European economic clubs

While waiting for the booster dose against Covid-19, I walked
along the Sava quay and enjoyed the autumn sun rays. At the same time,
while admiring the successful urban solutions and contents of the new city
block, I tried to respond to the harsh criticism of my host about the
meaning and justification of building multi-store buildings in the “central
business zone.” I tried to bring the answer closer to him through examples
of two similar projects on a global scale. Colombo is the capital of Sri
Lanka, which is slightly larger than Belgrade, but with incomparably worse
infrastructure. When I visited it in 2018, I was surprised that a new part of
the city was being built, the value of which is five times higher than the
Belgrade Waterfront project. This new part of Colombo was created in the
waters before a wide promenade and the beautiful Shangri-La Hotel. In
addition, a polder was created around the former port, on which a new
business and residential part of the city will be built. Since this example
was not convincing for my host, “I threw all the cards on the table.” I had
previously described to him my wonderful spring vacation in Hurgada, but
not a trip to the thirty-million-people Cairo. I skipped the description of the
Pyramids and the Sphinx, the National Museum, and the Nile to point out
New Cairo, the new capital of Egypt, a city surrounded by a high concrete
wall in the middle of the desert and where all state institutions and
apartments for all civil servants are built. The value of this investment,
which has an exclusively administrative purpose and serves as
accommodation for five million inhabitants, is fifty times more expensive
than the Belgrade Waterfront project. Finally, for consolation, I quoted
David Harvey on the connection between the development cycles of
capitalism and the processes of urbanization and the creation of
agglomerations.