly bustling throughout the day. During my morning coffee (locally, makiato), I frequently see regulars coming in to socialize. Indeed, Dardania is a very communal place, as perhaps is emphasized by how rarely people have their coffees without being accompanied by others.

Thus, it failed to surprise me when I was informed that Dardania is a tight-nit community where the residents and, perhaps cafe regulars, all know each other and integrate new comers. I have indeed experienced this hospitality and, I must say, I am very grateful. In anthropological and sociological theory, this could indicate the presence of social networks with close relational bonds. Although, since I've been here for less than a month, there's no use in pretending to be certain.

Additionally, Dardania is also witnessing intense spatial changes. From my window, I can see a cluster of three buildings growing steadily towards the sky. This leads to the question, what might happen to the community once the complex is built? Will the influx of new staff be integrated within the neighborhood, or will their pressure becoming overwhelming?

These are merely speculative questions which have occupied my sometimes overly-imaginative mind over the past couple weeks. However, they rise from the extent to which urban changes have gripped Prishtina over the previous years. Karin Norman, in her own recent ethnographic account, mentions how the Yugoslav government destroyed many of the city's Ottoman areas during the 1950s in order to build new, “modern” residential and commercial buildings, such as those in Dardania. During the 1998-1999 Kosovo War, many of the city's Albanian residents evacuated, returning after NATO's bombardment in 1999. Coinciding with the Albanians' homecoming, much of the Serb and Roma populations escaped, with the former leaving for locales such as the Gracanica enclave and Northern Kosovo. Also during this time period, the city became home to a large number of rural migrants, who had lost their homes as a result of the war's violence. These changes, of urban development and armed conflict, have been accompanied over the 15 years since by an influx of international aid, the accompanying arrival of aid workers, and, according to Norman, the corresponding rise in (often illegal) housing construction and prices.

Norman's ethnographic vignettes of Dardania, portraying nostalgia, migration, pre-war childhoods, and Roma livelihoods, show how the practices of residents shape the meanings, rhythms, and physical structures which make up Prishtina. In doing so, they contribute to the ways in which Dardania takes shape. Indeed, Dardania, as described in the paragraphs above, is a tight-nit community that has endured, and continues to endure, substantial changes. However, as events have also shown, the neighbourhood is not separate from the city's changes but wrapped up within them as a spatial location in urban life. The investigation of spaces such as Dardania then gives us a window into how larger events within the city shape the community and how the community molds the city.


Works Cited:

Norman, K., 2014. Shifting experiences of places in Prishtina. Eurozine, pp.1–8. Available at: http://www.eurozine.com/pdf/2014-02-12-normank-en.pdf [Accessed March 28, 2014].