"Watch the construction site!". "Pedestrians, move to the other side of the street!". When it is, it is built there too. Belgrade is changing and growing, cranes lurk on every corner, concrete blocks hover overhead, a leisurely walk through the city causes anxiety.
When that feeling occurs, experts advise to take a deep breath and touch a tree or grass to receive information through the sense of touch that we are not in danger. But the air is polluted, and grass and trees are hard to find.
In Serbia, 2.461 construction permits were issued in May of this year, which is 2,4 percent more than last year. Of that, 14,3 percent is being built in the capital. The largest number of construction sites in the capital is located in the central city municipalities - Stari grad, Dorćol, Novi Beograd and Vračar. According to statistical data from the Secretariat for Administration, it is planned that 17 new apartments will be built this year in 13.671 Belgrade municipalities.
Later, 5.000 apartments are planned on the site of the former IMT, and Belgrade on the water is also expanding. For the third year in a row, the Central Register of Planning Documents is not available to the public. He disappeared without a trace in 2022 after a hacker attack on the website of the Republic Geodetic Institute (RGZ). It is a public database of planning documents that contains all urban plans in Serbia.
There is no Register, and therefore no General Urban Plan (GUP), which should show the construction of Belgrade until 2041. According to the Law, the Register should be available at the competent ministry or the Agency for Spatial Planning and Urbanism of the Republic of Serbia, which does not exist, and should have been created by November 2023 according to the amendments to the Law on Planning and Construction.
Until the publication of this issue, the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure did not receive an answer to the questions of "Vremena" about the status of the adoption of the GUP and whether the aforementioned Agency will be established soon.
WHERE IS THE PLAN?
The collective "Ministry of Space" created the digital platform "Where is the plan?" as an example to citizens of how their information should look at every step of the process - from the moment it is decided to implement a plan until the very end.
"Our map gives citizens an insight into plans and urban projects in Belgrade, in a way worthy of the 21st century. So that citizens can see what is planned, whether it is relevant for them and how it affects the quality of their lives", says member of the collective "Ministry of Space" Bozena Stojić.
This platform contains information about plans and projects that were in the process from 2022 onwards. People can then react, says our interlocutor, if it is not in accordance with common interests or if there is a group of citizens that can articulate some different, common interests for that area.
"Individuals can also have private interests through their plots, so on the map they can see how it affects them. And that's fine, it's only important that the public is informed", says Bozena Stojić.
DELETING THE GREENS
The Collective also points to the practice of publishing plans for early public inspection during the summer months and how green areas are treated within those planning decisions.
"During the summer, we analyzed the plans that were on public inspection, while the citizens were mostly away, on vacation or sheltered from the heat," continues Bozena Stojić. "Analysis of 19 urban and four spatial plans showed that public green areas, which enjoy a slightly higher degree of protection, and whose improvement should be one of the priorities of the city's development, make up only 1,84 percent of the total area of all processed urban plans."
Although spatial plans for parts of Surčin and Grocka municipalities foresee an increase in forests, which is good news, other plans do not inspire optimism.
The fact that about 58 hectares of green areas are presented as undeveloped land is worrying.
"This kind of treatment of wild greenery can be very disastrous, since it refers to the lack of formal protection, categorization or maintenance and thus tries to justify the concretization of every square centimeter of naturally regulated surfaces", according to the "Ministry of Space".
CITIZENS ON WATCH
This is exactly what the residents of Mirijevo saw when they accidentally learned on the aforementioned platform that the draft plan for the detailed regulation of the Bajdin area in Mirijevo was open for public inspection, Đorđe Lukić from the citizens' association "Mirijevo zeleno i zdrovo" told "Vreme".
"We started writing remarks and collecting signatures in the form of a petition against this harmful urban project. We attended public hearings and tribunes, we organized neighborhood gatherings and protests, closing the streets of Mirijeva for the first time in the recent history of the settlement," says Lukić.
In that process, the tenants found out that in Mrijevo there are also plans for construction in parks, spaces between buildings, on promenades and sports fields.
"During 2023, we managed to prevent the procedure for the construction of a residential and business complex on the site of a children's park and sports fields in Ulica Samuela Becket, which are located in the immediate vicinity of the most numerous elementary school in Serbia," says Lukić.
The previous year, they also prevented the adoption of a plan for construction on the green area next to the dog park on Stojčina brdo on the same principle.
"We are in contact with informal civic initiatives in the territory of the municipality of Zvezdara, such as 'Our local community', but we also cooperate with activists from other Belgrade neighborhoods such as 'Bežania remains Kosa prvisosi', 'Blok je naš', 'Savski Nasip' and others ", states Lukić. "We support each other in the form of content sharing on social networks, as well as physical presence at protests and public discussions."
DO YOU NEED ANOTHER BUILDING??
Jovan Vuković from the "Blok je naš" association confirms for "Vreme" that solidarity and civic activism help preserve the space they live in.
"We can only fight unitedly - citizens know best what they need," says Vuković.
They don't have any resources or financial means, as he says, a lot of neighbors joined the fight, which helps a lot: "No one remembers to build a health center, swimming pool or kindergarten." We lack parking spaces, when it rains a little harder, we have floods because the sewage system is not designed for such a large number of inhabitants; in my building three years ago, the garages where the substation is located were flooded and until everything dried up, we were without electricity for two days. New construction will only contribute to such situations".
"Now if you enter the block and ask whoever you meet what they want to build - do you think anyone would say: a new building?!", asks Vuković.
For various construction plans, they attended early public inspections, submitted citizens' objections and also organized protests.
"The city plans to adopt, in addition to the existing rules, adopted by this government, the General Urban Plan for New Belgrade. Although the construction of residential and commercial buildings is not allowed in block 63, the detailed regulation plan foresees the construction of six new buildings with a height of 33 meters, that is about 12 floors. We submitted more than 1000 objections from citizens and now we are waiting to see what the planning commission and urban planners will decide", says Vuković.
If they decide to continue construction despite this, they will defend the block on the street with their neighbors, Vuković insisted.
HOW AND FOR WHOM IT IS PLANNING?
Urban planner Ljubica Slavković from the association "Nova planning practice" tells "Vreme" that by analyzing the representation of greenery in the newly planned complexes in the wider area of the Sava coast in Belgrade, they concluded that it is not at all clear by what logic decisions are made.
"The analysis indicates that in some plans the percentage of green areas in direct contact with the ground is drastically reduced, for example in Belgrade on the water it is reduced from 18,8 to 13,6 percent through changes and additions to the plan. Then, the existing Bristol park is allowed to be concreted up to 70 percent of its area, while in other plans this percentage is significantly higher, as is the case in the area of the former imt and fmo factories, the percentage of green areas in the blocks in direct contact with the ground averages 22 percent", says Ljubica Slavković.
Our interlocutor adds that in the higher order plans, it is prescribed that in an open block the percentage of greenery in direct contact with the ground should be at least 30 percent. Although according to typology, all new residential and business zones in this zone are not characterized as an open block, there is not a single argument why this minimum percentage would not be applied, especially considering the intensity of construction.
"Wild constructions have turned into the modus operandi of spatial development out of manners," explains urban planner Slavković. "It takes place under the dictates of investor urbanism, space is treated as loot and serves exclusively to maximize individual profits, different interest groups or individuals. As a rule, this happens at the expense of the public interest. In this process, the infrastructure is absolutely burdened and investments in building a healthy and functional environment are not on the priority list. Public spaces, greenery, traffic, healthy air, water and everything that should provide us with quality of life are suffering. Instead, squares of fabulous prices are springing up. For whom is such a city planned and built?"
EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO THE LAW
Ljubica Slavković emphasizes how important it is for citizens to be involved in planning and spatial development processes, but also to influence the radical reform of planning and decision-making procedures. However, even though they sleep with one eye open, citizens are left with very limited options to react.
The Law on Planning and Construction envisages only two phases in which public participation is enabled - "early public inspection", where citizens can familiarize themselves with the framework concept of planning solutions within a minimum period of 15 days, and finally "public inspection" for a minimum duration of 30 days, during which the official draft of the planning act is presented.
The decision on the preparation of planning acts is most often announced exclusively in official gazettes, and very few people are informed about it. The regulations of the Republic of Serbia recognize various mechanisms of citizen participation, but competent institutions rarely resort to them. In this way, and all according to the law, the citizens are brought before the fait accompli, while their quality of life is reduced as well as the space around them.
