Vučinić: New PUP for Podgorica must fail, it seems that Mujović is backing down in the face of investor interests

Vice President of the Capital City Assembly, Dragutin Vučinić, said that the new Spatial and Urban Plan for Podgorica "must fail."

The councilor of the Movement for Podgorica also said that it seems that Mayor Saša Mujović is retreating in the face of the interests of investors.

"When Prof. Saša Mujović took over as head of our Capital City, we expected that the process of making important city decisions would begin to be aligned with the interests of citizens, and not big capital – which, unfortunately, has been the prevailing practice for decades, especially in the field of spatial planning. However, the recent adoption of the Amendments to the Podgorica Spatial Planning Act has acted as a very ugly sobering up, because it seems that we are witnessing the retreat of our mayor in the face of the interests of investors, represented by the Ministry of Spatial Planning, which signed it, and the Government of Montenegro, which adopted the Podgorica Spatial Planning Act, completely ignoring the institutions of the Capital City, the councilors of the Podgorica Assembly, and the citizens who elected them. Today we are in Zabjelo, where the Government has told the citizens and children of one of the largest settlements in Podgorica that instead of expanding the existing park – it plans to enable plot owners to make profits by building new concrete buildings, in a part of the neighborhood below Ljubovići that is already disfigured by unplanned construction. The second part of the plan is to relocate park to a nearby plot, where ... a school was planned. In other words, the park will be moved, the school will be moved, and new buildings will be furnished," Vučinić wrote on Facebook.

He said that "we didn't fight for this."

He said that the leadership of the Capital City must call on the competent Ministry of Spatial Planning to withdraw the newly adopted Amendments and Supplements to the Podgorica Regional Urban Plan and, in cooperation with the Capital City, the Mayor and his deputies, the municipal administration and the Assembly, as well as civil society, the profession and citizens, open a consultation process in order to agree on a new and better quality Regional Urban Plan, in accordance with the procedure prescribed by the new Law on Spatial Planning.

"Otherwise, this is just the beginning, because after Zabjelo, new problems caused by this PUP will begin to appear, from the gigantic neighborhood on Velje Brdo and the sewage system for the planned 40.000 inhabitants above the main Podgorica water source Mareza, through the new concrete attack on Tološka šuma, to the spatial harassment of Piper, which I represent in the city council. I am especially thinking of the residents of Ras, who will be displaced due to the planned roads, or the residents of Bioč, who will continue to poison existing and new factories, or the residents of Roga and the 'partially' planned new bridge over the Morača... And for that, and for many other unmentioned shortcomings and especially because of the lack of transparency of the entire process carried out without a single adequate public debate - the new PUP Podgorica must fail," said Vučinić.