Colleague Sonja Ćirić these days writes about the so-called "legal planning". That's what happens when investor he measures, waits, looks at the clock - if he doesn't want to start a fire before that - and wait for the temporary protection of a building with cultural and historical value to expire.
And then, while the Institute for the Protection of Monuments is considering whether to extend that protection or declare it permanent, the municipality is already stamping the demolition permit. And the excavators are moving. Little by little, cultural heritage is disappearing. Pre-war mansions give way to hideous high-rise buildings. Here's just a fraction of what was torn down and wiped out:
The house designed and lived in by the famous architect Andra Stevanović - the designer of the National Museum and the SANU building - on the corner of Gospodar Jovanova and Kneginja Ljubica, an example of academicism from the end of the 19th century; the house of pre-war revolutionary Filip Filipović, Takovska 37; Kosančićev venac 5, the oldest house in that part of town; Mutapova 9, an architectural gem from the 19th century; buildings between Slavija Square and Manjež Park...
And it could go on like this for a long time, too long.
And let's not even mention the case of the General Staff, the metastasized Belgrade on the water, what all the Expo will bring in this regard and the eternal need of the team in power to grow a mustache there as well.
A cheap copy of Dubai
Belgrade will not become Dubai with this unfortunate construction - investor urbanism, as it professionally sounds - and the pursuit of its own cultural heritage. It will be something else - a cheap and poor copy of even poorer quality.
Take a longer walk around the city, look at what's left, what's disappearing and what's taken its place. Some of the people who complain about the blockades use this event to remind themselves what the capital of this country has turned into in 13 years. Let's take a look at those kitsch aesthetics and self-serving megalomania - whatever they were, the surfaces that once exuded life now look like glowing cemetery slabs. Let's take a look at the neighborhoods of the newly minted elite, bursting with luxury and bad taste.
It's not that cities shouldn't change. On the contrary. However, only the occupiers erase the identity without mercy, destroy the cultural and historical heritage and change its nature. And they do it to break the back of the occupied people.
And what does the internal occupier do? All the same, but his money comes first. It not only destroys the continuity, beauty and proof of the duration of culture, but embeds itself in that destruction, leaving its permanent mark on the site of the former treasure. That mark will remain even after they leave. The only meaning it has is to serve as a warning so that nothing like this ever happens again.
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