Chapter Two: In the Neighborhood: What’s in a Place?

This chapter shows how the location of the former Yugoslavia tribunal has become part of the urban fabric of The Hague. It interprets the city as a “dynamic archive” of memories and visions of the future with different meanings for residents and urban planners, and thus a space full of dissonances. To gain insight into the post-war debates between modernist urban planners and residents about the urban planning of the heavily war-damaged Zorgvliet-World Forum area—the current district of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—a comparison is made with the German reconstruction debates from 1945 to after the Wende of 1989. From this comparative context, it becomes clear how much urban planning and monument conservation revolved around a ‘romantic modernist’ belief in material authenticity and building. It highlights the impact of the recent ‘heritage turn’ in Dutch spatial policy, which breaks with a long tradition of top-down urban planning. The new heritage policy promotes citizen participation in favor of resilient, adaptive reuse of historic architecture. This opens up future-oriented possibilities for a redevelopment of the surroundings of the former Yugoslavia tribunal, which with its arrival itself became a key to the development of what is known as the ‘International Zone’. In order to assess several initiatives to improve the quality of life in the “deserted” area, which removed from the city is increasingly focused on heterogeneous, introverted high-rise offices, a comparison is made with the new urban renewal plan for the Brussels ‘European district’. The chapter ends with a reflection on the question of how the protection of the commemorative values of the former Yugoslavia tribunal can contribute to strengthening the urban identity of The Hague as an international beacon for peace and justice.