Managing urban environments: Opportunities and (un)sustainable practices in the Sava River area in Zagreb

Jana Vukić, Jelena Zlatar Gamberožić and Sara Ursić
Additional contact information
Jana Vukić: Department of Sociology, Croatia
Jelena Zlatar Gamberožić: Institute for Social Research
Sara Ursić: Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Zagreb, Croatia

Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal, 2023, vol. 17, issue 2, 201-216

Abstract: Zagreb, the capital and the largest city of Croatia, addressed the frequent flooding from the Sava River to the south by ‘jumping over’ it to build a new part of the city, named New Zagreb, which is protected from floods with embankments. For several decades, urbanists and architects have proposed various solutions for the Sava River, and from time to time, political elites have implemented some proposals or elements of these. Nonetheless, Zagreb has never integrated the river into its urban fabric. At the same time, along the river, there are illegal rubbish dumps in the only protected natural area, and the institutions and local authorities ignore their existence and take no legal actions against the offenders. This paper presents a case study of the ‘Zagreb on the Sava’ project that used the most important determinants of sustainability as the criteria for the project review, with emphasis on sustainable urban planning and the sociocultural dimensions of sustainability through the prism of experts, ie planners and civil actors (UNDSD 2000). The results show, among other things, that the demands of civic actors (citizens and non-governmental organisations [NGOs]) and the everyday needs and practices of the local residents run counter to political decisions of the mayor and the rest of the local government. Both experts and citizens are powerless. This paper concludes that the unused and unacknowledged potential of the Sava River is important for the realisation of a sustainable city on a human scale.

Keywords: urbanism; human scale; quality of life; sustainability; Zagreb (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R00 Z33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/8205/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/8205/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jurr00:y:2023:v:17:i:2:p:201-216

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().