General Urban Plan of Novi Sad Adopted, Amidst Protests and Conflicts

The General Urban Plan (GUP) of Novi Sad was adopted with 78 votes for and four against at the local assembly, but the protesters against the plan say that this is not where it ends for them.

The voting was preceded by conflicts between the protesters and opposition activists on one side and the security and police forces on the other, when those who oppose the GUP tried to break through the police line, and the 021 portal reports that some people have been arrested.

The police have not yet announced how many people were arrested during the incident.

The dissatisfied citizens and activists oppose the construction of the Novi Sad Waterfront project, a residential complex which is supposed to be located right along the coast of the Danube, and the City Commission for Plans has rejected nearly all the complaints to the 1,300-page document.

– People who live in certain parts of the city where urbicide has already been committed know what it means when investors are given parts of the city on a plate – the activist Marija Srdic said for N1.

Radomir Lazovic of the “Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own” said for N1 that citizens had filed over 12,000 complaints to the GUP of Novi Sad, neither of them adopted, and that their request at the protest was for only one of them to address the City Assembly.

The mayor of Novi Sad, Milos Vucevic, a member of the Serbian Progressive Party, says that he’s “not losing sleep” and that experts created the GUP and that “politics will give the final word”.

Two years ago, in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, citizens and experts managed to overturn the GUP for the Zagreb on the Sava project, as the project was called by the activists due to the similarities with the Belgrade Waterfront, a project which Serbia pronounced a project of national importance, and which is built in cooperation with an investor from the United Arab Emirates.

Grad Novi Sad

City of Novi Sad

Ne davimo Beograd

general urban plan Novi Sad

citizens protest

activists

Novi Sad Waterfront

urbicide

Marija Srdić

Radomir Lazović

citizens complaints