On Saturday, August 17, the DASH team went on a fieldtrip to visit the sights in Novi Sad. The tour was led by Petar Atanacković, who described the city’s rich urban history over the centuries by pointing to some of the key landmarks of the urban environment. Aleksandar Jevtić offered additional remarks on the city’s history from an urban planning perspective.
Credits for images: Ivana Momić
Novi Sad (the second largest city in Serbia, with more than 300,000 residents and a metropolitan area of more than 400,000) is only an hour’s drive from Belgrade and sits in the fertile plain of the Pannonian Basin. It is the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina and the main political, economic, health, educational and cultural center of the region.
Immediately before WWII, Novi Sad had about 70,000 inhabitants, but its population had dropped to 40,000 by the end of the war. The period that followed the war, however, was one of intense urbanization under the socialist government, which built a considerable public social housing stock. In the 1990s, the war which followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia opened onto a difficult period of transition, marked by economic stagnation and the decline of the city. Аfter 2000, in a new environment shaped by the adoption of the market economy, Novi Sad began to develop again; this phase, however, saw a decrease in investment in social housing, which had been by and large privatized at that time.
The walk started before noon with a visit to the city’s most famous landmark, the Petrovaradin fortress, which overlooks Novi Sad’s city centre. Historically, the dominant position of the Petrovaradin rock over the Danube and its surroundings has always been of interest to all peoples who have settled in the region, whether for shorter or longer periods – Celts, Romans, Huns, Ostrogoths, Gepids, Langobards, Avars, Franks and Bulgarians. During the Middle Ages, the area of Petrovaradin became a hotspot in the struggle for dominance between Byzantium and Hungarians, and the Ottoman conquest of Petrovaradin in 1526 marked the beginning of Turkish hegemony in the region. After Austro-Hungarian armies’ victory against the Turks, in the late 17th century the fortress was rebuilt in its present form and the settlement of Novi Sad (“new plantation”) was established on the bank of the Danube. After the end of WWI, Novi Sad became part of the newly-created kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Petrovaradin fortress was completely demilitarized in the middle of the 20th century, officially declared a historical monument, and placed under state protection. Today, the EXIT Festival (a multiple award-winning music festival) is held at Petrovaradin fortress every year in July.
After a city walk at temperatures of over 38 degrees, the DASH team ended the fieldtrip with a visit to the youth center CK13. CK13 is a polyvalent social and cultural center whose aim is to strengthen citizens’ political self-consciousness, social engagement, and ability to self-organize through a variety of programs of a political, activist, educational, cultural, and artistic nature. CK13 was founded in 2007 and today is one of the few remaining independent social spaces in Novi Sad. In the courtyard of CK13, the DASH team shared their impressions of the visit and discussed their plans for future secondments in Germany, Denmark and Portugal.
