Spatial Misuse of the Sarajevo Olympic Mountains and the Obliteration of the 1984 WOG Legacy

This year in February, Sarajevo marks 40 years since the Winter Olympic Games in 1984. These were the first Winter Olympic Games held in a communist country, and they placed Sarajevo and Yugoslavia on the world map. The nomination and announcement of WOG in 1978 caused rapid urbanization of the city itself but also of the surrounding mountains, which should host different sports disciplines. Mountains Jahorina, Bjelašnica, Igman, and Trebević were equipped with new sports facilities, roads, but also lodgings to accommodate visitors, press, and competitors. The early 1980s were the beginnings of the planned urbanization of rural mountain areas around Sarajevo. This process was stopped during the war 1992–1995 when the majority of these facilities (including sports facilities) were destroyed or heavily damaged. In the post-war period, the socio-political organization of the state was often oriented toward neo-liberal influences, which caused rapid, abrupt, and mostly unplanned development of ski resorts on the Olympic Mountains, Igman excluded. In the last 10–15 years, ski areas on Jahorina and Bjelašnica were developed into urban settlements to support the expected winter mass tourism. Trebević is lately also becoming more urbanized, with mostly out-of-scale residential and office buildings promoting healthy life and work on the ‘mountain on the doorstep of the city’. This paper aims to investigate the urbanization of rural mountain areas around Sarajevo, focusing on Jahorina, Bjelašnica, and Trebević.