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INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PROJECT
SERBALBANOPOLIS-ALBANOSERBPOLIS*,
©COPYRIGHT, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR Vojislav D. Dević
PROJECT AUTHOR
VOJISLAV D. DEVIC
NOVI SAD, 1991-2007
1. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
- As founders: to Serbia and Albania, to the European Union, the Russian Federation and the USA and to the UN, Not to remain just a utopia, it is enough for the project to be supported, for a start, by only one state of the European Union, by the government of one European state, by one Christian church, by one Islamic community, one king or heir to the throne, or one Maeccenas-benefactor, who would seriously encourage this project and help its further lobbying in Serbia, Albania, European Union, USA, Russian Federation and United Nations. The central reconciliation territory, on which this project should be accomplished, will come into sight by providence, probably somewhere on the border between Serbia and Albania, perhaps just in the valley of the River Beli Drim, between the mountains of Koritnik and Paštrik.
Leave the rest to the Lord!
On behalf of the Initiative Group ……………………………… Academician of ISA VOJISLAV DEVIĆ professor of City Planning,
Address:
2. THE VISION, THE MISSION AND THE AIMS
The conflicts and wars which shake the planet Earth are necessary neither to God nor to people, but only to certain groups which make the profit from the conflicts either economically or maintaining and increasing their political, religious, national or military power. The price of the success and “progress” of those visible and invisible power centres, as history always shows and proves, sooner or later becomes Pyrrhic or self-destructive victory, not only for those groups, but also, and even more, for quarrelling peoples and for the whole mankind. The transformation of the destructive energy into constructive one between the quarrelling peoples is not possible to achieve either by force or isolation or in short time or on the whole territory of the conflicts. From the geo-strategic point of view Europe has two good ways for its stable maintenance development. The first one is to follow the way of Swiss neutrality i.e. to maintain the balance between Asian and American political and economic centres, and the second is to become the centre i.e. integrative factor between Asian and American power centres. For both of these ways Europe has to become a whole first. In order to become a whole and unique in its spiritual, cultural, natural, political, economic and biological diversities it has to integrate its oldest territory, “the first Europe” the origin of European literacy, urbanization and sociability and it is Serbia, so the territory which has alternately, through millenniums, been now jeopardized, destroyed and burnt now organized, settled and built according to the plans of different empires and the great powers. Europe can’t be stable if it has on its territory, on the Balkans and in the part of Serbia, in Kosovo and Metohija, the focus of the conflict which, in every moment, can be destabilized and blazed up into a large scale war. The present day conflict on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija between the Serbs and the Albanians (Scipetars) who came from Caucasus, present day Azerbaijan, to Sicily under the Byzantine duke Giorgio Maniaco in 980 and then to the Serbian territory in 1043 has lasted, with interruptions, for many centuries and cannot be resolved peacefully until the clash of interests between Serbian and Albanian peoples is cleared and resolved. Even if the theories and assumptions that the Albanians are the descendants of native Illyrian tribe Albanoi were true (the claim that the Albanians are Illyrian descendants is refuted by the fact that the Illyrian languages belonged to the centum group) the clash of interests between these two peoples cannot be permanently resolved by any force, any NATO bombardment, any peace forces of the KFOR, UNMIK, any unilateral declaration of independence. This conflict can be ended only by the states of Serbia and Albania with the help of the European Union, the Russian Federation, the USA and the United Nations. At times when the Albanians want, at any cost, with the help of their western advisers, to obtain the independence of Kosovo and Metohija, i.e. its separation from its home Serbia in order to accomplish their dream about the Great Albania, Serbia in agreement with Albania should, besides the suggested solutions about essential or controlled autonomy within the borders of the state of Serbia, offer the project of SERBALBANOPOLIS, the city of reconciliation between the Serbs and the Albanians. By this it will show and prove both to its citizens and to Europe and also to the world that despite the boiling and ferment point it is possible ,with mutual forces, to organize for a start on a confined territory, the mutual life of those quarreling on religious, national and cultural basis.
This mutual life could be planned and organized in a new city founded especially for that purpose. This city for a new mutual life of the Serbs and the Albanians could be called SERBALBANOPOLIS AND ALBANOSERBPOLIS or simply PEACETOWN. What else should happen between the Serbs and the Albanians so that they would stop quarrelling, hating, killing each other and fighting for the primacy of who is older on the Balkans, who is more numerous and which country and people Kosovo and Metohija belong to. Do we need a new Balkan war and European conflict which could spread to the whole planet? Who is eager for Serbian and Albanian bloodshed and for whose interests and profits? Could the unification of the Serbs and the Albanians ever be reached? Up to now, history has shown that it is not impossible. The author’s opinion is that the unification of the Serbs and the Albanians could but does not have to happen, but it is necessary that they meet and reconcile and just such reconciliation of two peoples is suggested and offered in this city planning peace project of SERBALBANOPOLIS on an outer territory chosen for that purpose. The estimation of the author and the stirring group is that this would be the “business of the century” both for the Serbs and the Albanians and above all for Europe! In a nut shell, the project of SERBALBANOPOLIS promotes the possibilities of mutual life of the Serbs and the Albanians on a specially planned multi-religious and multicultural outer urban space which at the same time provides the mutual life for the people of different nations, religions and cultures who do not give up their primal identity. To prove that this city of reconciliation is neither a caprice nor an ephemeral adventure in the relations between the Serbs and the Albanians, it is primarily necessary that the home lands of both quarrelling peoples, then Serbia and Albania approve and guarantee the special exterritorial status of SERBALBANOPOLIS-ALBANOSERBPOLIS and that peace, order and organization, in the transitional period, are maintained by the forces and experts of the United Nations. If the Serbs and the Albanians do not have the projects with the mutual Serbian-Albanian interest (neither the decentralization of the government and the presence of KFOR, UNMIK, NATO, nor the supervised independence, nor the fundamental autonomy, nor the supervised autonomy would be enough) the Pandora’s box of the new series of war, blood and horror will be opened not only on Kosovo and Metohija. The innocent Serbs and Albanians will again suffer the most. Who is it suitable for and who will make a profit on a new Serbian-Albanian war once again? 3. THE LOCATION FOR THE PROJECT COMPLETION In writer’s opinion, one of the best locations for the construction of the SERBALBANOPOLIS geo-politically and geo-strategically is somewhere in the border zone between Serbia and Albania, perhaps just near Prizren in the valley of the River Beli Drim or on the spot chosen by both the Serbs and the Albanians, the great powers and Security Council of the United Nations. With the completion of the project for SERBALBANOPOLIS, for the first time in their history, these two nations would be put into a position to meet on an equal footing, to reconcile and accomplish the mutual life despite being of different nations, religions and cultures.
4. CITY PLANNING-ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT The total minimal necessary land area for the project completion is around 900 hectares. The base for the city planning solution of SERBALBANOPOLIS, i.e. PEACETOWN represents the model of OLIMPIAPOLIS*, the city of non-violent peace, which has passed the official selection on the world congress of city planners in Belfast, in Northern Ireland in 1996. According to city planning-architectural concept the central motive and the junction of the whole city complex would be the palace of the reconciliation of the Serbs and the Albanians and also of global culture, i.e. the thing that joins all the people on the planet, i.e. the culture of spirit and body (cultural and sport activities) within the green surface of the reconciliation park. The Reconciliation Palace (1) is planned in compliance with its educational-peace keeping role. Aesthetically it should represent the symbiosis of Serbian and Albanian construction styles, ornaments and proportions. The inside contents of show-rooms, negotiation and agreement halls and cultural events are restricted by the programmes of Serbian and Albanian historians. This programme should represent the history of the conflicts and the sense of community, war and peace between the two nations, constructive and destructive projects and events from the arrival of the Scipetars under the Byzantine duke Giorgio Maniaco from Sicily to the Serbian territory in 1043, until today (the Scipetars came to Sicily in 980. from Caucasus –present day Azerbaijan). The educational-ethical aim of this palace of reconciliation is that any future big or small conflict between the Serbs and the Albanians should be resolved in it, and that everyone who passes through it really understands the fatality and absurd of all wars, destructions and conflicts.
Picture 2.Preliminary design of the ideal zone for SERBALBANOPOLIS- ALBANOSERBPOLIS which will be adjusted to the chosen location
In the reconciliation park (2), green area around the palace, playing fields for trainings and sports competitions as well as small technological park of contemporary technologies and innovations are planned. In the second, municipal service and energy ring (3), public municipal services, crafts workshops, cafés, restaurants and energy collectors (windmills, solar collectors…) are planned. In the third business, residential and tourist ring (4) family, multi-family and group living for about 50 000 people (half of them Serbs half Albanians) with tourist space is planned. In the fourth, ring of culture and religion (5), specific cultural institutions for cultural and national societies and art workshops as well as religious buildings (temples and cemeteries; for the Serbs Orthodox temple and for the Albanians mosques and Roman-Catholic churches, and an Orthodox temple for Orthodox Albanians if there are any) are planned. In the fifth, production, agricultural and forest ring (6), ecological industrial production sections, ecological production of fruit and vegetables and forests as a biosphere layer of SERBALBANOPOLIS are planned. All the rings are connected with the spiral traffic arteries and pedestrian tree-lined roads. Urban space for the Serbs and the Albanians is divided in a specific way so that all the spaces would be centripetally fitted and gravitationally twisted towards each other. Picture 3. Spatial concept of the territorial division of Serbian and Albanian part of the city and potential traffic solution for SERBALBANOPOLIS-ALBANOSERBPOLIS The harmony of mutual life of the Serbs and the Albanians can be realized exactly with urbanized space based on the model of spiral distribution of the harmony of spheres-rings.
5. ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS а) According to the author of the project, SERBALBANOPOLIS can be built by the method of a joint corporation, or in some other way that would enable this city to become the proving ground where Serbian and Albanian will would be expressed so that they could live in permanent peace within one limited territory, at least. In the same manner the will of the European Union, the Russian Federation, the USA and the United Nations would be expressed so that Kosovo and Metohija is no longer a trouble spot for the conflicted great powers. b) All institutionalized subjects (Serbia, Albania, the European Union, the Russian Federation, the USA and the United Nations) would be completely independent legal subjects, signatories to the Bill for Establishing SERBALBANOPOLIS and guarantors of its lasting security, where the rules and obligations would be defined by the Statute of SERBALBANOPOLIS. c) The necessary common functions of SERBALBANOPOLIS would be within the Coordinating body's authority (comprised of individual member representatives of Serbia, Albania, the European Union, the Russian Federation, the USA and the United Nations) that would ensure:
d) The project would be realized under the guidance of Consortium for the Realization of SERBALBANOPOLIS made up of the founders and endowers.
6. THE ORIENTATIONAL VALUE OF THE INVESTMENT *
* Based on land, designing and building prices in Serbia
7. SOURCES OF FINANCING
The project stipulates that all of the founders (Serbia, Albania, the European Union, the Russian Federation, the USA and the United Nations) should cover land purchase expenses, the expenses of building infrastructure, the Palace and Park of Reconciliation, communal and energetic hub, agricultural-forest hub and organization of all the common areas, whereas corporations, donors and individuals should finance building of a business-residential and tourist hub of SERBALBANOPOLIS . Even though the price for the realization of this project (ranging between 1.3 and 2.6 billions of Euros)* may outwardly seem high to many potential founders, it may be even lower. Running a proper marketing campaign would make it realistic to expect the following to join the project as donors:
…… who would be credited with contributing to the realization of the project and who would thus leave a mark in the history of this unique city of reconciliation. At any rate, investing 1.3 to 2.6 billions of Euros in calming the tensions, i.e. in one’s own security should not be a problem at all, especially for the funds of the European Union, above all. Let us remember that the expenses for the new roof of the Wembley stadium amount to over 1 billion Euros. If Europe has no money for building SERBALBANOPOLIS – ALBANOSERBPOLIS but does have money for covering and reconstructing sport stadiums, then Europe does not care at all about the peace within Kosovo and Metohija.
* Finally, it is important to emphasize: No matter how big the investment may seem, it still makes up less than 1 per mill of the amount spent on armament and wars every year!
8. WHAT MAKES THE PROJECT OF SERBALBANOPOLIS-ALBANOSERBPOLIS – PEACETOWN UNIQUE IN THE WORLD AND WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER PROJECTS
9. THE OPINIONS OF THE INTERVIEWED In the year of 2002 this project was published in the form of a four lingual brochure (in Serbian, English, French and German) “SERBALBANOPOLIS – the City of Reconciliation of the 21st century” in the edition of “Prometeus” from Novi Sad, containing the reviews of respectable colleagues from urbanistic profession, Branko Bojović, the IAUS consultant and Miodrag Ralević, Ph.D., the president of the Serbian Town Planners Association.
The review of Branko Bojović, an architect and consultant at the Institute of Architecture and Regional and Urbanplanning of Serbia (Belgrade, December 1999) "The idea of my younger fellow colleague, Mr. Dević Vojislav, about Serbalbanopolis, seems very interesting and possible to accomplish. The reason for estimating so is given in the following text. The reconciliation of people in general, and so of the Serbs and the Albanians, from a humanistic standpoint, is inevitable. If the reconciliation of the Serbs and the Albanians is necessary - which it is – and if this reconciliation is possible at all, in particular and above all it will be possible in some form of urban space that, by its very nature, imposes limitations and tolerance, in the space where any individual human right and freedom is conditioned and limited by the same right and freedoms of the others. With respect to this, the idea of Serbalbanopolis of Mr. Dević Vojislav assumes an absolute value and that is the reason why I support this idea.”
An extract from the Opinion and Support of Miodrag Ralević, Ph.D. Docent, B.S. architectural engineer, president of the Serbian Town Planners Association for the idea of the realization of SERBALBANOPOLIS, the City of Reconciliation of the conflicted nations (Belgrade, January 2000.) “The idea of «PEACETOWN» offered to us by a respectable colleague Dević Vojislav, professor of architecture in its conception and notion contains universal and permanent values due to which it originated and which the whole urban culture strives for, both in the present and in the future. The basic value of the message of «PEACETOWN» is directed towards building multiethnic urban environments as the common symbiosis of what its residents offer from their source traditional (spiritual-ethnologic) life patterns, and by no means towards their “annulment, evasion or denial” with the aim of the installment of something completely new that would result in “rejection” of the communities that would live in that kind of a town. What is useful in practice and achievable in reality of the model of «PEACETOWN» is its gradual “creation” starting from the present moment by instructing nations how to respect the civilizational assets of other ethno-communities they share the land with, how to build common grounds for life, work and production, and thus complete networking and integrating public service systems into common integrational core that will connect them. Finally, as the crown of all the common life would be the formation of temple-palace dedicated to the accomplished reconciliation in their common achieved values and advantages of common life. Foreign relevant bodies who expressed their opinion on the projects: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation from Nottingham, Great Britain (February, 1999) and International Committee for Peace, Disarmament and Ecological Security at Seas and Oceans from Moscow, the Russian Federation (February, 1999). Both of these reports can be found on the site www.idobravoj.com under SRBALBANOPOLIS. 10. ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE PROJECT
He was born in Novi Sad in 1952. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, Department for Urban Planning in 1977, in Belgrade. He specialized in urbanism at the University of Paris VIII in Saint-Denis in the class of 1982/1983. He was elected professor at the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education and Arts in Moscow in 1995. In the year of 2000 he received the New Century Award “Who is Who” from Baron’s Who is Who Institute, California, USA, for “remarkable achievements that have marked our lives in many aspects”. In 2005 he was elected a consultant at the Institute of Geography, SASA (the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) “Jovan Cvijić” in Belgrade. He is a researcher, theoretician and practician of the spatial planning, urbanism, architecture, a protector of building heritage, of ecology, futurology and geostrategic projects. With his authorial papers he participated in several dozens of specialized and scientific symposiums at Serbian, Yugoslav, European and world level. Mr. Dević is a collaborator and author of several dozens of urbanistic plans and projects. He is also the author of a great number of articles published in professional and daily newspapers. He is also the author of the following books: The Projects of Tolerance – Mundialism, Ecumenicalism and Orthodoxy, 1996 (trilingual); A Hidden Name and The Unknown Urbanological Genealogy of Novi Sad, 1997; Can Earthquake Harm the Safety of Novi Sad?, 1998; The Ethical-Ecological Epistle to Fellow Colleagues – Architects and Urbanists of the III millennium, 1999 (five lingual, awarded at the Town Planning Exhibition (“Urbanistički salon”) in Niš, the same year) and Serbalbanopolis-The City of Reconciliation of XXI century, 2002 (four lingual); The Notional Concept of the Temple of All-Christian Meeting and Reconciliation, St. John the Baptizer, 2003. (bilingual). He is the author of the following maps: The Maps of Cultural Treasures of Vojvodina, 2002. (in Serbian and English); Cultural-Historic Map of Sremski Karlovci, 2003 (bilingual, Serbian-English); Cultural-Historic Roadmaps Through the Castles of Vojvodina, 2004. (bilingual, Serbian-English); Cultural-Historic-Geographic Maps of the World, Fruška Gora 2005 (bilingual, Serbian-English); Info maps of the Resources of Vojvodina and Novi Sad, 2005 (bilingual, Serbian-English); Info maps of the Resources of Novi Sad, Belgrade, AP Vojvodina and the Republic of Serbia 2006 (bilingual, Serbian-English). The guardian of squares, cemeteries and churches of Novi Sad. The fighter for ecology and creator of the ideas of Biopolis – the model of a healthy, harmonious and desirable city, Olympiapolis – the balanced city of nonviolent peace, Wisepolis – a votive city of a seal with tolerating barriers, Asceticpolis – strategies of a self-limiting city, Ecumenical lodgings by the Sanctuary of Snowy Mary in Tekkes, the survival strategy of the cities in XXI century, Fruška Gora as the third Mount Athos and many others. A member of:
Picture 4. The author of SERBALBANOPOLIS – ALBANOSERBPOLIS, Vojislav D. Dević
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