Guardian Highlights Battle Over Belgrade Waterfront

Bitter divisions in Serbia over the development of the Belgrade Waterfront are the subject of a major investigative feature in Thursday's UK Guardian. The mega-development of the city's long neglected Danube bank has split Belgrade, the article recalls.

"Some see a prosperous future in it, others are aghast at the project's hitherto-alien cityscape, unconvinced of its economic or social benefits and suspicious of Serbia's relationship with [the UAE-based developer] Eagle Hills," it writes.

The newspaper notes that the model for the development, housed in a restored hotel, shows "a core of dense high-rise buildings, dominated by a glass tower that is twisted in the middle, called the Kula Beograd," going on to note that the masterplan includes the largest shopping mall in the Balkans and upwards of 6,000 flats.

It concedes that the prospect of investment from the Emirates and 20,000 new jobs in a country with a jobless rate of 25 per cent is clearly attractive to Aleksandar Vucic's government, which has encouraged the UAE to extend its foothold in Serbia with other investment deals and the part-purchase of Air Serbia.

But "the perceived backroom nature of the Belgrade Waterfront deal has caused real anger," it adds, before interviewing a range of opposition politicians, activists such as Dobrica Veselinovic, from the Ne da(vi)mo Beograd movement, and artists and clubbers in the adjacent Savamala district. None has a good word to say about the prospect of an avalanche of "Gulf petrodollars".

Some complain that the exclusive character of the new Waterfront will inevitably impact on and destroy the artsy atmosphere of the Savamala district, part of which is due for demolition. Others complain that the expensive flats will...