The impact of a hydroelectric power station on the development and modernization of the Bajina Bašta settlement during the socialist period

Abstract

During the process of socialist modernization, initiated after WWII, large development projects in Serbia were the main drivers of urban transformation. Electrification and industrialization resulted in the establishment of new production modes, which defined a new socio-economic background for the development of settlements and the modification of their functional and morphological structure. The construction of the Bajina Bašta hydroelectric power station, in the middle section of the Drina River in western Serbia, was one of the development projects, and it triggered the transformation of the environment, upgrading the pre-war small town of Bajina Bašta into a new urban node, adjusted to the socialist imperatives and standards of progress.