We must resist and reverse the process of polarization of income and quality of environment, both in the social fragmentation of our cities and the divergence of core and periphery regions.

The International Network for Urban Research and Action, Salecina/Switzerland, 1991

From 20 to 22 October 2009 a symposium entitled ‘Balkanology’ was held in Vienna’s Architectural Centre (AZW - Architektur Zentrum Wien), in parallel with an exhibition of the same name in the gallery of that respected establishment. Inevitably, one of the main topics, in common with many symposium papers, was precisely the definition of Balkan, not so much in the geo-political sense of the word, but more in a semantic and conceptual sense.