S252603

Public Space and Protest Power 

Written by Maša Bezbradica

Public space and protest power explores how protest movements do more than express political demands; they actively reshape the city itself. Through the ongoing student protests in Serbia, the series explores how public space becomes a site of visibility, conflict, solidarity, and collective identity. Beginning with the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse and the institutional silence that followed, the podcast examines how grief turned into mobilization, and how student-led organizing transformed protest into a recurring urban rhythm. Across both episodes, protest is approached as an urban practice: something that reorganizes streets and squares, redefines everyday routines, and turns ordinary infrastructure into political terrain. By connecting political experience to spatial experience, Public space and protest power shows how democracy is not only debated. It is performed, negotiated, and made visible through the urban space. 

Part A – From Collapse to Collective: Student Protest in Serbia

From Collapse to Collective: Student Protest in Serbia begins in Novi Sad, where the sudden collapse of a recently renovated railway station canopy turns a normal morning into a moment of collective shock. As accountability fails to arrive and justice remains suspended, the tragedy becomes more than an accident – it becomes a symbol of institutional breakdown. From this rupture, a student-led protest movement emerges, expanding across universities and cities and transforming grief into organization. The episode follows how students, supported by professors and structured through direct democratic plenums, became central actors in demanding transparency, responsibility, and the rule of law. Positioned within both Serbia’s political climate and the longer global history of student movements, the episode asks why students so often become catalysts for change, and why their protests matter not only politically, but urbanistically as well. It raises an important question:  what happens when protest becomes part of the city’s fabric? 

Part B – Public space, public power: How protest reshapes a city

Public space, public power: How protest reshapes the city shifts the lens from protest as a political movement to protest as a spatial force. As demonstrations become recurring in Serbia, they begin to settle into the city’s everyday rhythm, reshaping how people move, gather, and relate to the spaces around them. Drawing on the Charter of Public Space and conversations with scholars and practitioners, the episode explores how public spaces gain visibility, symbolic power, and political function during protest. From Beirut to Madrid to Belgrade, it traces how repeated occupation can transform ordinary streets and squares into sites of memory and identity. The episode also examines how protest communication now extends beyond physical space into digital space, allowing visibility to travel and meanings to circulate. Ultimately, the main argument is that public space is not merely where protests take place. It is one of the central stakes of protest itself, and one of the last arenas where democratic presence can become visible, collective, and real.  

Part A – From Collapse to Collective: Student Protest in Serbia

Part B – Public space, public power: How protest reshapes a city