interventions in urban environments that were triggered into replay
during the COVID-19 pandemic, as citizens across the globe made
enormous endeavors to find the ordinary under extraordinary living
circumstances.
When societies and spaces are exposed to large-scale, unexpected
situations for long periods of time, visible spatial and societal shifts are
created, and their reciprocal connection becomes particularly apparent.

A question arises: how did the contemporary model of high-rise, high-
density city respond to the imposed social changes caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic?
Images and videos of people singing from windows and balconies have
traveled the world in 2020, displaying the natural need for socialization,
community, belonging, and protesting the seclusion that was
aggressively imposed by the pandemic. The recommendations for new,
enforced, but ‘safe’ social conduct forcefully restricted human contact
and was very much conflicting with the instinct and inborn human
nature.
Parallelly, limited circulation within and between cities and countries
created heightened demand for open public spaces locally that were
identified as crucial social assets in times of crisis s. A square meter
more of free space was in high demand during 2020 and 2021 in urban
environments, when maintaining social distance was almost equivalent
to staying alive. The role of public space as a material realization and
constructor of the physical realm within which we live, move,
communicate, gather, or avoid one another has been tested to the
ultimate limits. The health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
highlighted its role as a generator of social relationships, as well as the
importance it has on the quality of everyday life in urban environments.
Thus, the most recent pandemic brought the topic of space-society
relationships to the forefront, confirming that architectural planning
5

and spatial organization can have serious and large-scale social
consequences. Issues of accessibility, availability, flexibility, and
transformability of both public and private spaces had a high impact on
both physical and mental health during the long months of restricted
movement. While it made us revisit the question of how ‘human’
contemporary architecture and space is or how lost we have become
trying to cater to the contemporary needs of everyday life, it also
opened doors for new spatial concepts.
Attempting to assess the relationship between spaces and societies in
an urban context during the extreme social situation of the COVID-19
pandemic, this study presents the case of the city of Sarajevo, a town
that chronically suffers from an open public space and urban greenery
shortage. Imposed changes in social conduct revealed and highlighted
all the weaknesses and deficiencies of this progressively congested
city. Subsequently, the work examines Sarajevo’s existing inventory of
public spaces in order to address the possibility of the city transitioning
to a wider and more homogeneous supply of public space. Through
cartographic representation, the research produces maps —an atlas of
the main categories of public spaces — and makes an in-depth survey
of the pattern of movement, use, and quality of selected open public
areas using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technology.
AI and technology themselves have become increasingly important in
our lives and are changing the way we live. AI systems are designed to
automate tasks that were once performed by humans and are
becoming more sophisticated every day. AI is also changing the way
we interact with technology, making it more intuitive and natural, and
providing new and innovative ways to access and process information
and services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, AI served as a tool for
detecting human movement patterns, assisting in maintaining social
distancing.
This provides an insight into the assessment of vulnerability and risk in
Sarajevo in terms of the availability of public spaces and proposes
specific spatial interventions that could provide a more adequate
response for changing social behavior during COVID-19 pandemic or in
the face of possible new health crises.]]>