Belgrado Waterfront II

Deu no Estado de S Paulo
03-05-2018, por Barbara Surk / NY Times
http://internacional.estadao.com.br/noticias/nytiw,plano-para-construir-a-dubai-dos-balcas-irrita-moradores-de-belgrado,70002291828

Plano para construir a Dubai dos Balcãs irrita moradores de Belgrado

“Queremos restaurar a antiga glória de Belgrado, fazer dela uma cidade grande e respeitável novamente, depois dos anos de vergonha que vieram com os conflitos e guerras”, disse o prefeito de Belgrado, Sinisa Mali.

Imagem: Burohappold Engeneering
https://www.burohappold.com/projects/belgrade-waterfront/  

Antes do começo da construção, há dois anos, 231 famílias foram realocadas por causa do projeto, mas algumas se recusaram a sair. Certa noite, cerca de 30 homens mascarados com tacos de beisebol e ferramentas pesadas apareceram no local. Ao amanhecer, vários prédios residenciais e comerciais tinham sido demolidos para permitir o início das obras.

O ataque de 2016 chocou os sérvios, que levaram sua raiva às ruas, denunciando o que afirmavam ser práticas corruptas da elite. Os protestos se transformaram nas maiores manifestações contra o governo desde que uma revolta popular derrubou o poderoso Slobodan Milosevic, em 2000.

(..) Os primeiros proprietários dos prédios residenciais a serem concluídos em breve deverão pagar até 7 mil euros por metro quadrado, em um país com um salário médio mensal de 375 euros. Ao todo, 5.700 residências e oito hotéis serão construídos no empreendimento, na área entre o rio e as ferrovias.

Placas de cimento foram colocadas ao longo do rio para formar um calçadão repleto de escorregadores para crianças, um ancoradouro, um restaurante, uma ciclovia e uma fileira de cartazes gigantes que mostram os prédios a serem construídos nos próximos 30 anos. Entre estes, o maior shopping center dos Balcãs.

“Estamos tentando fazer tudo novo, sem romper os laços da cidade com o passado”, disse Mali.

Mas Bojan Kovacevic, presidente da Academia de Arquitetos da Sérvia, chamou o empreendimento de “crime contra o planejamento urbano”.

2018-05-21

Leia também

“To Build Dubai of the Balkans, Serbia Deploys Bulldozers and Baseball Bats”. NY Times 29-04-2018, por Barbara Surks

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/world/europe/serbia-belgrade-waterfront-uae-aleksandar-vucic.html

“Controversy surrounds Belgrade Waterfront development”. BBC online 21-06-2016, por Guy Delauney

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36576420

“Belgrade's 'top-down' gentrification is far worse than any cereal café”, The Guardian 10-12-2015, por Alex Eror

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/10/belgrade-top-down-gentrification-worse-than-cereal-cafe

“Belgrade Waterfront - the dark side of 'urban renewal'. Open Democracy 26-11-2015, por Marko Aksentijevic

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/marko-aksentijevi/belgrade-waterfront-dark-side-behind-urban-renewal

Belgrado Waterfront

Deu no The Guardian 10-12-2015, por Herbert Wright

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/10/belgrade-waterfront-gulf-petrodollars-exclusive-waterside-development 

Belgrade Waterfront: an unlikely place for Gulf petrodollars to settle

Belgrade Waterfront is a €3.5bn (£2.5bn) project of condominiums, hotels, offices, retail, parks and paths dominated by a glass skyscraper that will be the tallest between Vienna and Istanbul. Its developer is Abu Dhabi-based Eagle Hills, chaired by Mohamed Alabbar, who previously founded Emaar, builders of the world’s largest shopping mall and tallest building, both in Dubai. Their project manager in Belgrade, Nikola Nedeljkovic, says that “we envisage Belgrade Waterfront to be a game-changing hub for Serbia”, and that it “takes into consideration the balanced sensitivity to nature, culture and modernity”.

(..)The model shows the entire 1.77 sq km district – a core of dense high-rise buildings, dominated by a glass tower that is twisted in the middle. Called the Kula Beograd, the tower has been designed by the Chicago office of skyscraper architecture titans SOM, and would overlook the River Sava and the new 1.8km Sava Promenade.
Also part of the masterplan is the Balkans’ largest shopping mall, a soap-bubble dome on disused railway land further away from the river. Its 140,000 sq m would make it almost as big as London’s Westfield Stratford. Surrounding the mall would be upwards of 6,000 flats. “We’re trying to focus on the affordable as well as the high-end segments,” Nedeljkovic says. “We’re trying to have a diverse mix of product.” The mix is not obvious in the model. There are offices, of course, and hotels, including a including a swanky W Hotel to open in 2019. Parkland and tree-lined boulevards are spread liberally. Belgrade’s 1884 railway station will become a museum.

(..)The movement Neda(vi)mo Beograd (a pun that loosely translates as “We won’t let Belgrade d(r)own”) organises street protests against Belgrade Waterfront. They carry yellow ducks and rally behind a gigantic oversized duck the size of a car.
Dobrica Veselinović, one of the movement’s activists, alleges that the agreement to build Belgrade Waterfront is contrary to Serbian law and procedures because he claims that the promenade construction works started without a building permit. He adds: “It does not take into account the needs of society or economic and urban reality in Belgrade.” The group argues that local people were not consulted, that the deal does not provide adequate affordable housing and that it was done in secret.

They also say that families in the area were summarily evicted with mere days’ warning, and their houses demolished. Radio Television of Vojvodina (RTV), a public broadcaster in neighbouring Vojvodina province, ran a report in April interviewing some of the families who said their houses were destroyed without permission. The apartments in which they were resettled were only for limited periods or to buy, according to Veselinović, and “no social service or legal assistance was offered to them”. (Continua)

2015-12-15