Branislav Drašković
EAST SARAJEVO – THE CITY WITH THE FASTEST URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA
DOI: 10.35666/28310438.2025.6.259
UDC: 911.37GIS(497.6I.Sarajevo)"2000/2018"
The paper discusses the spatial development of East Sarajevo, which for almost three decades has been said to be the "biggest construction site" in the Republic of Srpska. The aim of the paper is to confirm or reject the hypothesis, whether East Sarajevo is really developing faster compared to other cities. Data from the Copernicus service were used - a European service for monitoring conditions and changes on the Earth's surface through photo interpretation of satellite images. By comparing data from two periods, we can get an insight into the intensity of urban development in any part of the territory. Several databases were processed within the Copernicus service, CORINE Land Cover (CLC) as well as databases dealing exclusively with urban development such as Urban Atlas and Imperviousness. GIS tools were used for spatial data processing, and Microsoft Excel was used for calculations of changes on individual types of land cover.
The results showed that the hypothesis about the most intense urban development site in the RS is partially confirmed. Namely, according to the CLC database, built-up areas compared to the period 2000-2018. increased from 1113 ha to 1629 ha or by 46%. The municipalities of Istočna Ilidža and Istočno Novo Sarajevo are especially leading, having expanded the urban zone by as much as 300% compared to the initial year 2000. The reason for such a high intensity of urban expansion lies in the fact that East Sarajevo is a new city that was created after the war, mostly inhabited by refugees from Sarajevo. Later, other socio-economic and demographic factors supported these processes.
Keywords: East Sarajevo, urbanization, development, Copernicus, database.