Trivial though they may seem, popular culture and mass media actually present an important part of our quotidian and play significant roles in defining dimensions of our environments—past and present, internal as well as external. Mediatized images of bygone times and faraway places invade and transfix the physical geographies of the living environment; invade and transfix, extremely subtly, symbolic geographies of every single human being. Despite the fictitious nature and perceived triviality of cinema, literature and music, they feature as modes of representation and communication for a wide array of topics and issues that present an important part of human existence. Therefore, archaeology of popular culture might be a useful complement to other past-reconstructing practices.

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This article argues that after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav rock music lost little cultural value and is still a prominent trigger of vernacular memories of the socialist Yugoslav past, as well as a vehicle of socio-political commentary in post-Yugoslav contexts. In this view, music is understood as a galvaniser of affective relationships to that past and to post-Yugoslav presents. In the first part of the article, the author discusses the theoretical and practical implications of digitally mediated music as immersive affective environments, working within the framework of media archaeology and a digital archives approach. It is argued that Yugoslav rock has retained its potency and appeal, where today, in a post-Yugoslavia context, it presents an outlet for the recomposition of musical preferences through nostalgia and opposition to the post-1991 socio-political developments. In the second part of the article, focusing on Facebook and YouTube, the author investigates how Yugoslav rock has been reframed in social media and how fragments of the country’s past are reframed in digital media environments. A qualitative multimodal discourse analysis is employed here to investigate a selection of fan pages of rock musicians and bands.

The chapter discusses the integration of civil society into planning, development, and governance of urban green spaces (UGS). The principles of participatory democracy and sustainable development inevitably require a more integrated approach to collaboration and networking among different sectors and actors. Until recently, the citizens/communities were only sporadically involved in decisionmaking and planning processes of UGS, which led to practices of urban development that failed to account for their needs. The crucial question is: What are the potentials and limits of engaging and involving people and communities in planning and playing an active part in the development of UGS? Specifically, the chapter discusses how theoretical concepts that often work well in strategies or development programs are only slowly implemented in practice. This raises the question of the obstacles and benefits faced by municipalities when trying to involve local communities in planning activities. First, the authors discuss the theory and practice of participation and community involvement in urban planning and management. Second, they present an overview of the local cases of UGS development in three Central and Eastern European cities (Maribor, Krakow, and Budapest), and thirdly, linking practice and theory, they discuss the intrinsic issues with community formation and sustainability.