New Belgrade

I have just been on a research trip to New Belgrade in Serbia. The area was built across the river from Belgrade by Tito after 1950, and now houses 500,000 people (about the same population as Leeds). Envisaged as the city of 'light, sun and future' there are some extraordinary architectural buildings made in the modern 'international style' exemplifying the benefits and disadvantages of this type of concrete architecture and city planning. Similar to some of the high rise buildings and monolithic structures being built in Leeds (although not clad in so much render or glass!), it reminded me of what happens when a dominant ideology in this case socialism, or in Leeds - the free market, transforms a city in a short period of time. I imagine this is what the former president of RIBA meant when he described Leeds as currently building 'the slums of the future'. It is too easy to dismiss the New Belgrade project as failed, there did seem to be an association amongst some people I spoke with between it and drug dealing/criminality, but many of the buildings are now being lived in very well, with a mix of rich and poor and low crime levels. Serbia's free market doesn't really seemed to have touched this area of the city that much yet, although NATO bombing 'redesigned' some of the key buildings in 1999.