Tuesday, April 28, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
DEVELOPMENT-YUGOSLAVIA: New Belgrade Comes to Life
Vesna Peric Zimonjic
- The "sleeping house of the Balkans" has woken up and begun to build again. Over the past six months New Belgrade has become the largest construction site in the region.
"It was high time that this part of Belgrade got a soul and became something other than a place where people come from work to sleep and mostly do nothing," says Zoran Pavlovic, head of the Urban Council of New Belgrade.
The gloomy municipality named "Novi Beograd" (New Belgrade) is a part of the Yugoslav and Serbian capital Belgrade, and home to more than 300,000 of its 1.5 million people. Serbia is the larger part of Yugoslavia, along with tiny Montenegro.
New investment in New Belgrade will reach some 250 million dollars over the next five years. The money is coming from the new government installed in Serbia two years ago after former leader Slobodan Milosevic fell from power, and from the international community.
New Belgrade was built on a vast sandy terrain in the communist era of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. It was to be the symbol of a new communist Yugoslavia after the end of World War II.
New Belgrade has large apartments with central heating and good transport links with Belgrade, but it remained a grim neighbourhood of grey high rises.
It never acquired a soul, say generations who grew up there.
New Belgrade sits in blocks with numbers. Five bridges link the two parts of Belgrade. To many born and raised in Belgrade, moving to "inhuman" New Belgrade is unthinkable.
"In coordination with the authorities of Belgrade, some plans that existed in the eighties have been revitalised," says Pavlovic. The government wants New Belgrade to become a model thriving community.
Development of New Belgrade was stopped in the nineties during the rule of Milosevic, as the country lived through wars and international isolation, and then NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombing in 1999.
"This is the first time in ages that we are seeing something built and not destroyed," says Nadja Vranjkovic (55), a teacher from New Belgrade.
Dozens of new constructions are coming up along its wide boulevards. Some of the largest department stores and shopping malls in the Balkans are under construction.
"But we don’t want New Belgrade only to be a shopping or sports centre," says Srdjan Nikolic, head of the Belgrade Directorate for Urban and Building Development. "The plans include new buildings for several schools of Belgrade University, a theatre and opera house, and business centres for international companies that are rushing here."
The most attractive site to be opened soon will be the sports ‘Arena’ with 20,000 seats. The Arena will host the Diamond Ball cup, the prestigious basketball event that traditionally precedes the Olympic Games. It will be held in 2004, ahead of the Olympics in Athens.
Belgrade will also host the European basketball and handball championships in the summer of 2005. Yugoslavia holds top titles in both sports.
The Rolling Stones will hold a concert in Belgrade next summer, but the venue has not been decided. It will be the rock group’s first concert in Belgrade.
"This city is coming to terms with normal life after a decade of ruin," says Nikolic. "The last facelift we saw both in Belgrade and in New Belgrade was in 1989, when the summit of non-aligned nations was held here."
Yugoslavia, one of the founding nations of the non-aligned movement, was expelled from the group in 1992 due to the warmongering politics of Milosevic.
"New Belgrade construction efforts are bringing jobs to thousands of people now," Nikolic says. "That is also badly needed for some who were idle for a decade."
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DEVELOPMENT-YUGOSLAVIA: New Belgrade Comes to Life
Vesna Peric Zimonjic
- The “sleeping house of the Balkans” has woken up and begun to build again. Over the past six months New Belgrade has become the largest construction site in the region.
(more…)
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