Pančevački Rit

Map of Pančevački Rit

Pančevački Rit (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчевачки Рит) is a small geographical area in south-western Banat, Serbia. It is situated between the rivers Danube and Tamiš, in Belgrade's municipality of Palilula.

Features

Its 400 km² wetland was constantly flooded, but since World War II it has been drained part by part and almost half of it has been turned into a very fertile patch of land, suitable especially for cultivating grains and vegetables. It is managed by Serbia's largest agricultural company, "PKB Beograd", which almost exclusively provides food for 2 million people in the greater Belgrade area; thus Pančevački Rit is commonly nicknamed Granary of Belgrade. Stockbreeding is also very intensive, as are fishery and hunting.

Many meandering canals and bogs have remained in the marsh: the slow streams of Vizelj, Dunavac, Sibnica, Butuš, Rogoznica, Buk, Belanoš and Sebeš, and large bogs of Reva, Veliko Blato (2 km²), Sebeš and Široka bara. In the south, the area ends with a river island (ada) Kožara (0.44 km²).

Neighborhoods and settlements

After being almost uninhabited before 1945, today its population density is above average for Serbia as a whole, since some of the fastest growing suburbs of Belgrade (Borča, Padinska Skela and Krnjača) have been built there.

Neighborhoods of urban Belgrade in the Pančevački Rit:

Settlements and neighborhoods of suburban Belgrade in the Pančevački Rit:

History

The area had its own municipality in 1955-1965 (until 1955 it had four municipalities: Borča, Ovča, Padinska Skela and Krnjača which merged into one municipality, Krnjača, in 1955 which in turn was annexed to Palilula in 1965).

Politics

Today, there is a proposal that area again become a separate municipality with the name Dunavski Venac. Beginning in the late 1990s, the notion of the area on the left bank of the Danube splitting from the municipality of Palilula had been gaining momentum until in 2005 the Municipal assembly of Palilula finally accepted supporting the move. The proposed new municipality, if accepted and confirmed by the Belgrade City assembly, will have an area of 407 km² and a population of 70-80,000.

See also