Belgrade's 'top-down' gentrification is far worse than any cereal cafe
On the banks of the river Sava, at the foot of Belgrade’s historic centre, Savamala was a congregation point for prostitutes for decades, who would solicit lorry drivers heading to Danube port. In 2009, however, things began to change. The area’s warehouses and defunct socialist-era firms began transforming – into bars, galleries and creative hubs. Today it could best be described as a Balkan bootleg of Hackney or Williamsburg, or indeed any other gentrified, hip quarter around the world, where cocktails are served in jam jars and the brickwork is exposed.
But the trajectory of the area’s revival is set to grind to a halt with the arrival of Belgrade Waterfront, a €3.5bn (£2.5bn) project between the Serbian government and the Emirati property developers Eagle Hills. The majority of Savamala’s lower reaches are to make way for offices, luxury flats and a 140,000 sq m shopping mall, the biggest in the Balkans – a little slice of Dubai, basically, that will chafe incongruously against the area’s soot-stained, art nouveau houses and light industrial buildings.
In eastern Europe, the term “gentrification” still carries regenerative connotations, and can be a force for relative good. But there are multiple models of gentrification, and what’s happening in Belgrade isn’t a natural process of improving urban districts. It’s a state-driven model of what you might call “top-down” or “hyper” gentrification – and one that’s arguably more sinister than anything happening in Hackney or Williamsburg.
‘Why does Belgrade need super-luxurious apartments? Who in Belgrade really lives that sort of lifestyle?’ Photograph: Aleks Eror
Frequently described as “megalomanic” by people that I spoke to, there’s a great deal of contempt for the project. Despite being built on state-owned land (in contravention of local laws), and requiring that Belgrade’s urban plan be redrawn to suit the developer’s demands, the city’s populace have been excluded at every step. There was no public consultation process and no transparency. The only dialogue has been one-way PR spiel. And at a price of roughly €3,000, a single square foot of Waterfront residential property costs between seven and 12 times the typical Serbian monthly salary.
“Why does Belgrade need super-luxurious apartments? Who in Belgrade really lives that sort of lifestyle?” asks Maja Lalić, co-founder of Mikser House, a multi-disciplinary creative hub based in Savamala. “When you consider who these people are that can actually afford them, you either get a bunch of imports [foreigners], or that most problematic segment of Serbian society – who, if you sniffed around where their money actually came from, you’d stumble across material for criminal charges. What sort of city is this, and who is it built for?”
The project is so widely unpopular that it has been the focal point of numerous organised protests. But the battle being fought for Savamala isn’t simply a class struggle, it’s a conflict of values.
Savamala’s revival was fueled by the arts and an exchange of ideas. The first institution to open its doors in the area was KC Grad, a cultural centre that hosts debates, exhibitions and club nights. More recently, the area has become a nightlife hotspot, with dedicated bars, clubs and restaurants. This process – although not without its detractors, principally some of the original cafe owners – has generally been welcomed by a Serbian populace starved of culture, who live in a European capital where the museum of modern arts has been “closed for renovation” for eight years.
‘Belgrade Waterfront represents the collective will of a people being trampled by politicians elected to serve them.’ Photograph: Aleks Eror
In other words – and like it or not, just as in much of east London’s model of gentrification – Belgrade’s revival has ultimately been a grassroots venture, driven by actual people and their aspirations. You might hate overpriced hipster cereal cafes, but they are human-scale businesses fueled by the dreams of individuals who are neither responsible for the predicament of the beleaguered local community nor able to alleviate it. And yet these shops make far easier targets than faceless mega-conglomerates or property developers, who cause incomparably greater damage.
We want more people to get involved in decisions that will determine how their city looks and how it’s planned
Dobrica Vesilinovi
Belgrade Waterfront, in contrast, presents an absolutely consumerist vision. It represents the collective will of a people being not simply ignored, but actively trampled by politicians that were elected to serve them.
You can see a glimpse of Savamala’s future on the river. The promenade has undergone a makeover: the husks of old boats have made way for children’s playgrounds, and a number of glossy observation decks have been erected on the murky, rubbish-strewn banks. Belgrade’s nouveau riche lunch at Savanova, a restaurant listed on the Waterfront website as an “exhibition area” for the project, despite quite clearly being a private enterprise.
The Belgrade protesters are organised and relentless: they use a clear symbol, and favour PR stunts rather than plain protests. Photograph: Ne Davimo Beograd
Though it might not suit everybody’s taste, it would be difficult to argue that it’s not an improvement on the wasteland that was here before, and proponents of Belgrade Waterfront will tell you that it’s better than nothing.
But that misses the point of why people oppose the project.
“We’re not all fired up specifically because of Belgrade Waterfront. What we want is to get more people to get involved in these decisions that will determine how their city looks, how it’s planned, how decisions are made, generally,” argues Dobrica Vesilinovi, head of protest group NeDa(vi)mo Beograd. “The type of city that you live in shapes everything around you and has an affect on people. It literally shapes them mentally.”
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The Belgrade protesters are organised and relentless. They use tactics copied from Otpor!, the movement that rallied against Slobodan Milosevic in the 90s – they use a clear symbol, and favour PR stunts rather than just protests; they print a newsletter; they write on sites to which their demographic pays attention.
Unlike individual protests, such as the Fuck Parade in London that ended up attacking the Cereal Killer cafe, it’s very much an enduring campaign. In their words, they have to do it now. They’re not under any illusions that they’ll be able to demolish Belgrade Waterfront after it has been built. And that’s the key thing: timing. Gentrification has barely touched Belgrade. It is something that has only arrived in the past five or six years. Whereas it’s a bit late for the Fuck Parade to target Brick Lane now, when the “damage” (if you want to call it that) has been done.
Western cities find themselves in the state that they are in because their residents largely sat by as gentrification took root. Hipster bashing late in the day is easy. In Belgrade, however, there’s still a chance of actually changing something.
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