The central public hearing on the draft amendments and additions (ID) to the Spatial-Urban Plan (PUP) of the municipality of Kolašin, which was supposed to last until the end of this month, will be extended, most likely, until the end of July.
Also, in addition to yesterday's, another central public hearing will be held on July 11, and in the next few days, specific workshops and consultations will be organized, where citizens will have the opportunity to talk with planners and representatives of the relevant ministry about certain areas, which are covered that planning document. Special attention, as planned, will be devoted to the manner in which the regulation of traffic in Kolašin is foreseen, as well as to the purpose of space in the very center of the city.
The team of planners, led by Sonja Radović Jelovac, met the demands of the citizens in this way. It turned out that even the seven hours of talks yesterday and the 20 days that the public discussion has been going on for, are not enough to eliminate numerous doubts about the IDP PUP.
Radović Jelovac reminded that the conclusion, during the preparation of the PUP in 2014, and what the developers of the ID were now "leaning on", was that the public wants the plan to enable an increase in the degree, through controlling the construction. Through the creation of current IDs, she explained, "the basic planning determinations of the PUP from 2014 have been accepted."
"The request for changes to the PUP was initiated by the Municipality, mainly because of facilities of public interest. This refers to infrastructure, legalization and key contents for the functioning of the city. We are doing this draft for the second time. Until 2020. Once we made a Draft and submitted it to the Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism, where it was for exactly 18 months. For some reason, the then Draft did not go to public discussion. Then a negative campaign started from the relevant ministry against that Draft, in which we accepted all the initiatives of the Municipality. In that "vacuum space" while the negative campaign was going on, we experienced that the DUPs from 2007 were being released in this city", reminded Radović Jelovac.
The first part of the central public discussion imposed the question of whether the PUP from 2014, whose IDs have only now come to order, is an outdated document and whether it meets the current needs of Kolašin. Numerous remarks also showed the very different attitudes of over 200 participants in the public hearing, among them a large number of those who have owned property in the area of that Municipality only a few years ago. Only a small number of participants were interested in the public interest and general use of space, while the majority concentrated on seeking clarifications and comments on solutions for individual plots. One of the strongest impressions of the central public hearing was the opposition of a large number of attendees to the ban on construction in the "green belt". It was also obvious that only a small number of participants were interested in the field of ecology, which, according to the planners, was given great attention in the document. Some, on the other hand, asked for a "higher floor" in the buildings, for a few, the number of floors per zone prescribed by the plan was oversized.
Reminding that the creation of the ID PUP takes years, and that the process is led by the line ministry, in accordance with the solutions from the law, adopted in 2017, the President of the Municipality Vladimir Martinović said that the goal of that document should be "the best possible solutions that benefit all the citizens of Kolašin ". He said that the goal is "realization of facilities of local interest, and for the need of strategic goals of local self-government".
"I invite citizens to respond to the Ministry, if they have objections. I sincerely hope that the Council, which was appointed by the Government, as well as the planners, will work in the general interest. I expect that there will be no favoritism, and that the ID PUP will aim to improve the quality of life of the citizens of Kolašin...", he said.
Among those who were bothered by the fact that the plans for Kolašin are being "drawn in Podgorica" is the former president of the SO Kolašin, Milan Đukić. He suggested that the process of creating the ID PUP be suspended, because, he reminds, the new Law on Spatial Planning has been announced.
"In the draft of that law, it is foreseen that the local planning document shall be adopted by the SO. In a situation where the Government is in a technical mandate, and a new one is about to be formed, I would like the process of creating the ID PUP to be stopped and returned to the hands of the citizens of Kolašin. I am here in front of the citizens, who are very ready to block the process, if it is not in their interest. Representatives of all Kolašin authorities are aware that the planning solutions for Kolašin were drawn up in Pogorica under the pressure of big capital", Đukić said.
Explaining the importance of the PUP, which "regulates immediate life", Zoran Rakočević said that he was disappointed with the Government's attitude towards the process of passing that document. According to him, "we should take care of the core of the city, which has its own specificity".
"In these solutions, I do not see the possibility of preserving the specificity of Kolašin. Some famous post-war planners of this city, when they decided on the purpose of space in Kolašin, they had as a model small towns in Switzerland... More attention must be paid to the development of the production and production of this municipality. A large number of hotels are opening, we need to create the conditions for this area to supply them", said Rakočević.
According to the entrepreneur Saša Dožić, the construction of the bypass that will connect the road from Mateševo to Kolašin with the ski resorts could "leave the town aside, that is, endanger business". He suggested that before the construction of that bypass, its economic profitability should be considered. Dožić also believes that it is possible to adapt the existing roads in the city to new needs, but also to create additional parking space by building underground garages.
Zeleni Kolašin: The increase in urban areas does not follow demographic growth
The comments of the citizens' initiative zeleni Kolašin on ID PUP were numerous and were presented in the past few days on social networks and submitted to the editors. Among them, as they claim, is the fact that the municipality plans to increase urban areas from the existing 124ha to 482ha by 2030, which is already four times over.
The largest part of this increase refers to the zone of general development of the center of Kolašin, for which this plan envisages intensive new construction. Such a large increase in the area of urban areas will not be accompanied by a huge increase in population; Namely, the Draft predicts that by 2030, the number of inhabitants in Kolašin will increase by 592, compared to the number from 2011. Therefore, the development of new urban areas is not the answer to demographic growth - for whom, then, is it being built to this extent", they asked from that initiative.
The largest part of that increase, they claim in Zelena Kolašin, "refers to the zone of general development of the center of Kolašin, for which this plan envisages intensive new construction."
As the main backbone of the plan, a development scenario named "Economically sustainable and ecologically acceptable development" was presented. The description of that scenario states that, if the scenario is fulfilled, the municipality of Kolašin will serve as an example of a sustainable community in which the most advanced technologies of environmentally friendly construction are used, as well as that the development of tourism will be strictly controlled and moderated. The draft plan, they assess in that initiative, however, does not agree with those goals.
"In the center of the municipality, in the planning unit "Center", many, many things are planned, while the other six planning units (Lipovo, Crkvine, Mateševo, Manastir Morača, Dragovića Polje, Međuriječje) remain aside. New social activities, which should contribute to the decentralization and revitalization of other parts of the municipality, are planned only in the Morača Monastery (cultural center) and in Mateševo and Crkvine, where they are reduced to the reactivation of the regional classes of the elementary school", the civic initiative explains.
The current form of the ID PUP draft, they claim, does not pay enough attention to other recent initiatives for the protection of the area of the municipality of Kolašin, such as the protection of the river Mrtvica and its surroundings. The plan, according to the initiative's activists, "leaves open several scenarios for the construction of numerous hydroelectric power plants on Morača and Tara, which is not in accordance with the postulates of environmental protection, nor with the ecological goals that the plan is trying to promote."
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