November 19, 2008

Užice - The Serbian Hong Kong


Užice is like the little Hong Kong of Serbia (here in some fantastic pictures of Pedrag Supurovic), you wouldn't really expect such a city when you start to go up the mountain region of the Zlatibor district. From here it's agood starting point point to visit some of the most exiting places of Western Serbia: Tara National Park, Zlatibor, Mokra Gora and the Kusturica Village of Drvengrad.

Located at the river of the Djetinja River, Užice has about 60'000 habitants and a florishing textile and metallurgy indutry, since the city started to developing an indutrial town at the end of the 19th century.

It's also the first serbian city with a hydroelectric power plant. Within the former Yugoslavia (established after the Second world War), Užice was renamed "Titovo Užice". From 1992, following the collapse of the pro-communist administration, "Titovo" was removed, leaving the original city name Užice.
Because it was Tito's city and had an important plac
e during the communist system, Užice received significant amounts of investments in infrastructure and local factories, which turned the city among highly developed ones of its size in former Yugoslavia.
This is probably also the reason, why it has many skyscrapers and for the summer there is a quite interesting beach "plaza".
During the 1990s Užice's economy performed very bad due to economic conditions (war, political instability, sanctions) and in 1999 the city was bombed multiple times during the NATO bombing.

Today, industry is the heart of the Užice municipality economic development. The most developed industrial branches are non-ferrous metallurgy, metal working and textile industries.
This "Textil's" commercial building that is located in Uzice's industrial zone, between the motorway, the railway, warehouses, a football field and a cemetery is a new building made by the group "NEO Arhitekti".
The architects delivered what they themselves describe as 'anti-design' in reaction to the surroundings and context. Ignoring all those external factors they are powerless to change, they concentrated on the interior.
The result is a building with an interesting perforated façade that reveals nothing of the very effi
cient spatial organization inside.

Maybe the suuroundings of the industrial zone is not very inspiring, but the center of Užice is very interesting.

Like this rocket-shaped building
which is an incredible eye-catcher!

And this H- shaped construction!
(picture by Ivan Micovic

16 comments:

  1. What about getting permissions to use photographs and signing authors?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear anonymus, you're absolute right. If you allow your permission, I would be pleased to mention you as the author of the pic and place a link to your site. Don't get me wrong, I found the pic in several places, so I was not sure who's the original author. But I'm very interested in getting this straight. Please contact me at: sajkaca32@yahoo.com
    (If you wish, I will delete the pic, no problem)
    And thank you to drop by!

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  3. Dear Sajkaca

    You are doing a fabulous job with your blog, providing people like me who are soooo far away with a glimpse of a country and place we want to know about...

    I am going to visit Belgrade in December , next month...I am currently in USA but originally from India.

    Will you be around?
    I would like to say hello!


    Regards
    Krishna

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dear Krishna

    thank you for the nice words. I'm very happy to hear that you 're interested in Serbia. I'm sure you will have a great time in Belgrade. Feel free to contact me at my email address (sajkaca32@yahoo.com). I will be probably in Belgrade in the End of December.

    Many greetings!
    Sajkaca

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  5. I have only ever passed Uzice in a bus and it always takes my breath away. I'd love to go there to explore on foot. Some day soon I hope. :-/

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  6. Best regards from TEXTILUE and thank you!
    Uzice looks like dream!

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  7. Odličan blog.Veliki pozdrav iz Užica.

    Mladen.

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  8. Thank you Mladen and thank you to TEXTILUE. Uzice is indeed amazing, and it was my wish to show it to my readers!

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  9. That H-shaped construction photo was taken by me. You can give credit to Ivan Micovic :)

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  10. Up to you though! :) Noticed the other ones don't have credit listed, so putting one there might ruin the visual appeal of the blog.

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  11. Thanks Ivan, I'm glad to mention authors of pictures, of course! Sometimes it's just hard to find out who the "real" author is.
    Thanks for visiting! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  12. For the most of the photographs you used it is not at all hard to find out who the authors are.

    As it is now, you are violaring not only Serbian but international copyright laws.

    It is not just, menitoning sources, it is requiring approval to use them.

    You are risking not only legal prosecution, but also closing this blog.

    As you are already warned few times about issue, it seems you have no good wil to pay respect to other people's work, and your only goal is to gain popularity by presenting other's work as your own.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I would feel grateful if someone with a successful site would use my pictures, but I see we don't think all in the same way.
    If you have a serious issue then feel free to contact me, but if you wanna stay anonymous, the I will not pay anymore attention to your comments.
    OK?

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  14. I don't get it.

    How do you come up with the Hong Kong connection? Hong Kong has over 7 million people and is a world centre for trade. Uzice is a little town of 50 000 that's kind of awkward to get to.

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    Replies
    1. Ehm, the connection to Hong Kong is not related with the number of inhabitants....obviously...if I read this post from 6 years ago, I now also ask myself..how it got this name, it's probably not just because Tito's administration blow in a lot of money and made it one of the more prosper cities of the former Yugoslavia...if I remember right, it was because of the silk textile industry..and here is the link to HK....but you're right...it's a bit overstated to call it that way...

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