Mitigating post-oil sustainability challenges in a topographically framed transit-oriented city

A distinct environmental setting of the naturally elongated city of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina stimulated its historical development in a constant transit-oriented manner despite its frequent and diverse regime shifts, planning practices and periods of war destruction. Topographically conditioned natural processes along with anthropogenic factors contributed to increasing challenges to urban sustainability. With Sarajevo in the top ranks, the country’s alarming level of air pollution was rated number one in Europe in 2019 with an annual average of 40,9 μg/m3 of PM2.5 (IQAir, 2020). The emergence of high-rise development without proper long-term planning strategies largely contributes to smog retention as a recent study on ventilation corridors in the city has shown (EBRD, 2019). As in many Southeast European cities over the last few decades, Sarajevo is dealing with an urban sprawl generated by the development of informal settlements (Tsenkova, 2012). These represent the dominant developments on surrounding hillsides around the city, accessible mainly by vehicle transportation, creating an aggravating factor on infrastructure, air quality and future development. Current practice in mitigating these challenges are scarce and often obstructed by adverse political agendas. The border of two uncooperative and structurally different governing Entities stretches alongside the city and hinders a unified long term regulation plan. The main research approach of this paper is based on grounded theory and case studies of cities with similar elevation variations. The paper establishes two main challenges to a sustainable urban development for a valley-based city in air quality and transportation. It elucidates sustainable urban planning opportunities in an oil-depleted future of Sarajevo while dealing with the given circumstances of urban disengagement and infrastructural pressure of the peripheral hillside developments and the urgent vertical growth restrictions in the valley, providing conceptual solutions for urban integration of the largely informal settlements through cable propelled modes of transportation and heat source reevaluation.