Waley Belgrade

Planning Perspectives
Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2011, 209235

ISSN 0266-5433 print/ISSN 1466-4518 online
2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2011.550444
http://www.informaworld.com

From modernist to market urbanism: the transformation of New Belgrade

Paul Waley*

School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Taylor and Francis RPPE_A_550444.sgm 10.1080/02665433.2011.550444 Planning Perspectives 0266-5433 (print)/1466-4518 (online) Original Article 2011 Taylor & Francis 26 20000002011 PaulWaley P.T.Waley@leeds.ac.uk

This paper introduces two starkly contrasting faces of recent European urbanism, and shows
how they have shaped the same urban territory, New Belgrade. In the first place, it outlines
the central dilemmas and difficulties around the construction of a large modernist city in
Europe, and secondly, it explores the modifications undertaken in order to accommodate a
radically different, consumption-oriented society. The location for this enquiry is the largest
municipal district within Belgrade. New Belgrade, with its immense size and expanse (over
40 sq km and a population of about 250,000), grand boulevards and massive apartment
buildings lined up in numbered blocks, is a mixture of modernist vision and socialist
planning, far larger than any comparable urban district in Central and Eastern European
cities. Designed as a federal capital for Titos Yugoslavia, it rapidly became a
predominantly residential suburb. New Belgrade is now being re-positioned and partly re-
built as a business centre in a process of change driven largely by international capital, with
international companies investing in the construction of large retail, leisure and business
facilities. At the same time, open spaces are being filled in, often with up-market housing.
The paper provides an overview of some of the plans and controversies that surrounded the
citys construction and an outline of the modifications that have transformed New Belgrade
since.

Keywords:

New Belgrade; modernism; socialist urbanism; urban change; market urbanism

Paradigmatic modernist urbanism

New Belgrade is one of the biggest if not, the biggest of the new cities that sprang up on
the outskirts of the major urban settlements of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) during the
Communist period. It is however different in a number of important respects from places such
as Nowa Huta, the steel city that stands next door to Krakow, or Petr

[ zcar on]

alka, the Bratislava
district on the south side of the Danube. It was designed with a strategic political intent: to
serve as the capital of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Never completed, it has become a
fascinating landscape testimony to changing concepts and practices in urban design and urban
policy over the last 60 years. Today, with its 4100 hectares it is easily the largest of Belgrades
16 districts. A city within the city, its population of about a quarter million would today make
it Serbias third largest urban settlement.
New Belgrade is, in the first place, a paradigm for the intermingling of modernism and
socialism in urban form and space. It is, secondly and more recently, paradigmatic of post-
modern and post-socialist urbanism and of the attendant insinuations of the neo-liberal market
into modernist urban form and space. It is a textbook case, and is therefore an excellent territory
for telling wider stories both about modernist and socialist urban space and about its post-
modernist and post-socialist sequel. It is also, as Hirt argues, a near-anomaly in post-communist

*Email: p.t.waley@leeds.ac.uk
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P. Waley

urban change, showing that prime location and quality of development may beat the grim
predictions of some scholars issued during the 1990s that the communist districts would
inevitably become ghettoes of decay.

1

Paradigmatic it may be, but it bears notable differences both from Western modernism and
Soviet socialist realism.

2

While New Belgrade illustrates patterns of change in CEE, it does so
in extreme ways. And yet, strangely, it has seldom been inserted into histories of modernist
and socialist urbanism. Why should this be so? Part of the answer probably lies in the distinc-
tive nature of its genesis, and part in the destructive nature of Yugoslavias disintegration.
Unlike Petr

[ zcar on]

alka, New Belgrade was not intended to be a residential district. Unlike Nowa
Huta, industry was not its raison-dtre. That it became (largely if not totally) a giant residen-
tial suburb is a commentary on the projects lack of economic sustainability Yugoslavia
simply could not afford to realize such an ambitious project. But it was far from ever becoming
just another monotonous series of high-rise apartment blocks. The lively architectural
ambience that existed in Socialist Belgrade, in frequent contact with developments in Western
Europe and elsewhere, ensured that the new city within a city was changing form and
appearance in response to stimuli from elsewhere.

3

Recent years have seen a notable (if still relatively specialized) recrudescence of interest in
New Belgrade, mainly but not exclusively among architects, sociologists and others with a
professional interest in the city. This follows on from and refers back to an earlier round of
comment and critique in which the thoughts of Henri Lefebvre and the work of Milo

[ s car on]

Perovi

[ cacut e]

figure prominently.

4

The tendency in this contemporary writing is to register horror at the
despoliation of a rare example of modernist planning even as it expresses sympathy for
Lefebvres call for recognition that the city is complex. As Dimitrijevi

[ cacut e]

points out, there is
an underlying and devastating irony in New Belgrade that a city conceived to stand for
socialist values is now a repository for the logic of untrammelled capital accumulation.

5

At the
same time, it would be a mistake to exaggerate a crude binary distinction between a socialist/
modernist period in New Belgrades development and a much more recent market-led trans-
formation. While a number of different chronologies have been advanced, it probably makes
most sense to see a more or less continual process of change in New Belgrade, punctuated by
a number of significant developments. There is, however, a final irony in the story of New
Belgrade, as Mari

[ cacut e]

et al. argue, that there exists an appreciation of New Belgrade among its
inhabitants present not only in everyday life, but also in literature, movies, and music indicat-
ing coexistence of New Belgrades inhabitants with their environment.

6

This paper represents an attempt to address some of these ironies and apparent contradic-
tions while telling the story of New Belgrades growth and mutations. The paper starts with a
discussion of some salient characteristics of socialist cities within which New Belgrade can be
set. The main sections of the paper present an account of the development of New Belgrade
that juxtaposes transformations in the built environment with a sense of daily lived experi-
ences, setting this within the context of the momentous changes that have affected Yugoslavia
and Serbia during this period. In doing so, I will argue for a reading of New Belgrade that
emphasizes the nature of the urban landscape as mirror of social change. The very nature of
the never-complete New Belgrade, with its large open spaces and broad avenues, has, I will
argue, made it particularly prone to the construction of the built landscape of neo-liberal
capital. These accretions have multiplied to the point where they now populate nearly all the
remaining empty plots, creating thus a patchwork of different styles of urbanism and a highly
z
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211

distinctive record of changing approaches to urban development and urban life. They provide
an unusually complete setting from which to explore the broader issues surrounding the nature
of modernist and socialist and post-modernist and post-socialist urbanism. It is in this sense
that New Belgrade manages to be both paradigmatic and exceptional.

Modernist urbanism, socialist urbanism

The first stone for New Belgrade was laid in 1948, the year of the break with the Soviet Union.
This is an important pointer to the way the new district developed. Unusually, New Belgrade
was both a modernist city and a socialist city. It was both modernist and socialist in its adher-
ence to a geometric street plan and in its combination of a separation of functions and provision
of services within the housing blocks. Under socialism, urban form and space were seen as
ways of shaping and improving society in a direction congenial to socialist ideals, but socialist
cities in practice varied enormously.

7

Modernist urbanism was of course predicated on the
belief that urban form could be used as a conditioning tool for society.
Discussion of socialist urbanism cannot be conducted in isolation from consideration of the
modernist movement. But while the influence of the Congrs Internationaux dArchitecture
Moderne (CIAM), the Athens charter and Le Corbusier should not be underestimated, socialist
urbanism cannot simply be equated with modernist urbanism. After all, the victory of the
Urbanists in the USSR in their debates with contemporaries who favoured a dismantling of the
urban legacy was followed not long afterwards by the triumph of socialist neo-classicism,
which had little in common with modernist ideals.

8

Modernist urbanism has much more
readily identifiable and consistent features than does socialist urbanism while of course lacking
socialisms ideological foundations. However, they share a backbone of central characteristics,
from which each diverges at various times in different places. These include:
(1) A fundamental faith in the centrality of the plan. The plan was the charter for a more
ordered future.
(2) Functional zoning, a key tenet of modernist urbanism.
(3) A generous use of space. This was made possible in socialist cities as a result of state
ownership of land, a feature of the under-urbanization characteristic of socialist
urbanism.

9

Open spaces formed an important part of modernist plans.
(4) Green space. There was a specific emphasis on the importance of green space.
(5) An emphasis on the city as locus for production and widespread provision of land for
industry.

10

(6) The use of industrialized and therefore standardized building techniques.

11

(7) A parallel sense of standardized, uniform human life.
(8) Large housing estates, characteristic of all CEE cities. In Soviet cities, the neighbourhood
units,

mikro rayoni

, showed the influence of various modernist currents of thought.

12

(9) Building

ex novo

. New cities sprang up from Siberia to Brazil.
New Belgrade incorporates or reflects many of these common features. And it encapsulates a
further one: Projects in socialist new towns were hardly ever completed.

13

In a similar vein, New Belgrade reflects many of the changes that have overtaken CEE
cities in the last 20 years including the introduction of a planning regime that is subservient to
212

P. Waley

the dictates of the market and the requirements of international capital and a restructuring of
urban areas leading to the development of a central business district and the growth of suburbs
and beyond them an urban sprawl.
Market-oriented planning has clearly become the central tenet in Serbia, as it has in the rest
of CEE. Ta

[ scedi l ]

an-Kok refers to opportunity-led planning with its role call of consultants, archi-
tects and property developers and to corrective planning, a regime in which public authorities
are forced to be flexible to attract inward investment.

14

There is a clear link between this looser
control exercised by authorities operating within a neo-liberal regulatory environment and the
incidence of black market activity. Petrovi , for example, argues that Urban governance in
post-socialist cities is more tolerant of illegal practices.

15

Ironically, the discourse and
practice of participation appears to be missing from the current style of entrepreneurial
governance. In the context of Sofia, Hirt notes the technocratic top-down nature of planning.
The same view on the training and professional outlook of planners is expressed by Vujo

[ s car on]

evi

[ cacut e]

and Nedovi

[ cacut e]

-Budi

[ cacut e]

.

16

They see planning legislation and its instrumentalization in the 2001
Regional Spatial Plan of the Belgrade Administrative Area and the 2003 Master Plan of
Belgrade as taking a narrow technocratic view of the role of planning.
Entrepreneurial urban governance has suffused the whole of CEE, including the Yugoslav
successor states. Within this model, FDI plays a transformative role.

17

The influx of capital invest-
ment from Western Europe and North America, as well as Japan and Korea, has created a new
hierarchy of cities, with a rapid development of central cities and under urbanization in smaller
cities of a newly cast periphery. According to this extension of world city thinking, this new
hierarchy is fashioned by the differing nature of FDI. Corporate regional headquarters, supported
by an array of advanced producer services, have already transformed the three largest cities of
the CEE countries, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, and are having similar effects on Moscow.
On the ground, a process of spatial restructuring has occurred as a result of which the cities
of CEE have developed features previously more familiar in the urban areas of Western
Europe. Alongside the creation of CBDs and the process of suburbanization have come other
phenomena such as the commercialization and privatization of sites vacated by industry and a
growing number of hypermarkets and shopping malls in peripheral areas of large cities. At the
same time, the commodification of urban space and the diffusion of extra-legal construction
have led to a growing impromptu infill urbanization, often through the construction of
commercial buildings.

18

Privatization has triggered socio-spatial segregation, or, what
Stanilov refers to as Balkanisation of the urban fabric.

19

Yugoslav cities have not been immune to these changes. But many of them have occurred
somewhat later or in intensified form as a result of the far more disruptive and retarded nature
of transition in the former Yugoslav countries.

20

And, as we shall see, many of these develop-
ments are visible in contemporary New Belgrade. However, perhaps because of what is
perceived as the exceptional nature of the post-Yugoslav tradition, and with a few exceptions
many of which are listed above, consideration of the ex-Yugoslav case has been largely absent
from wider discussion.

The planning and early construction of New Belgrade

New Belgrade occupies what was once a highly strategic site between two rivers, the Danube
and the Sava, and between two empires, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian. Plans for
s
c
s c
c c

213

construction of a new settlement on the marshes between the existing settlements of Belgrade
and Zemun had existed during the first incarnation of the Yugoslav state, in the 1920s and
1930s. The 1923 Master Plan for Belgrade envisaged the construction of luscious neo-
baroque avenues and boulevards, but all that materialized of this plan on the far bank of the
Sava was Belgrade Fair, which contained an eclectic mix of modernist and more traditional
pavilions and which was later transformed by the occupying Nazis into an extermination
camp.

21

The destruction of about one-third of Belgrade during both German and allied air raids in
the Second World War and the establishment of a socialist republic with its capital in
Belgrade gave a new impetus and significance to the idea of constructing a federal capital
outside the existing urban settlement. The first post-war plan was drawn up by Nikola
Dobrovi

[ cacut e]

, who had already established himself as the countrys pre-eminent architect. His
plan for New Belgrade had streets radiating out from a central station and terraces cascading
down to the river in an urban rendering of some formal French garden and opening up a
vista to the old town. This plan formed the basis for the drafting of ground rules for a series
of ensuing competitions for the design of New Belgrade. The fan shape was, however,
dropped in favour of orthogonal blocks, mainly square, and a central axis linking two focal
points, the new federal executive building (SIV Savezno Izvrsno Vece) and the railway
station.

22

A whole series of plans were announced for New Belgrade in the 1950s, after a hiatus
caused by the break with Moscow and the many associated disruptions.

23

Most of these have
been criticized for adhering too rigidly to Corbusian prescriptions or for blindly transferring
Lucio Costas plans for Brasilia, and it is worth bearing in mind in this context the links
between Yugoslav architects and the CIAM.

24

Milo

[ s car on]

Perovi

[ cacut e]

, who staged an influential
intervention in later debates about the future of the central axis and was himself an influential
architect at the University of Belgrade, accused his fellow architects of adhering to an out-
dated over-functional approach that failed to take on board revised thinking aired at the
CIAMs Aix-en-Provence congress held in 1953. Perovi saw two phases in work on New
Belgrade, an early one in which Dobrovi and other great architects participated, and a later
one without them.
The plan that was finally adopted was a conflation of the two winning entries to a national
competition organized and carried out in 1958 and 1959. It was designed around a central
axis, running from the federal executive building to the station, which consisted of buildings
with commercial, cultural and recreational functions, built around a central open space. Plans
to include federal government ministries along this central axis were dropped during the
1950s (Figure 1).

25

The central axis as envisaged in this plan was the subject of warm appre-
ciation from Aleksandar Djordjevi

[ cacut e]

, who was the head of the citys Town Planning Institute:
The monumental axis from the Federal Executive Council building to the new railway
station is no longer only the main street of New Belgrade, but a point to which all the
inhabitants of Belgrade and guests and visitors to the Yugoslav capital will be capital will be
attracted.

26

Figure 1. Branko Petri i s 1957 plan for New Belgrade. According to this plan, influential but unrealised in its detail, the central axis was to be flanked by commercial buildings, while government buildings were to border on the lake. Photograph reproduced from

Novi Beograd, 1961

by courtesy of the Town Planning Institute of Belgrade (Urbanisti ki zavod Beograda).

While this plan was never realized, three landmark buildings were completed in New
Belgrade, mitigating what was otherwise to become an exclusively residential landscape, and
for these, three separate architectural competitions were held. The most significant of the
three buildings was the palace for the Federal Executive Council (SIV; Figure 2). The
c
s c
c
c
c
214

P. Waley

winning entry was subsequently modified in the second half of the 1950s by Mihailo
Jankovi , who went on to become, in Kuli s words, the unofficial court architect to Titos
regime.

27

The resultant building presents itself as an unusual compromise between two prev-
alent contemporary tendencies, the one modernist, light and clean, suggesting the lines and
forms emanating from Brasilia, the other, perhaps less visible on the exterior, the vernacular
c c
Figure 1. Branko Petri[ ccar on] i[ cacut e] s 1957 plan for New Belgrade. According to this plan, influential but
unrealized in its detail, the central axis was to be flanked by commercial buildings, while government
buildings were to border on the lake.
Source: Photograph reproduced from Novi Beograd, 1961 courtesy of the Town Planning Institute of
Belgrade (Urbanisti[ ccar on] ki zavod Beograda).
c c
c

215

references of a classicized modernism. While this building is very much one of a kind, the
second of the three landmark buildings, the CK building, housing the Central Committee
(Central Komitet) of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia eventually materialized in the
guise of a fairly standard internationalist modernist office block, showing the clear influence
of Mies van der Rohe. It dominated its environs, allowing for all-round observation, fittingly,
one might argue, for the headquarters of the Central Committee of the League of
Communists.

Figure 2. The former Federal Executive Council building, one of the great showpieces of New Belgrade, now rather under-used (this and other photographs of contemporary New Belgrade by the author).

While the CK building was placed in a prominent position at the entry point to New
Belgrade for those crossing the river from the old city, the third of the landmark buildings was
located more discretely on the banks of the Danube on the far side of the Federal Executive
building (Figure 3). This was the Yugoslavia Hotel (Hotel Jugoslavija), built over a number of
years between 1947 and 1961, as a prestigious riverside lodging for visiting foreign guests.

28

These three buildings were the only completed expressions of New Belgrades assumed role
as federal capital, and although the plans to build government offices along the central axis were
soon aborted, they were to have been joined by other state and diplomatic buildings. Foreign
embassies were to be encouraged to move to New Belgrade, and, while several were reported
to be considering a move, only the Chinese government memorably, as we shall see later
moved its embassy to this bank of the Sava. In addition, there were plans to locate a number
of museums and other cultural buildings in New Belgrade, on land near the confluence of the
Sava and the Danube next to the CK building.

29

Of these, only one was completed, the Museum
of Contemporary Art (Muzej Savremene Umetnosti), the work of Ivan Anti

[ cacut e]

and Ivanka c
Figure 2. The former Federal Executive Council building, one of the great showpieces of New
Belgrade, now rather under-used.
Source: This and other photographs of contemporary New Belgrade by the author.
216

P. Waley
Figure 3. New Belgrade, showing the Sava and Danube rivers, and old Belgrade and Zemun.
Source: Map drawn by Alison Manson, School of Geography, University of Leeds.

217

Raspopovi

[ cacut e]

. A Museum to the Revolution of the People of Yugoslavia was to have been built
there too, but work was abandoned in the 1970s with only the foundations completed.

Figure 3. New Belgrade, showing the Sava and Danube rivers, and old Belgrade and Zemun (map drawn by Alison Manson, School of Geography, University of Leeds).

Building lives in New Belgrade

New Belgrade was built on marshlands that flooded every spring and autumn, and the initial
work of preparing the terrain was very hard. Eight million cubic metres of sand from the Sava
and the Danube was laid over the terrain to bed it down.

30

The work was done without proper
equipment but with much genuine enthusiasm, especially on the part of the thousands of youth
brigade members from all over Yugoslavia who took part. Photographs show large teams of
men and women transporting soil in wooden wheelbarrows. Lacking specialist machinery,
most work was done by hand. Contemporary accounts are cast very much in the idiom of the
triumph of civilization and the human will over the forces of nature, represented by the treach-
erous marshy terrain (Figures 4 and 5).

31

Figure 4. The rush of enthusiasm to lay the soil for the foundations of New Belgrade. Photograph reproduced from

Novi Beograd, 1961

by courtesy of the Town Planning Institute of Belgrade. Figure 5. The city appearing out of the marshland. Photograph reproduced from

Novi Beograd, 1961

by courtesy of the Town Planning Institute of Belgrade.

New Belgrade was laid out in orthogonal matrix blocks, 300 metres square. In this it
adhered closely to the 1957 General Urban Plan.

32

The vast extent of the planned new part of
Belgrade led inevitably to a permanently unfinished appearance, an impression reinforced by
the fact that the construction of apartment blocks had started in that part of the district that lay
furthest from Belgrade, proceeded by work on blocks closer to the Sava and the old city. In the
middle, the three central blocks remained empty. With the Danube to the north, Zemun to the
west and the Sava and beyond it central Belgrade to the east, a large swath of land to the south
was earmarked for industrial purposes.

33

A power station, shipyards and machinery factories
eventually filled some of this area, but a steelworks located there early on was bankrupted in
the 1970s. Perhaps the single largest departure from earlier concepts of New Belgrade was
the construction in the 1970s and 1980s of massive apartment blocks on the far side of the
c
Figure 4. The rush of enthusiasm to lay the soil for the foundations of New Belgrade.
Belgrade.
218

P. Waley

industrial zone (in Blocks 61, 62 and 63). This was a clear move away from a more sensitive
and expensive modernism towards the technocratic monumentalism of socialist urbanism.
Neither were these buildings so different, however, from the

grands ensembles

built around
Paris, Lyon and other French cities.
The huge scale of New Belgrade made it a very expensive enterprise, and it was not possi-
ble to rely long on the enthusiasm of youth brigades. Contributing to the expense was the lavish
choice of materials, both inside and out, and the care given to the configuration of buildings in
the blocks. As with so many Yugoslav development plans, such expense was only made
possible through centralized funding predicated on loans from abroad and earnings from the
export of military hardware. But if the state controlled the whole process of construction, at a
local level there was a degree of experimentation with community organizations. In the various
plans of the 1950s, New Belgrade was laid out along lines similar to the Soviet

raion

and

mikro
raion

, community structures for new housing estates.

34

These were implemented as

stambene
zajednice

, or residents associations. These later developed into the

mesne zajednice

alongside
reforms of national systems of government which introduced throughout Yugoslavia the
concept of self-management (

samoupravljanje

). In line with Soviet planning prescriptions,
each block was to have a number of community facilities, including a post office, nursery,
Figure 5. The city appearing out of the marshland.
Belgrade.

219

elementary school and supermarket as well as sufficient green space and playgrounds. These
were to be centrally placed, with residential buildings aligned around them.
New Belgrade had originally been planned, along Corbusian modernist lines, to become the
federal capital for the new Yugoslavia. It is ironic then, as Ljiljana Blagojevi

[ cacut e]

has pointed out,
that with the exception of a few isolated landmark buildings it became a giant residential
suburb.

35

It is ironic too that this residential suburb came to incorporate a fairly distinct hier-
archy. The best housing was to be found in the central blocks located on either side of New
Belgrades empty axis. These were allocated to employees of various federal ministries and
agencies and of the military, according to the Yugoslav system of socially owned property,
where state institutions and companies invested in housing for their employees (Figure 6).

36

Figure 6. One of the classic apartment blocks, in Block 22.

As I have already indicated, its sheer scale and the lack of means to continue construction
meant that New Belgrade was always a work in slow progress, progress exacerbated in its early
stages by the split with Moscow in 1948. As mentioned above, a sense of dissatisfaction with
the development of New Belgrade was expressed by Milo

[ s car on]

Perovi

[ cacut e]

in a study undertaken in
the late 1970s under the auspices of the Institute for Development Planning of the City of
Belgrade. The static planning procedure and the exaggeratedly extensive open areas and
over-large building structures, he wrote, [have] led to New Belgrade becoming a monotonous,
c
s c
Figure 6. One of the classic apartment blocks, in Block 22.
220

P. Waley

unattractive town.

37

These criticisms found an echo in one of the entries to an inconclusive
competition held in 1980 to find a winning design for the three blocks on the central axis
between the Federal Executive building and the railway station. The submission from architects
Serge Renaudie and Pierre Guilbaud and the renowned French urban theorist Henri Lefebvre
was accompanied by a long preamble in which they took the modernist urbanism of New
Belgrade to task for ignoring the distinctiveness of place and failing to address the complexity
of cities.
38
If New Belgrade can be seen as a space that was, in the end, hierarchically organized, it
also enshrined an important sense of being representative, representative of the whole of
Yugoslavia. The system of balances that existed meant that top federal military and civilian
officials needed to reflect the national composition of the whole country. The residents of
the more central blocks were as a consequence drawn from all over the country. New
Belgrade was considered to belong to the people of all Yugoslavia, while old Belgrade on
the other side of the Sava River was the home of Beogradjani, residents of the city of longer
standing.
Within the modernist uniformity of the older New Belgrade blocks, there was a consid-
erable amount of architectural variation. This resulted primarily from the choice of different
architects for the main blocks, with each one laying buildings out according to a different
formation within the same orthogonal layout. A certain pride is said to have developed for
specific blocks, and more generally for the blokovi (blocks) of New Belgrade, expressed in
imaginative names reflecting elements such as a distinctive layout.
39
Nevertheless, New
Belgrade shared some of the often-observed inconveniences and lacunae of modernist and
socialist planned communities. Despite the presence of small supermarkets in each block, there
was a shortage of commercial outlets selling anything other than daily needs. The Merkator
Shopping centre on Block 11c was considered dark and unappealing, with poor communica-
tion between its different levels. New Belgrade suffered too from a dearth of cultural and
entertainment amenities only one cinema and the Museum of Contemporary Art, tucked
away among trees near the confluence of the Sava and the Danube.
Perhaps the dominant impression that New Belgrade conveyed was one of open space
and incompleteness. The very centre of New Belgrade was an open axis between the Federal
Executive building and the railway station, but this was interrupted in the mid-1980s when
housing was built on Block 24, adjacent to the station. The station itself remained marginal
within the countrys transport network, little more than a suburban stop, and the blocks by
its entrance were undeveloped. Cultural facilities were planned but not built. Schools and
shops were insufficient. The sense of incompleteness was reinforced by a certain responsive-
ness to changing architectural ideas, both within Yugoslavia and beyond, and buildings,
arguably creating thereby an urban landscape that is anything but static. The construction
of housing in Block 19a was one example, in which traditional elements were combined
with modernist features such as flexible units and movable partitions.
40
Another was the
Sava Centre, across the road from Block 19a, which opened in 1979 and occupied a strategic
position between the main New Belgrade blocks and the Sava River. As if to emphasize the
unfinished nature of New Belgrade, what should have been one of the most prestigious
spaces, along the Sava, was occupied, as a result of tenancy rights contracted with one of the
big state-owned companies, by small, self-built rural-style houses, many of them inhabited
by Roma.
Planning Perspectives 221
The wider framework of change in Serbia
War and the deprivations that coloured the lost decade of the 1990s greatly exacerbated living
conditions in Belgrade and throughout Serbia. Sanctions only served to strengthen the grip on
power of Slobodan Milo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and those around him, who had monopolistic control of many
strategic commodities. The opposition to Milo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and his Socialist Party was always strong,
but he managed, ruthlessly, to control and suppress it. Serbia (at this time, part of residual
Yugoslavia) became a highly centralized country, with all the key levers of political and
economic power under the control of the Socialist Party and its lackeys. A country that had
become radically decentralized with the passage of the new constitution in 1974 now became
vastly reduced and suffocatingly centralized. Indeed, Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] argue that
the re-centralization of government and weakening of the constitutional role and planning
authority of the local communes was the main characteristic of the 1990s.
41
Planning in
Belgrade became inevitably centralized.
In some ways the transition in Serbia has followed patterns set in other CEE countries. In
other ways Serbia has very much followed its own path (or, perhaps, a specifically Western
Balkan path), characterized by what is generally known as a blocked, prolonged or delayed
transition, caused by war and authoritarian government.
42
Both these divergent interpretations
can be seen reflected in housing policy and housing conditions in the 1990s. On the face of it,
housing privatization bore much in common with other transitional CEE countries. It was
conducted rapidly and ruthlessly, but this very rapidity and the political calculations that lay
behind it set Serbia apart. As Petrovi[ cacut e] points out, housing privatization was conducted so as to
solidify the grip on power of the ruling elite around Milo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] .
43
The same point is made by
Djordjevi[ cacut e] . As little as between 2% and 5% of housing, she points out, was left in public hands
by 1993. Those who benefited principally, alongside the political elite, were urban dwellers,
and in particular professional, managerial and other members of the middle class. Housing
privatization, Djordjevi[ cacut e] writes, acted as a shock absorber that gave impoverished middle-
class households the impression that they were not among the losers in the transformation.
44
Flats were released to tenants at a third of their market value on highly favourable loan terms.
But this extent of privatization was highly inappropriate for a country as poor as Serbia, in
which, once a period of raging inflation had been overcome, salaries were low when they were
paid at all and prices remained very high.
The 1990s saw a decline in legal housing construction. At the same time illegal construc-
tion of housing, which had been a significant feature of socialist Yugoslavia, continued apace,
as more and more people were pushed into the black market to meet their housing needs.
45
Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] , in considering the challenges facing planners in the early
2000s, argue that Massive illegal construction as a long-lasting tendency is perhaps the most
complex and serious obstacle to introducing a more organized spatial pattern.
46
Vujovi[ cacut e] and
Petrovi[ cacut e] refer to estimates that 10% of housing stock in Belgrade is illegal, representing over
40,000 separate buildings.
47
It is perhaps not surprising that the legislative emphasis over the
last few years has been on legalizing illegal constructions, rather than on preventing their
construction.
Illegal construction was generally a problem of the old city. In the apartment blocks of New
Belgrade, maintenance was the problem in the 1990s for those who had recently purchased the
apartments in which they lived. The country for which New Belgrade had originally been
conceived as a capital was falling apart, and there was little available for the upkeep of the
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222 P. Waley
buildings themselves and their surrounding land. In a number of blocks, permission was
granted for the construction on the roofs of buildings of small apartments whose occupants
would be contracted to undertake maintenance tasks. The experiment appears to have been less
than successful. Lifts ceased to function, and rubbish chutes became blocked. The centralized
heating systems failed.
48
Established residential communities were disrupted and dispersed by
the war, as they were in some areas by the privatization process. Refugees from Croatia and
Bosnia moved into apartments, especially in the massive southwest blocks (Blocks 6163), and
there was a rise in drug-related crime in a number of areas (the two developments seen by
many as being linked). Then, at the end of the 1990s, the coup de grace was delivered by
NATO bombs. A number of landmark buildings were damaged in the bombing campaign of
1999, notably the CK building, which had been appropriated by Milo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] s Socialist Party.
The top storeys of that building were severely damaged, and were subsequently removed
entirely when the building was renovated. Meanwhile, perhaps the most infamous casualty of
the NATO bombing was the Chinese Embassy, damaged beyond repair by a bomb that had
apparently been intended for a different target.
The contemporary planning framework in Serbia and its capital
Milo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] s regime, unpopular but stubbornly resistant in Serbia, was finally deposed in the
turbulent events of October 2000. From then on, Serbias trajectory followed a path more simi-
lar to that pursued by other Central and Eastern European countries, albeit with a number of
distinctive characteristics. For those who envision a fairly predictable transition away from
socialism towards western European welfare capitalism, Serbia certainly presents some diffi-
culties and ambiguities. Not least of these involves planning regulation and the ownership of
urban land, where Serbia has occupied an ambivalent place somewhere between state and
market, and in many ways similar to that of China. Planning itself remains dominated by a
technocratic approach, with a focus on the provision of physical infrastructure, or, as Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e]
and Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] suggest, it is now project-led cum market-based.
49
A crucial piece of post-2000 legislation was the Planning and Construction Act of 2003,
which was designed to lead the way to the private ownership of urban land.
50
This legislative
act was, however, widely criticized for turning its back on participatory, integrated planning
and for its restricted interpretation of the role of planning. A similar law, enacted in September
2009, was also designed to hasten the transfer of urban land to private ownership but was crit-
icized on similar grounds.
51
Questions remain concerning the establishment of monetary value
for usage rights as well as the current value of urban land. And various anomalies and grey
areas remain, for example the definition of the public realm, leaving it unclear as to whether
developers should also be made to install infrastructure. The 2009 law covers several other
important issues; for example, it introduces various measures that facilitate the legalization of
illegal constructions Above all, it is designed to harmonize planning, construction and property
ownership with EU norms.
One of the main issues tackled by the legislation is the conjoined one of ownership and
restitution of urban land. Urban land in Serbia is owned by the state, but in the case of
Belgrade, including New Belgrade, the national government delegates responsibilities to the
Belgrade municipal government, for whom the Belgrade Land Development Public Agency
actually carries out management tasks. To complicate matters, in New Belgrade, large old
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parastatal companies occupy important blocks and have tended to act as if they were owners
of the land. In a system not at all dissimilar to that which exists in China, property users pay a
use fee in effect, a lease to the state.
52
This lease, which had reached quite a high level
in New Belgrade by 2008, covers the total potential floor space on new build and thus encour-
ages vertical construction; what is more, floor area ratios can be raised if a case is made to the
city assembly. Vujovi and Petrovi write of a flourishing illegal commercial real estate
market through transactions with rights of use, although this probably applies less in New
Belgrade than in other urban areas.
53
Compared with the rest of Belgrade, urban development is much easier in New Belgrade
because interested parties know that issues of restitution do not exist. New Belgrade has,
indeed, seen the lions share of development projects in the first decade of this century. Almost
all the empty plots in New Belgrade have been leased, and the rest have been earmarked for
development. However, New Belgrade like the rest of the city, presents various drawbacks for
property investors. These relate to the obstacles and bureaucratic hurdles that are placed in
front of developers; it has taken longer to obtain construction permits in Serbia than in most
other countries in the world, and there have been more of them to be obtained.
54
In this context,
it remains to be seen how effective the new legislative measures will be. The lack of transpar-
ency and excess of bureaucracy in this process is recognized by the government in Belgrade,
and the 2009 Law on Planning and Construction is designed in part to speed up this process,
although relevant changes will also have to be implemented at the municipal level.
While the ambiguities that have clouded the regulatory environment have put off many
investors, others appear to have been attracted by the possibility of making considerably greater
profits than would be possible in a more tightly regulated and transparent market. A steady rise
in property prices in the middle part of the first decade of this century saw the price of residential
property in New Belgrade reach 2000 per square metre. The purchase price of a lease on
newly built property lagged behind, so that even when the per-square-metre cost of construction
was thrown in, a clear profit was accrued for developers. It is interesting to note that many invest-
ments in the property market in New Belgrade over the last decade have come, as well as from
domestic and foreign-based Serbian interests, from the wider Southeast European region, under-
stood here as stretching from Austria to Greece, with the important addition of Israel. Slovenian
investors were the first in, as they were familiar with the system of state ownership of urban
land, and they reaped the initial benefits. The first new retail centre in New Belgrade, the prom-
inently located new Merkator, was a Slovenian investment. Greek interests are active in a
number of sites in New Belgrade, most notably in the central Block 26. Israeli companies have
been particularly prominent in Belgrade, as they have in other major cities of CEE, more willing,
it would appear, to adapt to local regulatory and market conditions.
55
Two Israeli investments
in New Belgrade stand out for their size and prominence. The first is called Airport City, and
consists of two rows of large glass office blocks containing nearly 200,000 square metres,
constructed at a cost of 200 million.
56
The second is the same Block 26 in which Greek inves-
tors are active. But while Greek and Israeli investors have taken to the opportunities that they
have seen in New Belgrade and beyond, Turkish investors and construction companies, respon-
sible for a significant number of construction projects in Moscow, while reportedly keen to work
in Serbia, have been put off by the regulatory environment and high prices.
57
The political climate through the first decade of this century was not uniformly favourable
for foreign investments, as the prevailing mood lurched between a defensive nationalism and
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224 P. Waley
a more outward-looking liberalism. Nevertheless, the wide open spaces that remained in New
Belgrade at the turn of the century were tempting targets. The unfinished nature of the terrain
appeared to be inviting investments. There were plenty of positive factors for the boosters to
draw upon. These included Belgrades central position in Southeast Europe and its location at
the crossroads of two European transport corridors (7 and 10). Belgrade was chosen as South-
east Europes City of the Future; it hosted the Student Games in 2009 and the Eurovision Song
Contest in 2008. Prices rose, and with them, so did the developers hype. The talk of the town
towards the end of the decade was all about Russians buying property in Montenegro, and the
nouveaux riches of Montenegro buying up property in New Belgrade. The economic downturn
of the last years of the decade only really impacted on property development in Belgrade in
2009, but there is no special reason to believe that construction work will not pick up again in
the following few years.
New Belgrade as new business centre
New Belgrade today is a highly unusual monument to changing approaches to urbanism both
urban construction and urban design. It is unusual because it speaks so eloquently of changing
approaches to city building. Many of New Belgrades city blocks retain their classic modernist
appearance, combining a sense of social and communal solidity on the outside with a sort of
large-scale intimacy on the inside. The variation in configuration between the blocks is still
apparent, and one still gets a sense of the thought, care and expense that went into their
construction. Cars are generally absent from the areas inside the blocks, which manage as a
result to retain their communal facilities, including playgrounds for children and basketball
courts and these appear to be well used. There is plentiful provision of green space, some of
it landscaped and some not. And there are the social and commercial facilities kindergartens
and primary schools alongside shops, post offices and the like.
58
The blocks come in a number of different configurations of buildings, but many of them
are marked in some way by later constructions. Because of the generous use of space in the
original design for New Belgrade, there has been plenty of room for new developments.
The area was punctuated by new interpolations in various attenuated modernist styles, includ-
ing the Sava Centre, built in 1978 for a conference of the Organisation of Security and Coop-
eration in Europe, and culminating in the Genex building, designed by Mihajlo Mitrovi[ cacut e] and
completed in 1980, a striking twinned skyscraper dominating the approach to the city from the
west.
59
More recent constructions have introduced post-modernist styles, some of them delib-
erately discordant but distinctive, others bland and unmemorable. The locus classicus of obtru-
sive post-modernism stands on one of the main streets of New Belgrade next to the former
Federal Executive Building. This is the so-called Little Red Riding Hood building, designed
by Mario Jobst and completed in 1999 (Figure 7). This is and the buildings behind it are said
to be the domain of sports players, singers and new age entrepreneurs. The buildings in this
block are one might say middle-rise gated communities. Elsewhere, post-modernist accre-
tions have been tacked onto modernist blocks with little or no attention to style. Thus one row
of two-storey commercial outlets and offices, known as New Belgrades Wall Street, lines one
of New Belgrades central thoroughfares, obscuring the modernist block behind it.
Figure 7. The so-called Little Red Riding Hood building, in Block 12.
New landmarks have appeared reflecting changing social values. In a central part of New
Belgrade, a prominent indeed bulky church, St. Dimitrije, looks across the street at the
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New Merkator supermarket. These twin monuments to the mores of the new New Belgrade
need to be placed alongside another pre-eminent symbol of new social values, the Arena. This
large multi-purpose hall, built over a period of years in the 1990s, occupies a significant posi-
tion within New Belgrade; it fills the middle one of the three blocks in the central axis between
the former Federal Executive Building and the railway station. The Arena has acted as a venue
for tennis competitions, the Eurovision song contest and music concerts and political rallies of
a nationalistic stamp. Now, these three landmarks of 1990s New Belgrade have been overtaken
and overwhelmed by the two iconic developments of the New Belgrade of the 2000s, Airport
City and the Delta City shopping complex. The latter, which draws shoppers away from the
citys central pedestrian street, includes outlets like Marks & Spencer. Meanwhile, some of
the older landmark buildings have been re-clad and re-branded. Such is the fate (epitomizing
the changes that have occurred throughout New Belgrade) that has befallen the Yugoslavia
Hotel, part of which became a casino under the control of the Serbian war criminal [ Zcar on] eljko
Ra[ zcar on] natovi[ cacut e] (Arkan) and has more recently been re-opened as a casino by an Austrian
company.
60
In similar fashion, the damaged CK building has been re-clad, and is now an office
block. Stretches of New Belgrades waterfront are to be transformed through the construction
of a marina and an aquatic centre, paradigmatic features of post-modern urbanism. Most
Z
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Figure 7. The so-called Little Red Riding Hood building, in Block 12.
226 P. Waley
important of all the changes that have or are about to occur in New Belgrade is the strengthen-
ing of transport links with the city centre. One is the upgrading of the railway station and rail
link to the east bank of the Sava, accompanied by the development of the block on which the
station is located, and the other is the construction of a new road bridge between New Belgrade
and the city centre, a sine qua non for the further development of New Belgrade given the
congestion that characterizes the current road links.
In the makeover of New Belgrade centre stage has been held, appropriately enough, by
developments, long foreshadowed and then actual, in one the central block that stands across
the road from the former Executive Building. The development of Block 26 and those on either
side has, as we have seen, been a subject of longstanding controversy. One by one, these blocks
were filled in, leaving only Block 26 standing empty. The story of this development is a
complicated one. The current rights owners are two large conglomerates that had formerly
been socially owned, Napred and Energoprojekt. They have gone ahead with the construction
of office buildings in part of the block, and have controversially sanctioned the construction of
a church that now sits there looking totally out of context. The principal development project
involves the construction, financed by Israeli investors, of four large skyscrapers. At the time
of this writing, the project is on hold. However, it is clear that a new central business district
will materialize as a result of a project whose main thrust is upwards and which consists of the
provision of high-quality office space with a smaller residential component. The process
behind this pivotal development exemplifies the neo-liberal urbanism that has characterized
urban change in CEE over the last decade and longer. There has been a lack of public discus-
sion of development possibilities, and more precisely a lack of consultation among planning
experts.
61
At the same time, there has been an automatic presumption among the relevant
parties government, architectural elite and investors that a new business centre is required
and that this is best translated through the construction of high-rise buildings. The govern-
ments vision of New Belgrade as business centre was sketched out in the Belgrade 2021
Master Plan.
62
As such, there is minimal consideration given to the nature of the surrounding
urban landscape and still less of New Belgrade as an important monument to modern urbanism.
The patterns and tenor of life in New Belgrade today
New Belgrade is seen today by some observers as being characterized by ever greater
differentiation. Others have darker premonitions. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , for example, sees New Belgrade
as a city at war with itself, with a catastrophic deterioration of public space, unplanned
development, particularly of grey economy commercial outlets, and growing socio-spatial
fragmentation.
63
In trying to pick ones way through these various interpretations, one should
be mindful of the variety of housing types (existing already by the end of 1980s) which have
led, inevitably perhaps, to differentiated neighbourhoods.
64
The almost total privatization of
housing in New Belgrade (as elsewhere in the city) has contributed to the differentiation
between blocks. But at the same time, it has reinforced a district-wide socio-spatial patterning.
Flats in central blocks have risen in price, some of them quite steeply, while in other, more
peripheral blocks, a much more uneven pattern of occupation has arisen, with many flats rented
out on the private market. This contrast is borne out by research conducted by Mina Petrovi[ cacut e] .
In commenting on different perceptions of New Belgrade neighbourhoods, she concludes from
her survey that perceptions of safety were the predominant variant between residents of one of
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New Belgrades central blocks and one of its more peripheral blocks, and that these were
conditioned in large part by the spatial characteristics of the areas.
65
It is certainly the case that
the spatial characteristics of New Belgrade blocks today vary enormously. The very earliest
blocks, dating from the 1960s, have begun to look rather shabby, while the architectural and
design pedigree of the central blocks of the 1970s remains strikingly visible (Figure 6). From
then on, we have on the one hand the mega blocks of the districts south-western reaches
(Blocks 61 to 63) followed in short order by a much more varied constellation of housing
styles, including some very well designed low-rise housing near the Sava River and a wide-
spread and ever-growing infill of more recent housing, culminating in the huge Belvil devel-
opment, constructed for the 2009 Student Games, and then sold off to the private sector.
66
Amidst this rather unlikely diversity unlikely, that is, for an urban district whose concep-
tion and rationale is so unashamedly modern three types of residential environment can be
identified: prestige, modernist and peripheral. Apartments have become extremely expensive
(compared to average income levels) throughout the central blocks of New Belgrade, but the
buildings that have a special cachet as the residences of the rich are those of recent construction
such as the Little Red Riding Hood building mentioned earlier and others in the same block.
However, apartments are expensive throughout much of the central blocks of New Belgrade.
Block 30, in the centre of the district, next to Block 26 and the Little Red Riding Hood building
is a case in point. An apartment there in the early 1990s, at the time of privatization, cost
somewhere in the region of 4500 DM (about 1500 at the time a time of rapid inflation in
Belgrade). In 2008, apartments in the same block were selling for 150,000 to 200,000, with
a minimum price of 70,000 for one of the smallest apartments. The average was 2000 per
square metre, while across the road in the block containing the Little Red Riding Hood build-
ing, the average cost of a square metre was 3500.
67
The second type is the modernist apartment building, a feature of the central blocks of New
Belgrade. These central blocks retain to a large extent many of their outstanding original
features, designed by some of Yugoslavias best architects. The finest examples, in blocks 21,
22 and 23, have generous windows with wooden shutters and recessed balconies. They have,
in the words of Mihajlo Mitrovi[ cacut e] , designer of the Genex building, richly profiled facades.
68
In addition, these blocks still have central spaces that contain various communal amenities
shops, post offices, playgrounds, football and basketball courts, and the like. And for the most
part, these spaces are reasonably well maintained; certainly there is no evidence here of the
bleakness and anomie that one associates with socialist new towns in CEE.
69
Some of the
social fabric of the modernist design remains. Neighbourhood associations (mesne zajednice)
still exist, although no longer as social meeting places but as administrative, locally based
offices of the New Belgrade government, the op[ s c ar on] tina; they exist, but often do not function, and
there are now fewer of them in New Belgrade eighteen in all meaning that one association
covers several blocks and a large number of residents. Each building has its own residents
organizations (ku[ cacut e] ni savet), but unlike the president of the neighbourhood associations who
receives a salary from the local government, officials are unpaid, and residents organizations
are frequently all but dormant.
70
Given the size of the buildings and the fact that there are many
elderly residents who have been there since the days of Yugoslavia, difficulties arise in
organizing and financing maintenance.
The third type is that of peripheral residential areas, particularly in the south-western
extension of New Belgrade (Figures 8 and 9). Blocks 61, 62 and 63, with their huge prefabri-
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228 P. Waley
cated concrete slabs and the more amenable buildings in blocks closer to the river Sava, were
completed after the central and north-western blocks, and built for a different type of resi-
dent, not for members of Yugoslavias ruling cadres but for ordinary low-income working
people, many of whom had jobs in the old city on the other side of the river. With the disin-
tegration of Yugoslavia and the economic and political disruption that ensued, a breakdown
of social norms occurred both in the wider territory of Yugoslavia but also in Belgrade, the
capital of rump Yugoslavia. In New Belgrade this manifested itself predominantly in the
harsher environments of the monolithic blocks and surrounding spaces of the south-west part
of the district (Figures 8 and 9). Drug taking became widespread, as portrayed in the 1998
film The Wounds (Rane), which depicts the lives of two would-be hoodlums and is largely
filmed in New Belgrade. Poverty and dislocation was generally seen to create a sense of
fragmentation. It was against this background of an already degraded environment that an
influx of Chinese occurred, the beneficiaries of an open visa regime negotiated by the
Chinese and Yugoslav governments. One particular area within New Belgrade, in Block 70,
became the basing point and distribution centre for Chinese commercial undertakings
throughout the Balkans.
71
The presence of a relatively large number of Chinese at a time of
great economic hardship produced reactions that ranged between bewilderment and hostility.
Figure 8. A view of pre-fab panel housing in Block 70a in New Belgrade.
The Chinese, however, remained, and today there are many signs that their presence is
accepted and in some quarters welcomed. A much older community in New Belgrade is that
of the Roma. The largest Roma settlement lay under the Gazela Bridge that crosses the Sava
River. Roma living there were making money through recycling, but were moved out and
dispersed in the summer of 2009 to make way for the reconstruction of the bridge.
72
This
was just the latest of numerous attempts to remove the settlement and re-house its
inhabitants.
Figure 8. The panorama of Pre-fab panel housing in Block 70a in New Belgrade. Figure 9. The close-up of the later phases of the development of Pre-fab panel housing in Block 70a in New Belgrade.
Despite the potential for social fragmentation, New Belgrade remains a district of choice
for a significant number of people.
73
Undoubtedly one of the main reasons is the proximity of
the two rivers, the Sava and the Danube. The Sava in particular is lined with bars and cafs
which are particularly popular with people from both banks of the river. The ability to sit on a
barge on the river sipping a drink is an amenity the like of which is not to be found in many
other large European cities. In addition, the residents of New Belgrade have about 25 square
metres of green space each as opposed to an estimated seven to eight square metres in the old
city.
74
There are of course issues and problems. The large expanse of parkland near the
confluence of the Sava and the Danube, part of which was formally designated Friendship Park
(Park Prijateljstva), is sorely in need of maintenance. The same can be said of many of the
Figure 9. Pre-fab panel housing in Block 70a in New Belgrade.
230 P. Waley
green spaces within blocks, part of the more generalized failure to carry through affordable
plans for maintenance. The lack of car parking space is already a significant problem and likely
to become worse. The lack of bridges a situation only being remedied now leads to traffic
blockages and overcrowded buses crawling back and forth across the Sava to old Belgrade. In
the end, however, as Hirt argues, there are plentiful signs that New Belgrade remains an
attractive choice of place to live for many of the inhabitants of Belgrade, not least of which is
the high price of property there.
75
Figure 10. Parking is likely to become an ever greater problem. The inside of Block 22.
Concluding thoughts on preserving New Belgrade
New Belgrade might have been built according to classic modernist prescriptions, but it is testi-
mony to the rapid change in ideas, styles and the technology of residential architecture. The
purity of the classic modernist blocks has been compromised both at a district-wide level and
within and around the blocks by later constructions. There are prominently located parts of
New Belgrade where the modernist apartment blocks give way suddenly to housing from the
1980s, 1990s and 2000s, with coloured wall panels, curved corners and sloping roofs, so differ-
ent in spirit and style from the natural concrete, wooden frames, and strong lines of the
Figure 10. Parking is likely to become an ever greater problem. The inside of Block 22.
modernist buildings. Away from the centre of New Belgrade, the purer spirit of the plans of
the 1960s and the buildings of the 1970s have been replaced by an approach that is in certain
areas more functional and in others more eclectic, with little attempt to provide community
structures and no investment in high-quality materials and design; here the open spaces along-
side the main thoroughfares have been eaten into by kiosks, small businesses and larger
commercial outlets. While in the former industrial belt that divided the old centre of New
Belgrade from the massive apartment blocks built to the south, large commercial and housing
projects are being completed now, on the plots left vacant by departing industries. Not only,
then, does New Belgrade end up by telling a revealing story of the history of housing styles in
the last 50 years, but it also reflects changes in urban planning and development. And equally
importantly, this vast monument to social housing has now become completely privatized
owner occupancy everywhere you look.
New Belgrade speaks to a wider story of social and urban change in the contemporary
world. It was created to reflect an internationalization predicated on the idea of a flat world
(one of international solidarity among non-aligned states and their peoples), but it has now
become subject to a literal Balkanization, a bumpy regionalism that sees Belgrade repositioned
as regional centre for Southeast Europe, with New Belgrade as its epicentre. Like the state
before it, capital has created its own spaces in New Belgrade, as it has its own geographies of
the region. It has also fashioned its own cultural logic, cultural practices and consumption
habits, alongside new disciplines of work and play, and these are colonizing the spaces of New
Belgrade. Nevertheless the vestiges of past eras (only recently past) continue to be a presence
in the landscape and an influence on peoples imaginations. It is hoped that this paper might
have two outcomes. The first is further research, building on that already undertaken by
Petrovi[ cacut e] and colleagues, on the changing relationship between the residents of New Belgrade
and their environment.
76
The second is a strengthening of moves to have the modernist blocks
and layout of New Belgrade preserved and internationally recognized.
Despite being such a large-scale and thorough example of socialist modernism, there have
been no attempts to date to preserve any part of New Belgrade, although there is support for
the idea in some quarters. This lack of interest stems no doubt from three factors: the failings
of modernist urbanism, the shortcomings of socialist urbanism and the failure and collapse of
Yugoslavia. Modernist urbanism calls for a sense of completeness. It leaves no space for
blemishes or exceptions. But the sheer size of New Belgrade meant that it was never complete.
Construction work in parts of the district had already departed from the prescriptions of
modernism by the 1980s. The shortcomings of socialism were manifested both in failures of
management and of equity. The scale of the project put it beyond the resources of Yugoslavias
federal socialist government, while on the ground the inability to secure a sufficient supply of
housing led to the construction of monumental apartment blocks that lacked the architectural
quality and communal facilities of the earlier blocks. Although the plan to locate federal
ministry buildings there was abandoned very early, New Belgrade was seen by its residents as
Yugoslav as opposed to Serbian old Belgrade. Residents of the older blocks worked in the
armed forces and federal ministries and so by definition came from all over the country. When
the country itself collapsed, so too did belief in the transformative power of New Belgrade. It
would be highly misleading however to suggest that the district is decaying or moribund. On
the contrary, the vigorous construction work that has filled empty spaces in the district and the
construction of new infrastructure including bridges suggest that New Belgrade is likely to
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232 P. Waley
become one of the leading centres for business activity in Southeast Europe. One can only
regret that this is happening with little regard for the possibilities of preserving, if only in some
of the more central blocks, a sense of the modernist urbanism of which New Belgrade is such
an egregious example.
Acknowledgements
The research on which this paper is based was undertaken primarily during visits to Belgrade in February
and July 2008 and interviews with planners, academics and architects. This paper was made possible as
a result of the generous help provided by a number of people. I am deeply indebted for help and guidance
to [ Zcar on] aklina Gligorijevi[ cacut e] , Miodrag Feren[ ccar on] ak, Zoran Eri[ cacut e] , Mina Petrovi[ cacut e] , Zoran Djukanovi[ cacut e] and Vanja
Ku[ ccar on] ina. Darko Radovi[ cacut e] , Ljiljana Blagojevi[ cacut e] and Jilly Traganou provided me with contacts and insights.
I would also like to thank Dejan Krajinovi[ cacut e] (Beobuild website), Slobodanka Prekajski (Belgrade Land
Development Public Agency), Nikola Mitrovi[ cacut e] (Dunavski Kej mesna zajednica) and Jovan Mitrovi[ cacut e]
(Medium International Development). I would also like to thank Marta Vukoti[ cacut e] Lazar for affording me
access to a number of useful volumes in the archives of the Institute of Urbanism Belgrade. Finally, I
would like to thank Vladimir Kuli[ cacut e] for reading through a draft and correcting a number of mistakes. Any
remaining errors and sins of omission and commission are of course entirely my own.
Notes on contributor
Paul Waley is a senior lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leeds. His research grows out
of a strong focus on specific geographic settings both in East Asia and Southeastern Europe. Tokyo has
provided the context for much of his research, but recently he has undertaken research on the Balkans
and Italy, including work on Trieste, leading to a special themed issue of Social and Cultural Geography
(Vol. 10, No. 3) which he edited.
Notes
1. S. Hirt, Belgrade, Serbia, Cities 26 (2009): 300.
2. Lj. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , Strategies of Modernism in the Planning and Construction of New Belgrade, in
Stockholm Belgrade: Proceedings from the Third Swedish-Serbian Symposium in Stockholm, April
2125, 2004, ed. S. Gustavsson (Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and
Antiquities, 2007), 166.
3. Z. Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] and B. Cavri[ cacut e] , Waves of Planning: A Framework for Studying the Evolution of
Planning Systems and Empirical Insights from Serbia and Montenegro, Planning Perspectives 21
(2006): 410; S. Hirt, Landscapes of Post-modernity: Changes in the Built Fabric of Belgrade and
Sofia since the End of Socialism. Urban Geography 29 (2008): 801.
4. See, for example, Lj. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , Novi Beograd: Osporeni modernizam [New Belgrade: Contested
Modernism] (Belgrade: Zavod za Udzbenike, 2007); Z. Eri[ cacut e] , ed. Differentiated Neighbourhoods of
New Belgrade: Project for the Centre of Visual Culture at MOCAB (Belgrade: Publikum, 2009); I.
Mari[ cacut e] , A. Nikovi[ cacut e] , and B. Mani[ cacut e] , Transformation of the New Belgrade Urban Tissue: Filling the
Space Instead of Interpolation, Spatium 22 (2010): 4756. Lefebvres voice can be heard in
the entry that he submitted to a competition for the partial redesign of New Belgrade: S. Renaudie,
P. Guilbaud, and H. Lefebvre, International Competition for the New Belgrade Urban Structure
Improvement, Competition report (1986). Perovi[ cacut e] s views were expressed in: M. Perovi[ cacut e] , ed.
Iskustva pro[ s car on] losti: Lessons of the Past (Belgrade: Zavod za planiranje razvoja grada Beograda [Insti-
tute for Development Planning of the City of Belgrade], 1985), a volume that was republished in
2008 (Belgrade: Gradjevinska Knjiga).
5. A. Dimitrijevi[ cacut e] , The Brave New Neighbourhoods of New Belgrade, in Differentiated Neighbour-
hoods, ed. Z. Eri[ cacut e] (Belgrade: Publikum, 2009), 117.
Z
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6. Mari[ cacut e] et al., Transformation of the New Belgrade Urban Tissue, 5. Amongst those who have made
New Belgrade a setting for some of their work is Belgrade-born writer and critic Mihajlo Panti[ cacut e] .
7. D. Smith, The Socialist City, 7099; I. Szelenyi, Cities under Socialism and After. Both in
Cities After Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-Socialist Societies, ed. G.
Andrusz, M. Harloe, and I. Szelenyi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 286317; K. Stanilov, Taking
Stock of Post-socialist Urban Development: A Recapitulation, in The Post-Socialist City: Urban
Form and Space Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe after Socialism, ed. K. Stanilov
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 5.
8. C. Bernhardt, Planning Urbanization and Urban Growth in the Socialist Period: The Case of East
German New Towns, 19451989, Journal of Urban History 32 (2005): 10419.
9. Szelenyi, Cities Under Socialism.
10. K. Stanilov, The Restructuring of Non-residential Uses in the Post-socialist Metropolis, in The
Post-Socialist City, ed. K. Stanilov, 93.
11. B. Engel, Public Spaces in the Blue Cities in Russia, Progress in Planning 26 (2006): 155.
12. Stanilov, Housing Trends in Central and Eastern European Cities during and after the Period of
Transition, in The Post-Socialist City, ed. Stanilov, 181.
13. M. Czepczynski, Cultural Landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities: Representation of Powers and Needs
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008): 81.
14. T. Ta[ scedi l ] an-Kok, Budapest, Istanbul, and Warsaw: Institutional and Spatial Change (Delft: Eburon,
2004): 52, 62.
15. M. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Cities after Socialism as a Research Issue, Discussion Paper 34 South East Europe
Series. Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE (2005), 9.
16. S. Hirt, Planning the Post-communist City: Experiences from Sofia, International Planning Studies
10 (2005): 21940; M. Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and Z. Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] , Planning and Societal Context: The Case
of Belgrade, Serbia, in The Urban Mosaic of Post-Socialist Europe: Space, Institutions and Policy,
ed. S. Tsenkova and Z. Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2006), 290.
17. F.E.I. Hamilton and F.W. Carter, Foreign Direct Investment and City Restructuring, in Transforma-
tion of Cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards Globalization, ed. F.E.I. Hamilton, K.
Dimitrovska Andrews, and N. Pichler-Milanovi[ cacut e] (Tokyo: United Nations University, 2005), 11652.
18. For an extended discussion of these issues, see E. Kiss, The Evolution of Industrial Areas in Budapest
after 1989, 14770; S. Hirt and K. Stanilov, The Perils of Post-socialist Transformation: Residential
Development in Sofia, in The Post-Socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformation in Central
and Eastern Europe after Socialism, ed. K. Stanilov (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 21544.
19. K. Stanilov, Democracy, Markets, and Public Space in the Transitional Societies of Central and
Eastern Europe, in The Post-Socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformation in Central and
Eastern Europe after Socialism, ed. K. Stanilov (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 273.
20. On the delayed and disrupted nature of post-socialist transition in Serbia, see M. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Post-
socialist Housing Policy Transformation in Yugoslavia and Belgrade, European Journal of Housing
Policy 1 (2001): 21131; Z. Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] and M. Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] , Interplay Between Political,
Governance, Socio-economic and Planning Systems: Case Study of Former Yugoslavia and Present
Serbia and Montenegro (paper presented at the conference on Winds of Societal Change: Remaking
Post-Communist Cities University of Illinois, June 1819, 2004); Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] ,
Planning and societal context; S. Vujovi[ cacut e] and M. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Belgrades Post-socialist Urban Evolu-
tion: Reflections by the Actors in the Development Process, in The Post-Socialist City: Urban Form
and Space Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe after Socialism, ed. K. Stanilov
(Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 36183.
21. V. Kuli[ cacut e] , Politika arhitekture. Arhitektov Bilten (Ljubljana, Slovenia) XXXV, no. 167/168
(November 2005): 827, 10812, 109.
22. For a full discussion, see Blagojevi[ cacut e] , New Belgrade: Contested Modernism, 62, 67; also, Blagojevi[ cacut e] ,
Strategies of Modernism.
23. A contemporary account of the planning and early years of the construction of New Belgrade exists
in the form of a publication, issued in Serbo-Croat, English and French entitled Novi Beograd 1961.
The book was edited by Milivoje Kova[ ccar on] evi[ cacut e] , Aleksandar Djordjevi[ cacut e] and other architects working on
New Belgrade, and was published by Beogradski Grafi[ cacut e] ki Zovod. No date for publication is given.
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234 P. Waley
24. M. Perovi[ cacut e] , ed. Lessons of the Past, 85, 124. Also, Blagojevi[ cacut e] , New Belgrade: Contested Modern-
ism, 1501.
25. V. Kuli[ cacut e] , Land of the In-Between: Modern Architecture and the State in Socialist Yugoslavia,
194565 (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austen, 2009), 270. Kuli[ cacut e] relates how, The city lost a
good portion of its originally dominant pan-Yugoslav connotations; and despite the fact they were
never entirely erased, the construction of New Belgrade from the mid-1950s on became an increas-
ingly local affair (272).
26. Quoted from Perovi[ cacut e] (ed.), Lessons of the Past, 120.
27. See Kuli[ cacut e] , Land of the In-Between, 273, for an extended discussion. Details of this building, as of
many others in New Belgrade, can be found in M. Mitrovi[ cacut e] , Modern Belgrade Architecture
(Belgrade: Izdava[ ccar on] ki Zavod Jugoslavija, 1975).
28. Mitrovi[ cacut e] , Modern Belgrade Architecture, 129.
29. Novi Beograd 1961, 17, 42.
30. Ibid., 57.
31. A classic case in point is Novi Beograd 1961, complete with supporting photographs.
32. [ Zcar on] . Gligorijevi[ cacut e] , Can City Development and Identity grow in Harmony? The Quest for a Successful
Public Space Design for New Belgrade, 42nd ISoCaRP Congress (2006), 2. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , New
Belgrade: Contested Modernism, 151.
33. For figures on changing land use in old and New Belgrade, see Hirt, Landscapes of Post-modernity,
795.
34. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , New Belgrade: Contested Modernism, 130; Novi Beograd 1961, 14.
35. Blagojevi[ cacut e] provides an incisive introduction to New Belgrade and its failure to fulfil original inten-
tions in her online article, New Belgrade: The Capital of No-Citys-Land. ART-e-FACT : STRAT-
EGIES OF RESISTANCE Issue 04 (2004) (http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/index_en.htm).
36. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Post-Socialist Housing Policy, 218.
37. The study was later published as a book, Perovi[ cacut e] , Lessons of the Past; see footnote 5. The passage
cited here appears on page 136.
38. S. Renaudie, P. Guilbaud, and H. Lefebvre, International Competition.
39. T. Mari[ ccar on] i[ cacut e] and J. Petri[ cacut e] , History and Perspectives of New Belgrade Neighbourhoods, in Differen-
tiated Neighbourhoods, 47.
40. Kuli[ cacut e] , personal communication, March 2010. For a discussion of these buildings and others in New
Belgrade, see D. Mila[ s car on] inovi[ cacut e] Mari[ cacut e] , Vodi[ cacut e] kroz modernu arhitekturu Beograda: Guide to Modern
Architecture in Belgrade (Belgrade: Dru[ s car on] tvo Arhitekta Beograda, 2002).
41. Vujo[ s car on] evi[ cacut e] and Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] , Planning and Societal Context, 280.
42. Z. Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] , D. Djordjevi[ cacut e] , and T. Dabovi[ cacut e] , Serbian planning legislation in the context of
socialism and post-socialism. International Academic Forum on Planning, Law and Property Rights,
Warsaw, 1415 February 2008.
43. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Post-Socialist Housing Policy.
44. M. Djordjevi[ cacut e] , Reducing Housing Poverty in Serbian Urban Centers: Analysis and Policy Recom-
mendations, in Too Poor To Move, Too Poor To Stay: A Report on Housing in the Czech Republic,
Hungary and Serbia, ed. J. Fearn (Budapest: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initia-
tive, Open Society Institute), 100, 101.
45. For an analysis of illegal housing, see Z. [ Zcar on] egarac, Illegal Construction in Belgrade and the
Prospects for Urban Development Planning, Cities 16 (1999): 36570.
47. Vujovi[ cacut e] and Petrovi[ cacut e] , Belgrades Post-Socialist Urban Evolution, 365, 367.
48. Dejan Krajinovi[ cacut e] , interview July 11, 2008.
50. For a discussion of this act and a comparison to earlier planning legislation, see Nedovi[ cacut e] -Budi[ cacut e] ,
Djordjevi[ cacut e] and Dabovi[ cacut e] , Serbian Planning Legislation, 12.
51. I. Mihajlovi[ cacut e] , Uncertainty over Serbias New Land Ownership Law, Balkan Insight (29 September
2009). http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/22520/. For a series of articles on the revised
property and construction law, see N. Korlat, Br[ z car on] e i jednostavnije do gra[ ds t r ok] evinske dozvole [Faster
and simpler to construction permits] Blic 7 July 2009 and links http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/
100592/Brze-i-jednostavnije-do-gradevinske-dozvole
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52. For details on the land use system in Belgrade, I am grateful to Slobodanska Prekajski, Belgrade
Land Development agency (interview February 8, 2008).
53. Vujovi[ cacut e] and Petrovi[ cacut e] , Belgrades Post-Socialist Urban Evolution, 379.
54. For an official confession of some of these bureaucratic obstacles, see an article entitled, Law on
planning, construction important for dealing with financial crisis, on the website of the Republic of
Serbia, http://www.srbija.gov.rs/vesti/vest.php?id=53110
55. Krajinovi[ cacut e] , interview February 5, 2008.
56. On Airport City, see the developments website, www.airportcitybelgrade.com; N. Korlat, Novim
projektima protiv finansijske krize [Against the Financial Crisis with New Projects], http://
www.blic.rs/ufokusu.php?kat=6&id=84401 (accessed March 20, 2009).
57. I. Mihajlovi[ cacut e] , Wary Turkish Investors Eye Serbian Opportunities, Balkan Insight 20 July 2009
(http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/21167/).
58. For a taxonomy of different types of blocks, see R. Gaiji[ cacut e] and S.Dimitrijevi[ cacut e] -Markevi[ cacut e] , Managing
Integration and Disintegration Processes in the Modern Urbanism Settlements: New Belgrade, 42nd
ISoCaRP Congress (2006), 6.
59. Mila[ s car on] inovi[ cacut e] Mari[ cacut e] , Guide to Modern Architecture, 160.
60. Kuli[ cacut e] , personal communication, March 2010. On its more recent transformation, see Beobuild,
Grand city gets grand casino, 2 July 2007 (http://www.beobuild.rs/read.php/117.html). The hotel
itself is being modernized, and an adjacent tower being constructed. See Beobuild, Kempinski signs
a deal in Belgrade, 23 July 2008 (http://www.beobuild.rs/read.php/240.html).
61. This is a point made forcibly in Gligorijevi[ cacut e] , Can city development and identity grow in harmony?
62. Generalni plan Beograda 2021 [Belgrade Master Plan 2021] (Belgrade: Belgrade City Government,
2003), especially section 7.1. See also Mari[ cacut e] et al., Transformation of the New Belgrade Urban
Tissue, 51.
63. Blagojevi[ cacut e] , New Belgrade: The Capital of No-Citys-Land.
64. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade recently completed an extensive re-discovery of New
Belgrade. The project involved artists and planners as well as geographers and sociologists, and was
designed as a re-appraisal of the district, building on and responding to the criticisms of Henri
Lefebvre and his colleagues (see Renaudie, International Competition for New Belgrade). The
results of the project were displayed in exhibitions and on video, and in Differentiated Neighbour-
hoods, Z. Eri[ cacut e] , ed.
65. M. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Diversification of Urban Neighbourhoods: The Case Study in New Belgrade (paper
presented at the), European Network of Housing Research International Conference, Rotterdam, 25
28 June 2007).
66. N. Korlat, Veliki stanovi bez kupaca [Large Apartments without Buyers], Blic 29 October 2009
(http://www.blic.rs/beograd.php?id=117996).
67. For these details, I am grateful to Nikola Mitrovi[ cacut e] , president of Dunavski Kej mesna zajednica,
interview July 8, 2008).
68. Mitrovi[ cacut e] , Modern Belgrade Architecture, 63.
69. Hirt, Belgrade, 296. See also A. Khrik and T. Tammaru, Soviet Prefabricated Panel Housing Estates:
Areas of Continued Social Mix or Decline? The case of Tallinn, Housing Studies 25 (2010): 20119.
70. Mitrovi[ cacut e] , interview July 8, 2008.
71. S. Vukovi[ cacut e] , Whos Hood? Identity Wars in New Belgrade The Case of Block 70, in Differenti-
ated Neighbourhoods, ed. Z. Eri[ cacut e] (Belgrade: Publikum, 2009), 197221.
72. See G. Anti[ cacut e] , and N. Lazi[ cacut e] , Belgrades Expelled Roma Find Chilly Welcome in South, Balkan
Insight 17 September 2009 (http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/analysis/22306/); G. Anti[ cacut e] ,
Roma exiles from Belgrade go hungry in south, Balkan Insight 21 January 2010 (http://www.balkan-
insight.com/en/main/analysis/25148/).
73. It is interesting to note that a similar conclusion is presented by Khrik and Tammaru in their paper:
Soviet prefabricated panel housing estates.
74. Prekajski, interview February 8, 2008.
75. Hirt, Belgrade, 300.
76. Petrovi[ cacut e] , Diversification of Urban Neighbourhoods.
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