By Els Keunen
On 23 October, Zlata gave a guest lecture to students at Stuttgart University, in which she presented lessons from her experience working on Roma housing and settlement transformation in Serbia. The lecture is part of the design studios ‘Common Ground’, organised in partnership with DASH partners Domus Social (Porto) and Gaiurb (Vila Nova de Gaia), in which students will develop proposals for strategies and/or designs for area-based interventions in specific sites in Porto and Gaia. Since in the selected site in Gaia, there are Roma families living in precarious housing conditions, we invited Zlata to talk about her experience working with Roma in Serbia.
On the evening of 23 October, Zlata joined us online to talk about the practical and theoretical dimensions of participatory and inclusive planning in the upgrading and relocation of informal Roma settlements in order for the students to draw lessons from the Serbian experience. After an introduction on the Roma in Europe, in which she explained Roma origins, the discrimination and exclusion they face, and the EU Roma strategic framework, she focused on the situation of the Roma in Serbia, their spatial distribution and settlement types. She then zoomed in on two cases.
The first case was the relocation of the Gazela Roma settlement in Belgrade. A multidimensional committee with stakeholders from the municipality, Roma settlements, experts, and NGO representatives was formed and worked in a co-creative way to propose a culturally responsive neighbourhood for resettling the Roma community. However, due to political and institutional changes, the project took a completely different turn and resulted in a substandard solution (resettlement in containers in the periphery), after which a re-relocation was necessary.
The second case involved the inclusion of Roma citizens in the development of the detailed regulation plan for Mala Guba Settlement in Prokuplje, which included the regularisation of an existing Roma settlement. By working together with the community to develop the plan, it was ensured that it responded to their needs. The proactive and engaged community and active support of local Roma organisations, together with the commitment and cooperation from municipal authorities were factors that contributed to its success.
During and after the presentation, students had the opportunity to ask questions, leading to an interesting discussion. Altogether, it was a very insightful lecture that helped the students reflect on how the lessons learnt can be applied to the case in Portugal.
