This research aimed to uncover how New Zagreb came into being. The Brodarski Institute, the Zagreb Fair, and New Zagreb’s mikrorayons had already been constructed when New Zagreb was authorized by the 1971 General Masterplan. I hypothesize that New Zagreb was created as an informal plan for Zagreb’s southern expansion, which was carried out through decision-making enabled by informality. Without a statutory plan after 1945, Zagreb fell within an informality gray zone in which power relations, rather than legal frameworks, governed contestations between two visions for urban development. The main adversaries in post-WWII Zagreb were the fierce opponents in the Conflict on the (Literary) Left: the ruling Party line led by Josip Broz Tito versus the faction of Zagreb's intellectuals, led by Miroslav Krleža, who pursued opposing ideologies: centralist and decentralist. Tito’s Politburo dominated the power structures, while Zagreb’s intellectuals, who were non-partisans, were marginalized and worked as low-level officials. Documentary data and oral history interviews showed that some decisions regarding the development of New Zagreb were made by low-level officials linked to Krleža’s circle. A central vision for Zagreb’s development made within urban planning structures anticipated Zagreb as a regional center and limited its growth to 600,000 inhabitants in thirty years. Krleža’s group’s alternative informal vision for southern expansion envisioned Zagreb as the Yugoslav economic center. Zagreb’s authorities, led by mayor Većeslav Holjevac, devised the informal plan to grow the city to 950,000 inhabitants in thirty years. A finding showed that Krleža leveraged Zagreb’s authorities through Holjevac. Centralists distributed their ideology vertically through power structures, and Krleža’s intellectuals used their official agency enabled by informality to make decisions for southern expansion, opposing the centralist ideology. The informal plan for New Zagreb was an outcome of ideological conflict that took place within formal power structures, which may seem contradictory.
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