Tomorrow is the Earth Day, which was first celebrated in 1970, and one of the leading Croatian newspapers, Većernji list (The Evening Newspaper), will dedicate the whole issue to the international holiday. Green will be its dominant color, and it will be printed on recycled paper. This is why I am in Zagreb this time around. This morning I sat at the editorial meeting of the newspaper as a part of a small group of guest editors brought together by Vjeran Piršić, one of the leading environmental or ecological activists in the country. Although my domain is spatial or physical planning in general, the focus of the two articles I have contributed is on Motovun. That is, golf and polo courses as threadbare screens for building a myriad apartments, houses, and villas in the historic landscape of this medieval jewel of a hilltown. In my mind, Motovun equals the earth entire, too. If only everyone would fight for his or her corner of this beleaguered planet! What else could we possibly fight for, anyhow? Everything else is way too abstract for our puny brains.

Addendum (April 22, 2008)

The newspaper is out. It is much less impressive than I expected, although I did not expect much. Most important, my main article is entirely missing. It is missing from the online edition of the paper, as well. Here I delve into the connection between spatial or physical planning and the second Croatian privatization, which involves land in state ownership. I explain how politicians, investors, real estate dealers, and builders collude to turn large tracts of land into private profit. Even though I do not go in great detail, I show how all this works in Motovun. I emphasize the crookedness of the whole thing, which remains safely in the hands of municipal officials bent on extracting as much money out of the deal as possible. Judging from the decision of the editor of the newspaper, I am too radical by half. At any rate, it is good that the subsidiary article is out, albeit considerably shrunk. It states clearly enough that the town is in peril right now, as deals are made behind closed doors on how many apartments, houses, and villas can be built in view of the medieval town. Even that was worth the effort. My corner of the world is in the focus, no matter how briefly.