Urban Up Close: Belgrade could be in Africa, and a few other things I have to say about the Balkans
Firstly, Some Quick Definitions:
The Balkans (countries): is a peninsula and a cultural area in Southeast Europe with different and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the east of Serbia to the Black Sea at the east of Bulgaria [from Wikipedia]. Includes the countries of Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and the geographical/political region of European Turkey. [from World Atlas].
Post-Socialist (countries): Countries that were formerly socialist states before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Not all post-socialist countries in Europe were apart of the Soviet Union.
We went to three post-socialist cities in the Balkans, in three countries that were apart of former Yugoslavia. I won’t talk about the break-up of Yugoslavia or the wars that ensued in the 1990’s, but google can tell you more if you are interested. We started out in the lovely city of Ljubljana, in Slovenia, which feels like a town. There are no more than 300,000 people there and it’s har
d to imagine a war happening there. In comparison to other former Yugoslavian countries, there wasn’t much of a war there: it lasted ten days and 50 people died in total. Slovenia separated rather easily, relative to the other two countries we visited afterwards.
Ljubljana is surrounded by and intertwined with nature. It is very green and wonderful. The historic town center is very lovely and a river runs through it. Pedestrian and car bridges connect the parts of Ljubljana that are separated by the river. On the river people were boating as well as stand-up paddle boarding. Ljubljana wants to increase their water transport, sort of like Amsterdam… because what city with a river or a canal in the center is not trying to be like Amsterdam.
A member of my cohort is Slovenian and he was telling us there is an anti-urban sentiment in Slovenia. That many Slovenians are anti-city and would prefer to live in villages. This is quite interesting because in many ways people romanticize the city, so it’s a bit refreshing to hear about a country where that is not the case. This anti-city feeling may also help preserve the loveliness of Ljubljana because it means there is not a huge influx of people coming from the countryside. In a country as green as Ljubljana, I don’t think I’d mind living outside of the city either.
Another funny thing about Ljubljana is the only reason they have a train stop is because the Royals from Austria wanted a fast way to get to the coast of Italy and going via (Maribor — middle of nowhere in Slovenia) and Ljubljana was the fastest way. The Austrian royals did not think that maybe people who lived there would want a train stop, they just figured it was the fastest way to the coast for vacation so they might as well have a train stop there. Lastly, the city of Ljubljana plans to be zero waste by 2020. From their castle you can see a huge waste recycling plant. We’re looking forward to seeing if they will really succeed in this endeavor. On that note we will move to Zagreb.
We took a 3.5 hour train to Zagreb, arriving there around 9pm. Zagreb was clearly a city and quite a contrast to quaint Ljubljana. Zagreb is and felt much bigger with a population of a little less than 800,000. It was bit more gritty than Ljubljana and we couldn’t walk everywhere, we had to take a tram to our hostel. Croatia, like Slovenia, is in the EU — but unlike Slovenia it is not on the Euro. So not only did we change city sizes, we also changed currencies.
Zagreb is full of cars and quite busy. They have a lot of development going on and reducing the amount of cars is not a priority, although they somehow want to increase the shared space on the streets to include bikes (without reducing cars). Not sure how well that is going to work out. Throughout our short two days in Zagreb we heard about issues with tram accidents, trams hitting people and some issues of bad urban planning when it comes to trams, cars, and people co-existing. Little did I know I would learn about this first hand.
One day after visiting Novi Zagreb, which is a socialist (mostly) residential district with huge block buildings, I took a bus back in the city and decided to walk around since the sun came out. I was near the train station, heading to the city centre and attempting to cross a very short street that had trams going in two directions, cars, and a crosswalk… but no lights or stop signs. It was a short street so I figured I could run across quickly when cars stopped and trams weren’t coming. I looked left then right, then left again, then right again. As I was looking right there was no tram coming and the cars stopped so I figured I’d run across. As I stepped into the street, still looking right, a car beeped at me and I hesitated. In this moment a tram came past me and hit my shoulder and the side of my body knocking me back onto the sidewalk; I guess it was the wrong time to cross.
The tram stopped, the driver got out and asked if I was okay, said he would call the police and the ambulance. I was mostly in shock and just glad I was not completely in the street when the tram came or I would’ve really needed to go to the hospital. I was shocked and embarrassed as cars started beeping because the tram stopped in the middle of the street, blocking it, to make sure I was okay. I showed him my arms and did a twirl to ensure him that I did not need medical treatment. It was more like a love tap. The tram love tapped me and I really just wanted to cross the street and go about my walk. All I could think about was how bad the planning of this street was. I wonder if getting hit by a tram counts as urbanist fieldwork?
As I’m walking intently through the streets of the center of Zagreb trying to find a nice cafe to get some tea and calm down from this mess of urban planning two Croatian young men approach me. One translating for his friend asks if he can take a picture wi
th me because he’s never seen a black person. What, are you kidding me! I just got hit by a tram, can I live? And also, I’ve seen some Africans in the one and a half days I’ve been in Zagreb, I’m sure he has as well. So after two minutes of trying to talk with these young men about the ridiculousness of their request I acquiesce realizing it’ll take less time to take a picture than it will to explain, and have the guy translate to his friend, why this is problematic. Finally I find a cafe, have a nice tea and a chocolate cake and enjoy the rest of my walk around Zagreb. Enjoying the beautiful botanical gardens and the architecture of the city.
Seeing the contrast and layers of political and cultural values of post-socialist, former Yugoslav cities is really remarkable. Going to Novi Zagreb was like being in a socialist city. The architecture and feeling of that district was as present to me as the new developments Zagreb has built on brownfields on the edges of the city. It seemed harder for Zagreb, than Ljubljana, to escape its history — a history that isn’t even too far in the past. For Belgrade, we can see that escaping these layers of history and turmoil were even more difficult.
We took a 5 hour bus to Belgrade, leaving Zagreb at 3pm. Border control took at an hour because we were now leaving the EU (Serbia is not in the EU, it’s been a candidate for a decade). The border control police were confused about why a group of people with 20 different nationalities were traveling from Croatia to Serbia. Luckily we had a Croatian with us who tried to explain that we are students on a class trip. The border police seemed a bit more concerned about the Bangladesh and Moroccan passports, but ultimately it was okay. We arrived in Belgrade around 8pm and to me it felt even more like a city. But not like a European city.
I wrote a paper about Belgrade and its waterfront project last semester so I was very eager to visit this city I had read so much about and never seen. My immediate impression of Belgrade was that it didn’t feel like a European city. We were no longer in the EU and the currency exchange rate was even worse than Croatian Kuna. One Euro is equal to 122 Serbian Dinar. Although parts of the city
were very nice, like the City Hall and the city center, it was clear that the city has and is struggling. There were areas of Belgrade, with buildings in ruins, that looked like they had not been repaired since the war, and had not been. The deputy mayor and Director of Urban Planning told us that 40% of residents in Belgrade don’t have sewage.
And yet, in the same breath the deputy mayor also told us they were focusing their priorities and investment in the city centre because that is where the tourists are. What!? Almost half of the population doesn’t have sewage and is living in buildings of which the outside looks like it has been in a fire, and the city planning team is focusing on the city centre? Misplaced development was clearly a sickness suffered by the city planners in Belgrade. At the same time a huge waterfront development project with investment from the Emirates is happening on the river Sava, on a huge piece of industrial land (former national railroad). The Emirati company has planned 75 buildings on 32 plots with a maximum of a 40 year timeline, which they’re hoping to finish in about 15 years. We’ll see about that. Supposedly 150
million will be invested by the Emirati company. In exchange the city of Belgrade has given them the most expensive piece of land in the city: the waterfront, for free. This is a very problematic project that I won’t go into detail about.
There is an activist group whose name translates roughly to “Don’t Drown Belgrade” or “We Won’t Let Belgrade Drown” who opposes this big waterfront project. The way the city government deals with them is sometimes beyond ridiculous and, again, if I go into detail this article would be a book. But things like using the activist group’s logo and name to get more votes from Belgrade residents; having people follow around some of the activists on the forefront of this movement… things like this that we don’t think of as happening in Europe. Which brings me to my next point and the title of this article: Belgrade seemed like a city that could be in Africa or the Caribbean or somewhere in the developing world, not Europe. What do I mean by this?
We often associate corruption in governments, misplaced investment, lack of basic infrastructure for large portions of a populations, investment from the East, and these sort of things with the developing world — cities in Africa or the Caribbean. We hear about the mistreatment of activists and opposition leaders in some African countries, and about the lack of basic infrastructure (like roads) in the Caribbean while the government focuses on tourism. Although this is not true for all, or even most, of the countries and cities in Africa, the Caribbean, and the “developing” world — these are some of the characteristics we associate with developing cities. Many of the characteristics of Belgrade, based on what we learned while there and my own research, can be likened to that of a city in a developing nation. Although, my friend from Ethiopia said even this type of governance and lack of sewage would not be tolerated in Addis Ababa.
The problems of European cities are in many ways different and incomparable to that of cities in Africa or the Caribbean. What is also clear is that the problems of post-socialist (former Yugoslav) cities is different from the problems of Western Europe. We often idolize Europe (and America) as the ideal for many things, including city planning, integration, sustainability, etc. But it’s important to understand that different regions in Europe have different realities, economies, histories, legacies and thus cannot be considered in the same category. It may make more sense to compare a post-socialist city to a post-colonial city because they may have more in common, economically and otherwise than a post-socialist European city has to a Western European city.
Belgrade could be anywhere in the world, but it happens to be in Europe. It is a very dynamic city despite it’s history of turmoil and having been bombed as recently as 1999 by NATO. We ended our time in Belgrade with a lovely boat cruise on the Sava and Danube rivers, of which Belgrade is at the confluence. The captain allowed me to connect my music to the speakers so as we cruised down the river to Bob Marley, Buju Bantu, and other Caribbean music I had playing — we were able to take in the whole experience and realize the different world, the Balkans, in which we spent a week. Three very different cities with a similar recent past and conflict. Between looking at paintings in a cave in a castle in Ljubljana, getting hit by a tram in Zagreb, and dancing to Serbian folk music in Belgrade… I’d say I had a pretty enlightening experience with many more stories than I have shared here.
It’s important to always look at the world in context and on a local scale before zooming out. If we look closely, we will realize many things are not as they seem.
