Ušće (Belgrade)

Ušće (Serbian Cyrillic: Ушће) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Novi Beograd.Ušće is located on the mouth of the Sava river into the Danube, thus the name ("ušće" is Serbian for "(river) mouth"). It occupies Novi Beograd's Blocks 10, 13, 14, 15 and 16 on the Sava's left and the Danube's right bank, covering a tip of land that overlooks the islands of Malo Ratno Ostrvo and Veliko Ratno Ostrvo to the north and the old core of Belgrade, the fortress of Kalemegdan to the west. Ušće borders the neighborhoods of Staro Sajmište and Savograd on the south. As a compact grassy and forested area it stretches along the bank of the Danube into the Block 10, to the Zemun municipality and the "Jugoslavija" hotel, and the ENJUB shopping mall.

Characteristics

Like all of Novi Beograd, Ušće is flat, and without buildings to hide that fact like in the rest of the municipality, that is quite obvious here. With only three buildings and several smaller edifices, Ušće is the least urbanized section of Novi Beograd but some residential blocks are administratively attached to the local community of the same name, which had the population of 6,623 in 2002. Ušće is a vast grassy and forested area (2,5 km x 1 km) along the river banks. As such, it is used by many Belgraders as a recreational area or as a place for organizing political gatherings or musical concerts. However, many areas are not cultivated, but left to grow wild. During the high levels of the Danube and the Sava, bank areas are always flooded.

Buildings

Ušće has only three buildings, but two of them are monumental. One is the "Palace of the Federation" (Serbian: "Palata Federacije" or "Палата Федерације"), a seat of the former federal governments of Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro (also called the "SIV building"). Another monumental building is the Ušće Tower, with 134 m of height the tallest building in the Balkans (it was second tallest before the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 when Avala TV Tower just outside Belgrade was bombed down). Twin tower Ušće 2 will be finished by 2009. Third important building is the Museum of Contemporary Art, close to Sava river's left bank.

Other facilities in the neighborhood are several restaurants along the river banks and the "Park of Friendship" (Serbian: "Park prijateljstva" or "Парк пријатељства"), where during the Communist rule of Yugoslavia by Josip Broz Tito, many world politicians and dignitaries used to plant a tree when they visited Belgrade. Park has been in very bad shape lately as a result of little to no maintenance.

Sava's left bank contains numerous barges (in Serbian called "splav" or "сплав"), which since the early 1990s became center of the famed Belgrade's night life.

Gathering place

Due to its central location and wide-open space, Ušće has hosted some mass gatherings:

*On November 18, 1988, Slobodan Milošević (at the time Chairman of the Serbian Communist League's Central Committee) addressed the huge 100,000+ strong crowd as the main speaker at a mass rally that took place as integral part of "anti-bureaucratic revolution" and in essence served as Milošević's unofficial inauguration.

*On March 11, 1991, Milošević's regime organized a large counter-rally in direct response to March 9th Protest two days earlier. The gathering was seen as the regime's attempt at showing that anti-regime protesters of the prior days were a lone, politically instrumentalized, and misguided group of destructive-minded youth. Milošević himself did not address the crowd, but some of the most prominent members of his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) did. The crowd on hand mostly consisted of older generation members, many of whom were workers and pensioners bussed in for the occasion from other parts of Serbia.

*On July 3, 2004 Serbian bands Riblja Čorba and Zabranjeno Pušenje headlined a day-long anniversary concert before 40,000 spectators that came out to celebrate Riblja Čorba's 25 years and Zabranjeno Pušenje's 20 years on the scene.

*On June 17, 2006 Serbian turbofolk superstar Ceca performed more than three hours in front of large crowd of 100,000+ in support of her "Idealno loša" album that got released the same day.

*On July 14, 2007 the The Rolling Stones finally played a concert in Serbia after several previous cancellations. The spectacular 2-hour show in front of 65,000+ was part of their "A Bigger Bang Tour".

*On June 24, 2008, The Police played a show in front of 25,000+ crowd as part of their reunion tour.

*On May 20, 2009, Depeche Mode is scheduled to play Ušće as part of Tuborg GreenFest.

References

* "Beograd - plan grada"; M@gic M@p, 2006; ISBN 86-83501-53-1