New Belgrade
New Belgrade is a municipality of the city of Belgrade. It was a planned city and now is the central business district of Serbia and South East Europe. Construction began in 1948 in a previously uninhabited area on the left bank of the Sava river, opposite old Belgrade. In recent years, it has become the central business district of Belgrade and its fastest developing area, with many businesses moving to the new part of the city, due to more modern infrastructure and larger available space. With 209,763 inhabitants, it is the second most populous municipality of Serbia after Novi Sad.
Geography
New Belgrade is located on the left bank of the Sava River, in the easternmost part of the Srem region. Administratively, its northeastern section touches the right bank of the Danube, right before its confluence with the Sava. New Belgrade is located generally west of 'Old' Belgrade, to which it is connected by six bridges. European route E75, with five grade separations, including a new double-looped one at the Belgrade Arena, goes right through the middle of the settlement.The municipality of New Belgrade covers an area of. Its terrain is flat, which poses a high contrast to the old Belgrade, built on 32 hills total. Except for its western section, Bežanija, New Belgrade is built on what was essentially a swamp when construction of the new city began in 1948. For years, kilometers-long conveyor belts transported sand to the new settlement from the Danube island of Malo Ratno Ostrvo, almost completely destroying the island in the process, leaving only a small, narrow strip of wooded land. Thus, it is romantically said that New Belgrade is actually built on an island.
Other geographic features of New Belgrade are the peninsula of Mala Ciganlija and the island of Ada Međica, both on the Sava, and the bay of Zimovnik, engulfed by Mala Ciganlija, with the facilities of the Beograd shipyard. The loess slope of Bežanijska Kosa is located in the western part of the municipality, while in the southern, the Galovica river canal flows into the Sava.
Though it originally had no forests in the real sense, Novi Beograd now has more green areas than all the other municipalities of Belgrade, with a total of, or 8.5% of the territory. In time, several areas of the municipality developed into fully fledged forests, and three were officially classified as such: the forest along the motorway, the forest along the Sava Quay and the forest on Ada Međica. Most of the municipality's green areas, however, are within the large Ušće park. The latest addition to the Belgrade park system, Park Republika Srpska, is also located in the municipality.
There are no separate settlements within the municipality, as the entire area administratively belongs to Belgrade City proper and is statistically classified as part of Belgrade. The area located around the municipal assembly building and the nearby roundabout is considered to be New Belgrade's center.
As it was planned and constructed, New Belgrade was divided into blocks. Currently, there are 72 blocks. The old core of the village of Bežanija, Ada Međica, Mala Ciganlija, as well as the area along the highway west of Bežanijska Kosa, are not divided into blocks. Due to changes in administrative borders, some of the blocks belong to the municipality of Zemun, extending north of New Belgrade as one continuous built-up area.
In September 2018, Belgrade's mayor Zoran Radojičić announced that the construction of a dam on the Danube, in the Zemun-New Belgrade area, would start soon. The dam is designed to protect the city during high water levels. Such a project had not been mentioned before, nor was it clear how or where it would be constructed, or if it were feasible at all. Radojičić clarified after a while that he was referring to the temporary, mobile flood wall. The wall will be high and long, stretching from Branko's Bridge across the Sava and the neighborhood of Ušće, to the Radecki restaurant on the Danube bank in Zemun's Gardoš neighborhood. In case of emergency, panels will be placed on the existing construction. The construction is scheduled to start in 2019 and to finish in 2020.
History
Early history
Bežanija is the oldest part of today's New Belgrade. A settlement existed here from the Neolithic to the Roman period.In the book Kruševski pomenik from 1713, which is kept in the Dobrun monastery near Višegrad, the settlement of Bežanija was mentioned for the first time under its present name in 1512, as a small village with 32 houses, populated by Serbs. In this time, the village was under the administration of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, and was part of Syrmia County. The inhabitants of the village crossed the Sava river and settled in Syrmia after fleeing the fall of the medieval Serbian Despotate at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1521, the village became part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1527 to 1530, Bežanija was part of Radoslav Čelnik's Duchy of Syrmia, an Ottoman vassal, until its subsequent organization into the Ottoman Sanjak of Syrmia. The Habsburg monarchy conquered it temporarily during the Great Turkish War, but it remained under Ottoman administration until 1718. In 1718, the village became part of the Habsburg monarchy and was placed under military administration. It was part of the Habsburg Military Frontier. During the 17th and 18th century, hunger and constant Turkish intrusions devastated the village, but it was constantly repopulated by refugees from central Serbia.
During the 1717–1739 Austrian occupation of northern Serbia, when both banks of the Sava were Austrian, a massive process of construction works in Belgrade began. The goal was to transform Belgrade into a Baroque city, rather than an oriental one. The task of designing the new city was given to Nicolas Doxat de Démoret. In his plans, Doxat envisioned the proper, star-shaped fortification on the location of modern New Belgrade, across the Belgrade Fortress. Despite the maps printed with the existing fortification, the ramparts in the swamp were never built, though some work was done on the construction.
In 1810, a population census counted 115, mostly Serbian, households in Bežanija. By the 1850s, a large number of Germans had colonized Bežanija. In 1848–1849 it was part of the Serbian Vojvodina, an ethnic Serb autonomous region within the Austrian Empire, but in 1849 it was again placed under the administration of the Military Frontier.
As the Frontier was abolished in 1881–1882, it became part of the Syrmia County within the autonomous Habsburg kingdom Croatia-Slavonia, which was located within the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. In 1910, the largest ethnic group in the village were Serbs, while other sizable ethnic groups were Germans, Hungarians and Croats. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, in autumn of 1918, Bežanija became part of the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 24 November 1918, as part of Syrmia region, the village became part of the Kingdom of Serbia, and on December 1, it became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
From 1918 to 1922, the village was part of the Syrmia County, and from 1922 to 1929 it was part of the Syrmia Oblast. Bežanija became part of the wider Belgrade area for the first time in 1929 after the coup d'état conducted by the king Alexander I of Yugoslavia, who redrew Yugoslavia's administrative divisions, creating a new administrative unit Uprava grada Beograda or Administration of the City of Belgrade which comprised Belgrade, Zemun and Pančevo.
Inter-war period
Between the two world wars of the 20th century, communities sprung up closer to the Sava river, in Staro Sajmište and Novo Naselje. The idea of building a new settlement across the Sava was officially presented in 1922 and the first urbanization plans for Belgrade's expansion to the Sava's left bank were drawn up in 1923, but a lack of either funds or the manpower needed to drain out the swampy terrain put them on hold indefinitely. Additionally, the Ministry of Construction rejected the city's plan of expansion. The project was conceived by Đorđe Kovljanski and it included an idea of creating an island from the Savamala neighborhood in old Belgrade. He even envisioned the bridge across the northern tip of Ada Ciganlija, across the Sava, which was finally built in 2012. In 1924 Petar Kokotović opened a kafana on Tošin Bunar with the prophetic name Novi Beograd. After 1945, Kokotović was president of the local community of Novo Naselje–Bežanija, which later grew into the municipality of Novi Beograd. In 1924 an airport was built in Bežanija, and in 1928 the Rogožerski factory was constructed. In 1934 plans were expanded to include the creation of a new urbanized area connecting Belgrade and Zemun, as Zemun was administratively annexed to the city of Belgrade in 1929, losing its separate city status in 1934. King Alexander Bridge was also built over the Sava River and a tram line connecting Belgrade and Zemun was established. Also, a Zemun airport was built.A sandy beach with cabins, kafanas and barracks used as sheds by fishermen occupied the area of the modern Ušće quay, north of Branko's Bridge. It was one of the favorite vacation spots of Belgraders during the Interbellum period. People traveled there from the city by small boats; the starting point was the small kafana "Malo pristanište" in Savamala. Occupying the left bank of the Sava, it was in the location of the future access ramp for the King Alexander Bridge, so it had to be removed. Several properties were demolished, including numerous kafanas, including "Ostend", "Zdravlje", "Abadžija", "Jadran", "Krf", "Dubrovnik", and "Adrija." The only one that wasn't demolished was "Nica", predecessor of the modern Ušće restaurant. In total, 20 buildings and 2,000 cabins, barracks, or sheds were demolished, jointly by the municipalities of Zemun and Bežanija, which owned half of the land each, and the property owners. The plan was to build an embankment instead. However, the beach itself survived the construction of the bridge in 1934 as it only made access easier. The beach was finally closed in 1938 when the construction of the embankment began. The beach itself was called Nica after one of the kafanas.
A group of Danish investors offered to the city government their project of constructing a new settlement between Belgrade and Zemun, on the left bank of the Sava. In February 1937 they sent a very elaborate proposal with maps to the then mayor of Belgrade, Vlada Ilić. The Danes offered to do it for 94 million 1937 dinars and the city administration replied that the project got their fullest attention, but that citizens of Belgrade and Zemun should have a say, too, about this new settlement. In August the Danish investors held a meeting with mayor Ilić. This time, they offered to build the entire modern neighborhood for free, but to retain the right to sell the lots to private buyers who were interested in building houses in the neighborhood, in the total amount of over 80 million dinars, while the city would remain the owner of the land. A contract was signed on 24 February 1938. Danish representatives announced that their ships will reach Belgrade by 12 to 15 May 1938. Among them, there was one special ship. It was to dredge the bottom of the Danube in the vicinity of Great War Island and to eject the dredged earth through pipes in the swamp, filling it. The plan was to fill the area on the right side of the Zemun road, which extended across the King Alexander Bridge across the Sava. It was expected that the work, estimated at 30 million dinars, would be finished by 1940 when the area was to become a nice, dried and elevated filled terrain suitable for the start of the construction of the "newest Belgrade". The project was described as the "displacement of the Sava confluence into the Danube".
File:Dojno polje aerodrom.jpg|thumb|250px|Bežanija's airport at Dojno Polje in 1931, a rare structure built on the territory of the future New Belgrade
On 20 May 1938, president of the Yugoslav government Milan Stojadinović, pulled a lever on a Danish excavator, ceremonially starting the works to drain the land at the confluence. The large "Sydhavnen" excavator was transported by ship via the English Channel, the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea and finally the Danube. It was reported at the time that this was the first time that an ocean ship had anchored in the port of Belgrade. The draining proved to be much more expensive than expected. The "Sydhavnen" excavator sank to the bottom of the Sava river after World War II broke out in 1941, but was lifted out after the war and repaired. It continued to work under the name "Kolubara".
In 1930s members of Belgrade's affluent elite began to buy land from the villagers of Bežanija, which at that time administratively spread all the way to the King Alexander Bridge, which was a dividing point between Bežanija and Zemun. An "Association for the embellishing of the left bank of Sava - New Belgrade" was founded in 1932. From 1933 a settlement, consisting mostly of individual villas, began to develop. Also, a group of White Russian emigrants built several small buildings, mostly rented by the carters who carried goods across the river. As the settlement, which became known as New Belgrade, was built without building permits, authorities threatened to demolish it, but in 1940 government officially "legalized the informal settlement of New Belgrade". Prior to that, the city already semi-officially recognized the new settlement, as it helped with building its streets and pathways. By 1939 it already had several thousand inhabitants, a representative in the city hall, and was unofficially called New Belgrade.
In 1938, for the purpose of hosting Belgrade Fair, a complex of buildings was erected next to the already existing community. Spread over 15 thousand square metres, it hosted fairs and exhibitions designed to show off the Kingdom of Yugoslavia's developing economy. Also this year, the municipality of Belgrade signed a contract with two Danish construction companies, Kampsax and Højgaard & Schultz, to build the new neighbourhood. Engineer Branislav Nešić was entrusted with leading the project. He even continued his involvement on the project after 1941 when the Nazis conquered, occupied, and dissolved the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Because of this, the new communist authorities who came to power after 1945 put Nešić on trial as a collaborator. As the complex never hosted any fairs again and the new Belgrade Fair was built across the river, the area became known as Staro Sajmište.
Though future New Belgrade's area was barely urbanized, it already contained the tallest structure, if not a proper building, in Belgrade. After Yugoslav government signed a deal with the Czechoslovak Škoda Works for the purchase of 300 tanks in 1937, the Škoda decided to donate the towering construction as the parachuting attraction. The Škoda Tower, a "parachutists tower", was opened on 2 June 1938. The tall latticed steel construction was the tallest structure in Belgrade. The tower was an imposing and domineering structure, which, due to its height and position in the flat and low terrain, was visible from all parts of Belgrade from across the river. It was claimed to be the tallest facility of its kind in both Europe and the world. It was used both for the professional training of the parachutists, but also for the amateur jumps by the fair visitors.
On 22 February 1941, mayor of Belgrade Jovan Tomić and architect Dragiša Brašovan held a press conference, announcing plans for the future. The plans were made for New Belgrade and the Sava's bank in "Old" Belgrade. The new town was to be built on and have 500,000 inhabitants, even though the entire Belgrade at that time had a bit over 350,000 people. Tomić issued a ban for the private owners to purchase the land, so that all land designated for the future town will remain city owned. He also asked from the state government to banish all private land owners on the Sava's right bank, located between the Belgrade Main railway station and the river and to confiscate the land. Further plans included the filling of the arm of the Danube and turning the Great War Island into the peninsula and erection of the monumental memorial on it. The project also included two new bridges across the Sava, which would connect the old and the new part of the city, one on the location of the modern Gazela bridge and another in the continuation of the Nemanjina Street. Because of the latter bridge, Tomić planned to demolish the building of the Belgrade Main railway station and relocate the facility in the neighborhood of Prokop, thus clearing further of space for the commercial facilities. Construction of the new railway station in Prokop indeed began, but in 1977 and as of 2018 is still not finished, though in 2017 it took over the domestic transportation.
In general, on the territory of modern New Belgrade, urbanization between two world wars began on three locations: along the Sava bank, stretching from Sajmište to Ušće; workers settlement around Old Airport; informal settlement at Tošin Bunar, where modern Studentski Grad is today. Majority of the construction was informal.