The Belgrade Metro as a Space of Unfinished Modernisation and Literary Reflections of Its History

Abstract

The concept of a Belgrade metro has been present in Serbian urban planning since the interwar period. Despite numerous projects, long discussions, and even the creation of a small part of the necessary infrastructure, the underground rapid transport system remains a solution that has never been implemented. The subject of this article is the metro viewed as a project permanently suspended at the conceptual stage, constantly in a transitional phase, a project whose constitutive feature is “being in progress”. As a result of the endless temporariness of alternative transport solutions, in Serbian culture the metro functions as a symbol of the incompleteness and dysfunctionality of local reality. This phenomenon is confirmed by Filip Vujošević’s drama Halflife, analysed in the article. It is set in the space of the underground station Vukov Monument (Vukov spomenik), designed as a main point of the future metro, but still serving today as a temporary solution and a substitute.