Toward the end of 2018, citizens of the Montenegrin port city of Bar organized themselves and demanded that the local government and the Ministry of Education stop the construction of a kindergarten. This perhaps sounds like an unlikely story of urban activism. Nevertheless, it is true: a Bar community decisively opposed the building of a kindergarten in place of a centrally located, almost 100-year-old cypress park. The Cypress Revolution followed, which showed that organized resistance against flawed decision-making processes and dubious spatial planning practices in Montenegro is possible – and it gave an important lesson on the perils of ignoring citizens and sacrificing public spaces in the city-building process.
