Scaling up? From urban movements to citizen's platforms in Serbia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper brings the “scale question” into the discussion of urban movements in Southeast Europe and offers a multispatial framework for their analysis. It focuses on the shifting scale of urban movements in Serbia, which was recently united in a wider citizen's platform. The paper reveals that scaling up from the single-issue initiative to a national political alliance is a challenging process that takes place on multiple scales. The main challenges are co-optation and tension between urban issues and issues in other spaces beyond the (capital) city. My explanation considers the centralised semi-authoritarian national government and the urban-rural divide in Serbia.