Not a project at all. A plural project of urban space in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Which radical pluralism should the project of urban space–that is, arguably, the project of community, as the site of plurality–depart from and expose? The intention of this contribution is to posit a tentative answer to such a question. To do so, what follows will refer to Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a geo-historical context trapped between the two-fold result of an essentialised notion of plurality: full democratic multiculturalism and atavistic Balkan political violence. The wager is that Bosnia’s post-war Transition–a political and spatial project of community characterised by an abundance of spatial forms of ruination, abandonment, and vacancy–is stretched toward the realisation of a properly multicultural democratic pluralism. Given the contradictions of the Transition, the article will discuss its implications trading on Jean-Luc Nancy’s thought on community and “being singular plural,” in order to suggest an ethical orientation of a plural project of urban space.