Why do Balkan countries don't have the concept of wealthy suburbs or neighborhoods outside of the main city centre?

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WorldlinessRadiant77@reddit

Because we don’t have old money. Every fortune made in Bulgarian, or Serbia, or Romania - both legitimate or not - has been made in the last 35 years. The generation that built that wealth is still around managing it and the heirs haven’t had the time to segregate themselves from the rest of society. The appeal of suburban living is also somewhat lower - the rich still need to get around and it makes more sense to live centrally and buy a lavish villa as a getaway.

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geo0rgi@reddit

Thank fuck we don’t tbf. The main reason you see so much racial/social problems in the West is because of segregation. Cities like LA, London, Paris and so on have segregated neighbourhoods for rich people and segregated places for poor people. This causes divide and racial/social tensions. In the Balkans you can have a minister and a CEO live in one building and a cokehead living in the next one. This kind of causes equality and you don’t have prominent ghetto neighbourhoods to the extent you have in London or Paris. It is one of the few good things we have leftover from communism, back then everyone lived in the same kind of building so you didn’t have this kind of social segregation. Of course there are some exceptions with gipsy ghettos, but hopefully we can solve this one with time.

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BasiliskChoki@reddit

I mean we kinda do have rich suburbs tho - Boyana, Bankya, Dragalevtsi and so on

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WorldlinessRadiant77@reddit

Normal people also live there though.

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GlitteringLocality@reddit

Most of the elites live in the Bežigrad district. Which yeah is just a district in Ljubljana…

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crikey_18@reddit

You’re forgetting literal suburbs where wealthy people live, i.e. small towns under Smarna gora, Trzin,…

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antisa1003@reddit

>In western european countries, there are two main forms of wealthy neighborhoods: Those which are inside the main city centre, and **those which are in the periperiphery and offer a good balance between being close to the capital (or big city) and calmness, nature.** Actually, the most "elitist" people will live in the latter, whereas the first are simply that expensive because there are a lot of businessmen, companies, to whom being in the main city centre is a huge asset. So you basically described the north part of Zagreb (Podsljeme). >same goes for Zagreb As I wrote above, the northern part of Zagreb is seen as an elite neighbourhood do to being close to nature, close to the city center and having none of the tall buildings.

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antisa1003@reddit

>In western european countries, there are two main forms of wealthy neighborhoods: Those which are inside the main city centre, and **those which are in the periperiphery and offer a good balance between being close to the capital (or big city) and calmness, nature.** Actually, the most "elitist" people will live in the latter, whereas the first are simply that expensive because there are a lot of businessmen, companies, to whom being in the main city centre is a huge asset. So you basically described the north part of Zagreb (Podsljeme). >same goes for Zagreb As I wrote above, the northern part of Zagreb is seen as an elite neighbourhood do to being close to nature, close to the city center and having none of the tall buildings.

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Bitter-Cold2335@reddit

What? I live in Germany and also in Serbia and the town and city layouts are basically the same thing, communist blocks make up the only difference but my home town in Serbia doesn’t have a lot of them which is the same as in my city in Germany since I live in Western Germany.

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PreWiBa@reddit (OP)

Not really. For example, in the Ruhr area the richest part of towns are always on the periphery, in Essen it's Bredeney and around the lake, in Bochum it's Stiepel (it literally looks like a village compared to the rest of the city), in Düsseldorf (actually in NRW as a whole) the people with the highest wages don't live there, but in nearby Meerbusch. And i don't mean that the city is structured differently, but that the suburbs might be much, much more expensive than most neighborhoods which are considered rather central to the city. People here think that i mean villages, no, i mean small towns which are at least kinda a different thing but still very, very close to the main things happening. For example, for Belgrade (since you are Serbian), Zemun would fit a possible candidate i think

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Bitter-Cold2335@reddit

Bro I live near Essen and suburbs like Essen Kettwig and Essen Werden are literally one bus/s-bahn away from Essen HBF and you can literally take them any time of day, maybe you can even walk if you want to. And they are also full of mix use buildings and apartment buildings, you literally have ,,suburbs,, like this in Serbia or Bosnia which is basically a place where there is a higher concentration of rich people but it’s walking distance to the rest of the town and it has a similar layout and public transportation as the rest of the city.

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PreWiBa@reddit (OP)

They are literally what i described They are about 10-12km away from Limbecker Platz, and they don't have a similar layout, they are almost like insular and have a different architecture than the center, Holsterhausen or Altenessen. We don't have this, or we do, i didn't we don't, just that it doesn't have the same status, it basically goes, the nearer to the center the more expensive it gets.

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Bitter-Cold2335@reddit

You have nothing to do in these places unless you want to play golf all day on that one park, they are almost entirely reliant on Essen to provide amenities. But in Serbia you got plenty of places like this that have been parts of Belgrade for even longer than these were a part of Essen, especially Dedinje or Senjak in Belgrade and other cities have places with high housing costs where the rich live with their own layout.

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Incvbvs666@reddit

Suburbs in the west emerged from two factors: 1. White flight 2. The glorification of the rural ambience. Serbia had none of the two factors. Whereas the already-urban west pined for homesteads in nature, Serbs pined for modern cities with all the amenities a modern cities possesses at a time when many villages didn't have electricity or running water. This is why you'll never hear Serbs, whatever their political stance, complain about 'commie blocks.' Serbs, especially of the older generation, know full well the toil of village life and many would never trade their comfy apartments in a million years.

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Bitter-Cold2335@reddit

What bullshit are you talking about some of the riches people in my region are old families that didn’t have to be refugees and used to live in Vojvodina villages or town owning land, people that used to live in commie blocks in Belgrade were usually associated with slum living or at least that is how it was associated in Vojvodina, recently that has changed because of the insane price increase to housing in Belgrade and Novi Sad which increased the value of these commie blocks also so it became comparable to owning nice land and houses, not to mention that Belgrade used to have its fair share of poverty problems back then so claiming these commie blocks which were just stealing of national resources to build apartments in Belgrade for party members were anything more than a scam is ridiculous especially when you consider all those resources could have been used to improve the rest of the country while also allowing for Belgrade to be less crowded, which allow the city to be more economic and help manage the country better.

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MehmetTopal@reddit

>Serbs, especially of the older generation, know full well the toil of village life and many would never trade their comfy apartments in a million years. Lol it's the same here, detached house is usually associated with peasantry. It's probably because unlike the West, we didn't have a relatively well off middle class until recently, so the peasant-urbanite dichotomy was very visible. But I'm not sure if suburbs appeared really from white flight in the West outside the USA. Other than the USA, none of the other Western countries had any sizable black or non-white populations until the 21st century. 1970s London was basically still 90-95% white and they still had suburbs for decades by then

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Jermajestyandtony@reddit

Because the selo is shameful (i dont think this)

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TheSamuil@reddit

I fear that Sofia, at least, is beginning to develop such neighborhoods. Fancy look "modern" apartment buildings, few parking spaces, suboptimal public transport (the typical signs of poor urban planning) can be spotted in much of southern Sofia. I have the misfortune of seeing them whenever I go hiking in Vitosha

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fit-comp@reddit

Athens 101

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crowingcock@reddit

In İstanbul the northern parts are what you're describing.

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LibertyChecked28@reddit

Because we ain't fucking stupid

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maximhar@reddit

But Sofia has precisely that.

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starlordbg@reddit

I live in Sofia but my hometown has similar areas.

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JufffoWup@reddit

We have Boyana, Dragalevtsi, and a growing number of luxury closed complexes away from the capital.

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PreWiBa@reddit (OP)

Care to elaborate? Many people value a mixture off nature and economic opportunities big cities provide.

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selqnin@reddit

There are wealthy suburbs and whole villages even. Problem is they look like Berlin in 1945 on the outside. I know some that don't even have good roads but the people living there are super rich.

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starlordbg@reddit

I live in Sofia, but in my hometown there is actually similar areas.

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Cefalopodul@reddit

Because 90% of people, in Romania at least, own their homes.

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Albon123@reddit

Debrecen (our second biggest city) is like that somewhat, the outskirts (or “suburbs”) are usually on the wealthier side, with richer people living there than in the centre where all classes appear (rich people still live in certain areas of the centre, though, and some outskirts are more like big villages, so not all of them are like the richer parts). But yeah, in Budapest, it is definitely not the suburbs that have the richest people. But the city itself is sort of split into several “areas” anyways, and most rich people reside in certain areas.

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Willing_Corner2661@reddit

Senjak and Dedinje are outside the city center

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caesarj12@reddit

They are beginning to appear in Albania lately. Go to google earth and see for yourself. The thing I guess is that before we didn't have as many rich people and the infrastructure was not good. By infrastructure I mean everything, not just roads. You need water, you need sewers, you need electricity, you need groceries, you need schools and kindergartens nearby, you need leisure objects etc. If you don't have even a single one of those mentioned above then your life quality suffers.

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Another_Irrelevant@reddit

Yes, but from what I see they mostly look like gated communities, not European-style affluent suburbs. Anyway, i don’t think their absence is either positive or negative for the Balkans.

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caesarj12@reddit

Some are, others are not. I am neutral personally. Each one is free to choose their way of living and each taxpayer is entitled to having infrastructure in the areas where residential buildings are allowed.

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ExperienceClassic918@reddit

Rich people usually do live somewhere more remote in their huge villas. Ceneter of the cities have historical value but they need to be properly upkept as much as they can be. If someone rich is willing to buy some of them and if the old owner that inherited is willing to sell - its not seen as that bad. It is really expensive to take care of the old historical buildings and cities don't always have necesseray funds for it but they can provide some support in certain situations. And owners are not allow to demolish it unless they gain approval from the city - it depends from city to city how certain parts and buildings are treated and how they handle it. Rich ones usually have more properties. If they have an apartment in the center, its more of a reputation or an image thing that was a leftover from the past, since some of those older and historical parts in center or closer to center were usually places for richer and "upstanding" members of society (long long time ago). But most of the old, historical neighborhoods that were only for the rich and "upstanding" members of the society in the past are kind of neglected nowdays. So I guess, not so many rich ones - just a lot of people that like to go in big depts to make them look rich, but usually live in new apartments that are expensive, but not really build well. But thats something for another post. Centers of the citiee are usually more of a mix of cultural tourism, inheritance, governmant or city institutions, schools and faculties and some wealthy ones. Rich ones usually live where they want to live. The other problem is no urban planing for some cities and places - but thats another issue as well.

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mearcliff@reddit

They exist in Albania

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Open-Cold-4978@reddit

Parts of the Samobor area near Zagreb, e.g. Anindol, are like that. But you will not find a single neigbourhood in Croatia where all of the houses are McMansions, even in the equivalents of Dedinje in Zagreb and Split.

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Sea_Top9815@reddit

Well in Thessaloniki we have panorama suburb.

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ballofplasmaupthesky@reddit

Sofia has wealthy suburbs, but they aren't sprawling, and are somewhat hidden by Vitosha's (mountain to the south) lowest slopes.

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Radiant-Safe-1377@reddit

idk? we have that in my city (Varna). Fancy suburbs are considered st constantine&helena( tho this one is kurort- vacation resort), briz , trakata, galata and borovets. we call it vilna zona (its mostly multiple story houses instead of apartment buildings at the outskirts of the city ). however, we often have villages near or next to cities and people often opt for this option too. it can be better than suburbs if the village/town is under a different municipality because taxes are less (ex my car tax is 45 euro in Varna, but after I change registration next year it’ll be about 15 euro). commuting is what is truly different imo. people are perfectly fine with riding a bus for 1h or driving an hour in traffic to get to work from one neighbourhood to another, but cannot fathom driving 30-40 minutes from a village to city center. I grew up abroad so driving between towns for work, school or groceries was fairly common, idk why people here find it odd. probably explains why most of my neighbours are foreigners

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markohf12@reddit

This was tried a few times in Skopje (Sopishte, Bardovci) but it didn't work out, mostly because land in Skopje is still cheap, you would maybe save around 30K EUR on your total cost (land + house) by building somewhere further away on a total cost of 150K, it's just not worth it especially since you will lose pretty much all of your amenities and have additional commuting time. >Why do Balkan countries don't have the concept of wealthy suburbs or neighborhoods outside of the main city centre? Isn't Athens full of affluent suburbs?

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PreWiBa@reddit (OP)

I learned that today, but still most the answers here show that it's rather the exception to the rule.

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vikezz@reddit

We kind of have that in Varna however the construction came before the roads or the water systems so now they have fun times

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azuratios@reddit

Athens is like that, and the only "rich" people who are left in the rich part of city centre are mainly older artists. Celebrities and millionaires noawadays live in the suburbs exclusively.

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No-Championship-4632@reddit

Nah, it's not the case in Sofia.

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ksaldo@reddit

In Prishtina there are American style suburbs where the wealthy and prominent people live. They are called Marigona residences, International Village etc. So yeah those who can afford don't want to live in high traffic areas of downtown

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LettuceDrzgon@reddit

In Athens we do, there are some wealthy city-center neighborhoods such as Kolonaki but there are also wealthy suburbs in the north and south.

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SuccessfulVisual3719@reddit

Gross

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PreWiBa@reddit (OP)

?

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Sport_Middle@reddit

Maybe because majority of Balkan and we, here in Serbia are home owners, we live in apartments that we inherited from our parents, so we live where we have an apartment. Ofc lots of people will resell the apartment and live somewhere else.

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