Altina
Refugee settlement turned Belgrade suburb—Altina's 20,000 residents trace to Croatia's 1995 Operation Storm, building a town without urban planning.
Altina exists because war creates refugees—and because refugees need somewhere to settle. In 1995, when Croatia's Operation Storm expelled 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina region, many ended up here: empty land on Zemun's northwestern edge, 11 kilometers from downtown Belgrade. The settlement grew spontaneously, without planning permits or infrastructure—enumerated streets rather than named ones, unpaved roads, no public transit. What emerged was essentially a small town of 18,000-20,000 people built in under a decade.
Ancient history offers ironic context. This location once served as a trading point between Sirmium and Singidunum—the Roman cities that became modern Sremska Mitrovica and Belgrade. Two thousand years later, refugees from a different kind of empire's collapse retraced that route. After 2000, urbanistic regularization began: paved roads, street names, transit extensions, the Sava Šumanović elementary school (one of Belgrade's largest, 900 pupils by 2023), and finally, a 7,000 m² park begun in 2021.
The slum-to-suburb trajectory is familiar from refugee settlements worldwide. By 2026, Altina's challenge is integration: whether the second generation identifies as Belgraders, as Krajina diaspora, or as something new forged from displacement. The Altina railway station connects to Zemun; the question is whether the social connections follow.