Expert exchange between Belgrade and Vienna

Date: 06.09.2010
Location: Belgrade
TINA VIENNA event

From 6 to 8 September 2010 the City of Vienna organised a set of key activities taking place in Belgrade, where Vienna's Vice-Mayor Renate Brauner met representatives of the city government of Belgrade and Serbia's national government. Apart from these political talks a series of business events and a presentation of Vienna as an educational and business location as well as a festive gala event taking place at Belgrade's city hall with about 500 prominent guests and a performance of the Vienna's Boys Choir.

In this context the Executive Group for Construction and Technology of the City of Vienna, Compress PR and TINA VIENNA organised 3 days of technical workshops which particularly provided administrative officials with a platform for a high-level exchange on the following issues:

  • Urban planning tools and their legal effects in practice
  • Services of general interest: wastewater disposal and waste management as an overall system
  • International financing tools for Belgrade's large-scale infrastructure projects

The event was opened by Željko Ožegović (Belgrade City Councillor), Boris Ranković (Head of the City of Belgrade's Directorate for Building Land and Construction), Anica Matzka-Dojder (Member of the Vienna City Council) and Brigitte Jilka (Head of the City of Vienna's Executive Group for Construction and Technology), who emphasised the importance of these talks for both the political and the administrative level in their introductory statements.

Theme 1 "Urban planning tools and their legal impact in urban development practice":

Since Belgrade is currently elaborating its urban development plan, the city's representatives showed great interest in the way Vienna's urban development plan (STEP 2005) has been prepared and discussed with their Viennese counterparts issues such as the plan's conceptual design, contents, organisation, implementation and measurement of progress as well as basic principles and challenges. Particular importance was attached to how Vienna succeeded in integrating the contents of its urban development plan (STEP 2005), the CENTROPE concept and the UNESCO cultural heritage dimension.
Other issues discussed included Austria's spatial planning authorities and the development of Vienna's land-use and development plan and its legal impact.
By presenting one of Vienna's target areas (Northern Railway Station) and a PPP project (Gertrude Fröhlich-Sandner Campus) implemented in this area and unrivalled in its scale in Europe, the Viennese delegates provided the Belgrade experts with an extremely interesting practical example of implementing a project without affecting the current municipal budget.

The presentation on Wien Holding demonstrated how a full subsidiary of the City of Vienna successfully promotes the perception of its role as a (project) developer, builder and operator under the direct influence of the City of Vienna to ensure well-organised, sustainable urban development in the fields of real property, culture and events management, logistics and mobility, environment and media and education. Participants observed that Wien Holding may also serve as a model for the establishment of a similar subsidiary of the City of Belgrade.

A noticeable sign of the future cooperation between Belgrade and Vienna was the participation of Kurt Puchinger (Head of the Urban Planning Group of the City of Vienna's Executive Group for Construction and Technology) in an advisory board for the development of a high-rise building scheme for Belgrade.

 Theme 2 "Services of general interest: wastewater disposal and waste management as an overall system":

Belgrade is currently contemplating how to re-design its waste management and wastewater disposal systems in accordance with international environmental requirements. The city, for example, plans to build 4 sewage plants and approx. 1,000 kilometres of public sewer pipes in the next few years. The experts agreed that the 5 stages of waste management (avoidance, separate collection, recycling, other forms of recovery, disposal) are of utmost priority with regard to all measures to be taken. 

Vienna's sewer system is also intended to serve as a model for the design of a fully-fledged sewer network in Belgrade, which will not only involve the construction of one (or several) sewage plants, but also ensure a reduction in the level of pollutants introduced into the Sava and the Danube. Particular interest was attached to the sewer network control system Vienna has in place. By realising a modern sewer network and a state-of-the-art sewage plant, Belgrade could achieve the same results that have been accomplished by Vienna.  Due to the system's high cleaning capacity, the influx of pollutants into the receiving water bodies (Danube Canal and Danube) is reduced to a level which is virtually no longer measurable. 

The Austrian building company PORR presented a number of schemes and projects which it has realised or planned in the waste management sector in Serbia. In this context, the company's cooperation with municipalities, which enables a well-functioning waste management without large-scale public investments outside the Maastricht criteria but within the budget seemed to be an interesting model for Belgrade.

 Theme 3: "International financing instruments for large-scale projects in Belgrade":

In the course of the event, the City of Belgrade also presented some of the large-scale projects it plans to realise in the near future (underground railway, sewer system, sewage plant, landfill protection, renewal of the tram system). The European Investment Bank, Österreichische Kontrollbank AG, Hypo-Group-Alpe-Adria, Kommunalkredit Austria AG and Erste Group Bank AG presented their financing schemes and the related requirements and processes for this kind of large-scale municipal projects, explained them on the basis of projects that have already been implemented and reported on their experience in implementing projects in the region. The aim of this event was to illustrate the basic conditions to be complied with by all parties concerned for better understanding, and Belgrade's experts showed great interest in the presentations.

At the end of the event, the delegates learned about the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC), whose tasks include the elaboration of internationally applicable contracts and agreements for the public procurement of architect and engineering services. This is to provide legal security for both the contracting authority and the contractor on the huge global market.

On the basis of specific problems, possibilities of cooperation between the two cities were identified and the participants agreed to continue the coordination talks in the individual areas in the future. In this way, citizens' quality of life will be enhanced by the exchange of know-how between the two capital cities.

Links

 

Photo © Nikola Fifić
f.l.t.r.: DI Mag. Žaklina Gligorijević (Head of the City of Belgrades Planning Department),
Željko Ožegovič (Belgrade City Councillor),
DI Brigitte Jilka, MBA (Head of the City of Vienna's Executive Group for Construction and Technology),
OMR Ing. Hannes Gluttig (City of Vienna's Executive Group for Construction and Technology)

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