Defense of Public Spaces in the Cases of “We are Keeping our Park“ and “Bring Back the Magnolia“ Initiatives in Zagreb

Sa？etak In the last few years, there were many examples of fighting for public spaces in Zagreb. In this paper, two such cases are examined. In the first case, residents of the Savica housing estate joined in the civil initiative “We are keeping our Park“ and fought for the defense of the existing park space (green area and playground) because the city authorities supported the building of a church, which would significantly decrease the park area. Thus, the long-standing efforts to annul this city autorities’ decision have begun. The second case, of resisting the planned revitalization of the Me？trovi？ Pavillion on the Square of the Victims of Fascism, caused a major protest against the revamp and logging of the trees near the Pavillion, especially the magnolia tree. This brought about the initiative called “Bring back the Magnolia“. The paper provides discourse analysis regarding these cases, for which digital articles from various Internet portals covering the topics were used. The analysis revealed a dichotomous situation. On the one hand there was not enough citizens’ participation in the decision-making process regarding the planned changes, and on the other, there was a strong resistance of tenants and citizens, displayed through civil initiatives including protests and various actions. All this led to the stagnation in adjusting to European urbanistic standards (so called urban sustainability), particularly its environmental and social dimension. Nevertheless, through the discourse analysis it can be argued that the civil initiatives, i.e. citizens through their agency, promoted these values and attempted to convince urban policy makers to apply them, which sometimes resulted in positive outcomes and in which a new dimension of power relationships between all actors involved can be observed