Kaluđerica

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Kaluđerica (Serbian Cyrillic: Калуђерица) is a suburban settlement of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in the municipality of Grocka.

1 Location
2 Population
3 Living conditions
4 Klenak
5 References

[edit] Location

Kaluđerica is the westernmost settlement in the municipality of Grocka. It is located 8 km east of Belgrade (44.75° North, 20.57° East), and stretches in two fork-like urban formations between the road of Smederevski put to the north and the Belgrade-Niš highway to the south. The settlement is built in the hollow (micro valley of the Kaluđerički potok creek), with a specific microclimate, so out of all parts of Belgrade Kaluđerica is often the foggiest and the first one to have snow in winter. In modern Serbian, word kaluđerica means a nun, though the name was probably derived from the word kaluđer which means a monk (kaluđerica - a monk's place).

[edit] Population

Kaluđerica is one of the fastest growing settlements in Serbia. According to Census of 2002, Kaluđerica had a population of 22,248 and an estimated 23,481 on December 31, 2005, and being classified as a rural settlement (village) it would arguably be the largest village in the Balkans. However, most of the houses are built without the necessary building permits, so population is presumably much higher, especially after the wars in former Yugoslavia and the influx of the refugees from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Croatia and Kosovo and Metohija (journalists often nickname Kaluđerica the largest illegal settlement in Europe). Both Belgrade's City Public Transportation Company (GSP) and the Telekom of Serbia, based on the number of people using their services, estimate the population between 45,000 and 50,000. News reports of 75,000 inhabitants can't be hold as true.

Kaluđerica, in urban sense, grew with Belgrade, that is, with its most eastern part Mali Mokri Lug on the north, along the Smederevski put, and Veliki Mokri Lug to the south, divded from Kaluđerica (that is, from Kaluđerica's section of Klenak) by the highway. Population of Kaluđerica:

1921 - 650
1971 - < 2,000
1981 - 12,435
1991 - 17,534
2002 - 22,248
2005 - 23,481

Kaluđerica is 3 (or 5) times more populous than its municipal seat, Grocka. A motion of annexing it to the city municipality of Zvezdara is rejected by the Zvezdara municipal assembly, as the problems of living in Kaluđerica are enormous and, from this point, seem to be unsolvable.

[edit] Living conditions

As the entire settlement of 50,000 is built without any permits and plans, none of the communal problems is even remotely solved. Kaluđerica is notorious by its lack of sewage (which during strong rains spills over in the streets), waterworks and electricity (which are, by the largest number, illegally conducted from the public lines) or transportation (short and bending streets, with only one straight street in the settlement, and only one bus line of the public transportation, 309). As a whole settlement, Kaluđerica probably has the worst conditions of any other in the City of Belgrade territory. With a total lack of control in the settlements expansion, in few cases it even happened that someone builds a house in the middle of the street, disconnecting it.

[edit] Klenak

The eastern extension of Kaluđerica is known as Klenak. It is the highest part of the settlement, on the hill above, with a beautiful view on the rest of Kaluđerica. Klenak stretched along the highway, with its eastern part in Zvezdara municipality, as the extension of Mali Mokri Lug. A bridge over the highway connects Klenak and Mali Mokri Lug with Veliki Mokri Lug, which expanded on the other side of the highway.