How a Grassroots Approach to Urban Infrastructure Can Facilitate a Just Green Transition in the Balkans: Guidelines for Improved Citizen Participation

This essay argues that infrastructure is a focal point for everyday political action in human-environment relations with possibilities for expanding citizen participation, focusing on grassroots approaches to infrastructure as potential sources of inspirational practices that can positively shape a just green transition in the Balkans. Drawing on research on the ways ordinary people relate to infrastructural interventions in the Pančevo Marshes, a former wetland area in metropolitan Belgrade, the essay identifies modalities of political participation that should be supported and expanded to enhance the policy process. These grassroots relations to infrastructure include a variety of practices of everyday politics related to infrastructure: appealing to state representatives to resolve problems, proposing new procedures for state agencies, offering alternative expertise, and spotlighting problematic state representatives. The essay concludes with suggestions for improving participation so that citizens can substantively participate in the early stages of policy development.