by Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer

One of the most referenced examples of an informal market as nucleus of urban development is the so-called Arizona Market in the Brcko district in the Northeast of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There are a number of different narratives in circulation about what triggered the birth and boom of this vast informal market in war-torn Bosnia. The most widely supported ones attribute its rise to a kind of natural emergence of a free market environment, under the protection of the military presence of the International Community and as desired by the local population.