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