What is "blokovi"

Blokovi ( Serbian Cyrillic: Блокови, English: Blocks) is the semi-formal plural name for a group of urban neighborhoods in Belgrade's municipality of Novi Beograd.

The neighborhood is located in the southeastern urbanized section of the Novi Beograd municipality, on the left bank of the Sava river, across from the islands of Ada Međica and Ada Ciganlija. It is bound by the neighborhoods of Bežanija and Bežanijska Kosa from the north, Block 58 from the southeast (neighborhood of Savski Nasip) and the neighborhood of Dr Ivan Ribar from the west.

When construction of Novi Beograd began in 1948, the area designed for the future urban expansion was divided in 72 blocks (with several sub-blocks, like 8-a, 9-a, 9-b, 70-a, etc., and some numbers are missing). Not having any specific name like most other parts of the newly built Novi Beograd, over time, this area became colloquially known simply as Blokovi (The Blocks).

The population of the local communities which mainly form the neighborhood was 89,561, including the neighborhood of Dr Ivan Ribar. But the boundaries of the Blokovi neighborhood are very informal and roughly can be divided into two sections separated by the Yuri Gagarin Street: the north part or, so called Bežanijski blokovi (Bežanija blocks) with a population of 44,505 and the south part or Savski blokovi (Sava (river) blocks) with a population of 45,056 in 2002.