WHO NEEDS PUBLIC PROPERTY?

Is selling the best way to use and preserve public spaces? Beograđanka, Sava centar, Hotel Dom and many other buildings in public ownership are being sold at lightning speed, without any discussion about what could be done with these spaces and how they could be improved or repurposed, while remaining in public ownership. 

Instead of improving and multiplying public goods and spaces in order to protect the public interest, which is what developed countries do, we were forced to sell off what belongs to us all for a pittance as the only solution. And how about repurposing these unused spaces into affordable housing, social, cultural or youth and student centers, facilities for local community activities, recreational spaces or retirement clubs? There is space, and there are needs, but there are no political interests and the will to put public goods into the function of the real needs of this society.
Three years ago, together with Cyclotron, we shot a short film about public spaces and their (dis)use and deterioration. Almost every city or municipality in Serbia has a non-negligible number of unused and abandoned spaces that are in public ownership, but whose primary purpose is no longer sustainable, that is, for which there has been no interest on the market for a long time.