The Garden City Concept: from Theory to Implementation : Case Study: Professors' Colony in Belgrade

This paper presents a part of the town-planning history of the capital of Serbia — Belgrade. The subject of the research* is the analysis of the application of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Concept in Belgrade in the third decade of the twentieth century. Special attention was devoted to the urban discourse in the first decades of the last century. The narrower referential framework of this work focuses on investigating the urban growth and development of Belgrade in the first decades of the twentieth century. In Belgrade there are dwelling quarters that were created in the period between the World Wars as a direct consequence of the implementation of the Garden City Concept. One of the basic thesis of this work elaborates the modes of the genesis of one of them — the Professors’ Colony, and seeks to distinguish specific applications of the Garden City Concept in relation to Belgrade’s specific social conditions

Belgrade Riverscape Revisions and Lost Perspectives of Modernisation

On the 24 of January 2017, the new strategy of the re-design of the urban park Ušće (the Confluence), that belongs to the central green zone of Belgrade was presented to the city government. The future landscape project for this space will be authored by the prominent and global urban design firm Gehl Architects. Before the project becomes available to the public, we investigate the intrinsic qualities and values of the existing space in perspective of the Belgrade urban modernisation. During the nineteenth century, Belgrade was a city on a water border-line between the Ottoman Empire, respectively the Principality/Kingdom of Serbia and the Habsburg Monarchy. There was a radical transformation of the city’s urban landscape during this period and the process was driven for the most part by the paradigm of the modern European city. The protagonists of the transformation, the bearers of political and economic power, were following the patterns of a capitalist development of the state. After the end of the World War One, Belgrade was the most densely populated city and the city with the greatest mechanical inflow of population in the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918–1929), in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–41), as well as after World War Two in the Socialist Yugoslavia. The construction of New Belgrade on the right bank of the Danube River, at the deserted space between Belgrade and Zemun (which until 1918 was part of Austria-Hungary) progressed according to the initial concept by the prominent Yugoslav town planner and architect Nikola Dobrović, 1946–48. In all these periods of urban landscape transformation, the main buzzword that has justified the different kind of spatial interventions was expressed by the saying: Belgrade must descents to its rivers. In this context we compare contemporary visions of the Danube riverfront of New Belgrade with the insightful concept from the very beginning of the twentieth century for the Danube suburban neighbourhood in the old Belgrade that reveals the valuable clues of the lost layers in the perpetual metamorphosis of an urban riverscape

Water, society and urbanization in the 19th century Belgrade: Lessons for adaptation to the climate change

This paper traces urban history of Belgrade in the 19th century by looking into its waterscape in the context of its transformation as the capital of the Princedom of Serbia. Aiming to underline the importance of water as a resource, with the view to contemporary environmental concerns, we explore how citizens historically related to waterscape in everyday life and created a specific socio-spatial water network through use of public baths on the river banks and public fountains, water features and devices in the city. The paper outlines the process of establishing the first modern public water supply system on the foundations of the city’s historical Roman, Austrian and Ottoman waterworks. It also looks at the Topčider River as the most telling example of degradation of a culturally and historically significant urban watercourse from its natural, pastoral and civic past to its current polluted and hazardous state. Could the restitution of the Topčider River be considered as a legacy of sustainability for future generations, and are there lessons to be learned from the urban history which can point to methods of contemporary water management

Historical Enquiry as a Critical Method in Urban Riverscape Revisions: The Case of Belgrade's Confluence

This article aims to underline the necessity of including historical enquiry in reaching the complex goals of sustainable development of urban riverscapes. Its proposed method is a survey conducted through selection, interpretation and systematization of the relevant historical data that consider the Belgrade cityscape, and specifically, the New Belgrade public spaces at the river confluence. The theoretical framework, which relies on the concepts of 'landscape urbanism' and 'critical practice of landscape architecture', has affected the selection and interpretation of dense historical layers of modernization, formed in diverse socio-economic and political conditions. We have distinguished five historical strata that contribute significantly to comprehension of the present state. By looking at the traces of the formative period of Belgrade urban landscape, the moments of New Belgrade's inception, inerasable impacts of war, vigorous post WWII socialist transformation and, finally, the series of Danube riverscape revisions, we intend to depict the complexity of the modern city legacy and thus stress the interconnectedness of past and future endeavours. As a counterpoint to globalizing tendencies in re-designing city riverfronts, this work is conceived as a lateral contribution to a broader investigation that informs, supports and constitutes more ecologically viable practices

Beogradski pasaži XX veka - analiza tipa i kritičko ispitivanje prostornog potencijala

As noted by Walter Benjamin, the spatial phenomenon of a covered glass-roofed passage, stretched between two streets and inserted inside a city block, encapsulated the extreme cultural ambivalence: by expressing repression through the ideology of consumerism and expressing freedom through the utopia of abundance. The hidden emancipatory potentials of the city passages, observed closely in a particular case, represent the subject of this paper and the analytical probe that examines the historical conditions of a particular enterprise. When the Passage of Nikola Spasić was constructed in the main pedestrian and shopping street of Belgrade in 1912, the époque of Parisian­style arcades had already passed. Observed in this broader perspective, the construction of the Passage, according to the project of Nikola Nestorović, one of the most prominent Serbian architects of the period, was only a late echo of the Parisian 18th century invention. The comparison and contention between the three chosen, realized and unrealized, transpositions of the Passage in Belgrade, designed by different prime architects of the time, in relation to Benjamin's idea of space with emancipative potential, correspondingly point out the protean capacity and open up new alternatives in the context of contemporary production of space, particularly important in the light of a changing global culture.Kao polazna osnova istraživanja, u ovom radu, postavljen je prostorni fenomen XIX veka - pasaž (passagen, nem.) - odnosno, natkriveni (zaštićeni) prolaz između dve ulice, umetnut u gradski blok, koji je, prema opservacijama Valtera Benjamina (Walter Benjamin), predstavljao jedan od suštinskih izraza modernosti u vremenu svog nastanka. Upoređivanjem i ispitivanjem prolaza/pasaža u urbanoj istoriji Beograda tokom XX veka, rad analizira transpoziciju ovog tipa u kontekstu proizvodnje prostora u različitim društvenim okvirima, i problematizuje je kroz aktuelna pitanja savremene devastacije i redukcije javnog domena i javne sfere na globalnom nivou. Ovim radom nastavljaju se i produbljuju prethodno započeta naučna ispitivanja autorki, kroz novu predmetnu građu, problemske okvire i istraživačka pitanja proverena u redefinisanoj kritičkoj perspektivi, koja se bave emancipatorskim potencijalom prostora posebnih tipologija, izvan uobičajenih definicija i interpretacija

From Ottoman Gardens to European Parks: Transformation of Green Spaces in Belgrade

At the turn of the 20th century, there was a striving in Europe to establish a balance between the constructed city fabric and green space. Parks and squares with greenery became just as important as showcase buildings and entities within the city center. This paper investigates Belgrade’s green areas, taking a concise look at their transformation in the historical context: changes in the city center during the 19th century, and concern for health and hygiene in the first half of the 20th century. The paper presents the production of green spaces in Belgrade’s city center through the metamorphosis of devastated and abandoned public and private spaces, and through the creation of new green areas. This paper examines the relationship between culture and nature in Belgrade, within the context of its urban history, and its place values, changed by the new capitalist production of space

Re-thinking city space in the context of nineteenth century Belgrade

The split into “nature” and “culture” has lasted for centuries in Western civilization and remains the framework through which we consider various important problems of contemporary society. In the last decades of the twentieth century there has been a clear reaction to this dichotomy, first in a geography discourse then elsewhere, and a move towards studying the construction and representation of nature in cultural history. A very important feature in the approach to design for recovering contemporary urban landscape is urban greenery regeneration as well as the study of the urban greenery past. The broader historical context of our study is the establishment of new capitalist relations towards urban territory in nineteenth century Belgrade, and with it a new distribution of political and economic power. This process led to the disappearance of the main green spaces in the city and the suppression of the memory they carried. The reconstruction of Belgrade’s historic core was implemented according to Emilijan Josimović’s urban plan (1867). Nevertheless, it contained some very important indications of ecological thinking. In order to elaborate a refined approach to environmental and cultural problems that Belgrade, like other cities, faces today, we bring to light and critically examine those features and aspects of Josimović’s plan that established organic relations and balance between nature, culture, city memory and city development

(Middle Class) Mass Housing in Serbia Within and Beyond the Shifting Frames of Socialist Modernisation

In many aspects middle-class mass housing development in Serbia/Yugoslavia was unprecedented, determined by a growing and unacknowledged formation of a middle class in the context of Yugoslav socialism, and a widely proclaimed but elusive social ideal of “housing for all”. Two types of MCMH were the most prevalent in the period considered here (1945-1991): a multi-storey collective residential building, in or outside the city centre, and the individual private house, built in formal and informal or so-cold “wild”settlements. The Yugoslav housing experiment emerged mostly within the collective residential estates. The appropriation, innovation and even invention of different industrial building methods was further enhanced by excellent standards in urban planning and architectural design, exemplified in this study by selected MCMH cases in New Belgrade, Novi Sad, Bor and Subotica. Due to aging, lack of maintenance and the impoverishment of its inhabitants, the present state of this large housing stock is poor, its future uncertain, and yet, its lessons are of vital importance today. In response to what would be the lessons and contemporary implications of the Yugoslav housing experience, in this brief review we have outlined the specificities and the unique historical conditions of the emergence of middle class mass housing in Serbia.This publication is based upon work from COST Action “European Middle-Class Mass Housing” CA18137 supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)

Contribution to the knowledge of spatial movements of adult Hermann’s tortoises

We recorded the movements of adult Eastern Hermann's tortoises (Testudo hermanni boettgeri) in a local population situated in a complex forested habitat system. The average total movement range size (TMRS) calculated over three consecutive years was 4.56 ha and 7.53 ha for males and females, respectively. The largest estimated TMRS of male and female tortoises was 27 ha and 90 ha, respectively. Six females and three males (or 9% and 4%, respectively, of the overall sample) had a movement range size (MRS) greater than 10 ha. Significant differences between male and female MRS were not detected. Body size had no influence on the MRS of individuals in the sample, except on the core movement range size (CMRS) in males. Although the collected data did not enable calculation of the home range in the studied population, the results indicate that the calculated average TMRS of local Hermann tortoises is larger than the average home range in some other populations. Therefore, in the absence of information on the home range size of local adult tortoises, the MRS could be a suitable alternative for planning local species reserves.Archives of Biological Sciences (2017), 69(4): 671-67