Planning Capital Cities

project as a priority.^72 By noting that this project

couldn’t be financed only by public funds and loans,

which was considered as the main obstacle for the

earliar unrealised visions, the actual Prime Minister

Aleksandar Vucic has directed all his efforts to find a

potential investor for the project.

After a series of urban concepts that were appearing

in the media during 2013, a Belgrade Waterfront

Master Plan was presented in Dubai in March 2014

by Mohamed Alabbar, the director of the newly

established company and potential investor “Eagle

Hills”.^73 The master plan was presented to the

domestic public at the renovated building of the

Institute of Geophysics, known as “Geozavod”, which

become the showroom of the project in June 2014.

The project web page announced that Belgrade

Waterfront would take the urban renewal to new

heights - a future smart city that combines commerce,

culture and community.^74 The master plan envisions

the construction of offices and luxury apartment

buildings, eight hotels, a shopping mall and a 200m

high tower as the main symbol of the area and of

Belgrade as well. The investor’s view is a truly mixed-

use environment that will usher in a new era of

prosperity the Serbian capital.^75

Seen as an initiative that will create jobs and growth and turn Belgrade into a

business hub for the Western Balkans^76 the project was given by the government

the status of one of national importance, which allowed the acceleration of

the process of defining the framework for its implementation. In a period of

several months the Spatial Plan for Belgrade 2021 has been changed and the

Spatial Plan for the Development of the coastal area of Belgrade’s riverside was

adopted for the Belgrade Waterfront project.

Since these processes have been a novelty in the urban development practice

in Serbia, the project encountered a sharp criticism by both the professionals

and the public. The citizens gathered using the legitime tools around the

initiative “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd!”.^77 They organized a series of activities and

performances to point out the future consequences of the practices known as

“investor’s urbanism”, as well as to prevent the modification and adoption of

the existing plans. They criticized the abolition of the public evaluation of the

site conducted in the form of competition, the unknown authorship behind the

proposed solution and the inexistence of a precise economic framework that

determines the price of enterprise and provides its benefits. The professional

Belgrade: The quest for the desired city image

Fig. 17
The renewed outlook of the “Geozavod” building; the Belgrade
Waterfront Gallery. (Belgrade Waterfront)