City fortifications and the form of European cities, with special reference to Croatia

Developments on the sites of bastion fortifications are often welldesigned expansions of city cores with mainly public buildings, representative residential buildings and public spaces. The transformation of bastion fortifications in the Croatian towns of Karlovac and Osijek in the earlytwentieth century resulted in the creation of urban landscapes that can be compared in their characteristics with similar areas in major cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg and Copenhagen. Developments in these two towns are comparable to those in the nineteenth century in many parts of Europe. They are inner fringe belts forming boundary zones between historically and morphologically distinct housing areas.