JURICA PAVIČIĆ

subscription WRITTEN BY JURICA PAVIČIĆ The Duilovo case: How the whole history of modern Croatia can be told through the story of a meadow All the epiphenomena of the "random state", all the ethnology of the tribal mentality, all the failures in institution building - on one plateau Plan for Duilovo Plan for Duilovo ... Posted: October 3, 2020 8:03 pm Facebook Twitter Messenger E-mail If someone took you to Split and showed you a place known as Duilovo, you would probably say that it is by no means a special piece of useless neglected land. Because Duilovo really doesn't attract attention in any way. It is a flat, overgrown with thorns piece of flysch plateau elevated about thirty meters above the sea. In the past, the Duilovo plateau was part of a vast field in Split, where farmers from Split's Baroque suburbs grew vines. During the decade of frantic Split urbanization, Duilovo was too far from the center to be hit by the flywheel of housing. However, Duilovo had one advantage that other, similar Split suburbs did not have. Namely, it is by the sea. It is separated from the sea by only one natural rampart - a steep flysch plateau that is gradually eaten away by the south, turning the dunes into brittle pebbles. There, on that beach, the only example of meaningful construction in the entire area of ​​Duilovo was built. It is a former Yugoslav Army military hotel, a piece of typically Yugoslav brutality that descends through a beach pavilion (devastated) to an equally devastated beach. Nothing with nothing, in short. Just an anonymous suburban plateau, a plateau full of beetles, brooms and thorns. You will say and be wrong. Because, through fifteen years of the history of the Duilovo plateau, the entire history of modern Croatia can be told. All the epiphenomena of the "random state", all the ethnology of the tribal mentality, all the failures in institution building - all this can be "read" on the Duilov plateau if the one who reads the good knows the letters with which it is written. In the Duilovo case, the clientelism of Croatian local politics, the problematic role of the media, legal uncertainty, and the long-term defeat of the urban profession are clearly expressed. In the case of Duilovo, even the toxic role that top sport has in Croatia is clearly evident. All, just all the rot of a failed state can be clearly demonstrated on an anonymous, silly meadow. The modern history of Duilovo begins somewhere at the beginning of this century, when the tourist boom begins on the Adriatic, and the eastern districts of Split in the Eldorado of expansion begin to approach the plateau and the ruined military hotel. At that time, Duilovo was still an unurbanized terra vergine. Various potential investors are hanging around a piece of space by the sea, including one famous Formula 1 driver. However, of those interested in the then unurbanized meadow, one was the most rocked by the emotions of the locals. It was Goran Ivanišević , the greatest tennis player from Split and Croatia who had won his only and wonderful Wimbledon only a few years earlier. In those early 2000s, Ivanišević bought an undeveloped field with the promise that he would build a tennis academy on it. He conditions his investment by the city changing the urban plan in a completely different place so that he could build a villa in the Podmarje zone in which he will build a Split home. This is not the first time that Split has given in to sports and emotional blackmail. But Ivanišević did not stay in Split, he sold the villa in Podmarjan, the Duilova zone never welcomed a tennis center, and sometime in the 2000s, people began to think about its urbanization. In 2008, Split launched an urban tender for the zone - then largely owned by the tennis player. This tender corresponded in ambition and scale to the times of the pre-crisis investment boom. He envisioned a large marina and hotel resort, but also relatively little construction on a loose, wide space. The competition was also ambitious in terms of propositions: it was international, the jury consisted of architects and urban planners from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and serious competition prizes were planned. The competition was conducted with semi-success, three third prizes were awarded, and foreign experts gave guidelines during the judging on what it would be prudent to do with this space. The whole process looked very European and serious, but the circumstances and timing did not help him. The collapse of Wall Street and the real estate collapse were already happening, and only a few months later, local elections were being prepared in which the obvious favorite and future winner was - well, you know, Željko Kerum . Since then, since 2008, little has happened in Žnjan. The former military hotel was getting sadder and more neglected, the beach was being arranged here and there, and the spacious plateau was eaten away by the spontaneous construction. The people of Split forgot about Duilovo, not even knowing that a whole little thriller was going on around that plateau in offices and offices. The pitches passed from hand to hand, new plans were constantly being drawn and drawn, and investors were more or less secretly meeting with the next mayors. RELATED NEWS 1557504 NEWS FROM LILIPUT A sad story of two buildings, two masterpieces. One was killed by a foreign speculator, the other by a local messiah FILM STORY Nikša Župa from Split worked in the theater, so he became an arms dealer and died in Plitvice And this whole secret history of Duilovo would have remained very secret if this week the Zagreb investor Ciril Zovko had not appeared in several Croatian media and attacked the current city government, which is hampering his grandiose project on Duilovo. Zovko - who bought the land from a tennis player - imagined four skyscrapers with a dizzying 22 floors in the area of ​​Duilovo, three of which would be residential and one a hotel. According to his own statement, he had a nice cooperation with former SDP mayor Baldasar (a man who - by the way - is being accused of favoring investors) about this plan . "We worked in accordance with the urban planning instructions from the City of Split under the leadership of the then mayor Baldasar and his team. There was a stalemate with the change of government. It is extremely unserious that the change of government changes the rules." The problem with that statement is that the rules have not changed. Tender works (and - by the way - common sense) in this area provided for the construction of no more than five floors. Even today, the urban plan in that area does not envisage housing construction, only tourism. The Zagreb investor, however, apparently received signals from the former mayor that the plans could be bent, signals that melted away with the change of government. With the current mayor of Split - a sick man who is at the end of his probably only term - Zovko obviously failed to establish such a "harmonious cooperation", so he complained to the media and shared his crying emails with invitations to a meeting. real estate combinators: he complained about - how do you say that? - and, yes: "anti-entrepreneurial barriers". And here the story of Duilov suddenly ceases to be just a story of a meadow covered with broom and beetle. It becomes the story of a city that agrees to the moral blackmail of a man who is credited with skillfully throwing a shaggy ball over the net. It becomes a story about the dangerous fetishism of sports, which, as soon as you wave the ball in front of their eyes, obscures rational reasoning for Croats. That story becomes a story about real estate speculation, about getting rich by turning "green" into "red", without a single cramp being buried. It is a story about spatial mutations in which a space starts as a planned park, then becomes a tennis camp, then a hotel with low pavilions, and in the end 20-storey residential skyscrapers are cut out of it. This story is also a story about Croatian urban tenders, beautiful shells of form in which the community invests knowledge, money and intelligence, so that it all ends up in a drawer like - how did Ciril Zovko put it? - "irrelevant". It is a story about local mayors who meet with investors over semi-formal coffees and tell them about the increased number of storeys, without the public, city councilors or the independent profession having any idea. But - that story, the story of Duilov, is mostly a story about the defeat of urban planning. On the defeat of urbanism as a meaningful, rational and professionally based activity. It is disarming that the hypocritical naivete with which investors pretend to think that it is possible to push 22-storey buildings into the space provided for five-storey buildings, without any consequences for the city. Where would these people park? How would you get to your apartments, and leave them for work? Where would their children attend kindergarten and school? How would you service your needs? Where - next to them - would the tourists of the two hotels physically stop? How would citizens get to the beach? All these questions would swarm in the head of every sensible person, even if it is about another city, even if it is not about Split, the only Croatian conurbation in which primary schools still work in three shifts, in which only 3% is recycled. waste, in which the city has not been able for three years to find eight quadrangles of land for recycling yards. About a city that has no landfill solved, and after every heavy rain it loses drinking water. In this and such a city, an ambitious Zagreb developer would pour another 88 skyscraper floors on the ground of a five-dinar, following the logic that all Croatian real estate benders are guided by. The ideas will be his, as well as the profit. Gasoline will be ours, from Split. We other citizens will pay for the consequences: faulty roads, congestion on narrow roads, neighborhoods without sidewalks, bottlenecks, missing kindergartens and schools, crowded beaches, chaos and crowds. All this is happening just a few hundred meters from Split 3, an anthological (and already well-damaged) example of world-important urbanism. It takes place in a city that was liquidated in 1995 by an urban planning institute, driven by a blind ideological faith in liberal deregulation. In a country where the mayor of the capital arranges a big urban makeover with a sheikh or emir with rahat-lokum and tea. In a country that for thirty years firmly believes that planning is a communist wisdom. And that is why - in such a country - Duilovo is not just one meadow. It is a case study. It is the national state of affairs.