Banja Luka needed a promenade along the Vrbas River.
A river that runs through a city should be accessible to citizens. People should be able to walk, rest, exercise and reach the water. But that does not mean the solution we see today was the only possible one.
On some sections, the natural riverbank has been supplemented or replaced by concrete paths, large quantities of stone and other construction interventions. Heavy machinery was also documented operating in the water and riverbed during the works.
The question of this case study is therefore not whether Banja Luka needed a riverside promenade. The question is: did the promenade require the character of the Vrbas riverbank to be changed to this extent — and who decided that this is what it should look like?
River or urban waterfront?
The same problem could have been addressed through very different concepts.
One approach would have been a discreet intervention: a path following the existing terrain, natural or nature-compatible materials, maximum preservation of existing vegetation and the natural riverbank, and construction only where technically necessary.
Another approach is to create a more pronounced urban waterfront: engineered banks, hard surfaces, new amenities and a substantially altered relationship between river and city.
The City chose the more intensive transformation. Mayor Draško Stanivuković publicly described the project as the development of roughly 6.5 kilometres of riverbank, including promenades, picnic areas, sports, cultural and hospitality facilities, with a total estimated value of up to BAM 15 million.
That is not merely a municipal works decision. It is a decision about what one of Banja Luka’s most important natural spaces will look like for decades to come.
How it was built — and how it might have been done differently
The following two pairs of images provide a visual comparison between the completed works and one possible, more discreet interpretation of the same space.
The AI visualizations are neither architectural nor hydraulic engineering designs, and they do not imply that the depicted solutions would be technically feasible without further analysis. Their purpose is to visualize the question of whether access to the river could have been developed with less intervention in the natural character of the riverbank.
Stone is not only an aesthetic question
Large quantities of stone next to the new path visibly change the character of the riverbank. In places where the visual relationship was previously dominated by water, soil, grass, trees and riparian vegetation, there is now a much harder boundary between the promenade and the river.
After a June 2026 meeting with City representatives, the Center for Environment reported that the City Administration had described the project primarily as a riverbank fortification with elements of fire protection, while presenting the promenade as a secondary component. The Center also reported that, according to information provided by the City, a main design from 2025 exists and was based on an earlier conceptual solution.
It would therefore be inaccurate to claim that no project existed. The more relevant question is: how much of the full vision for transforming the riverbank was available to the public before the works became visible on the ground?
If the large-scale stone interventions were necessary for bank stabilisation and erosion control, it is legitimate to ask what analyses justified that particular solution and whether less invasive alternatives were considered. Water-management conditions were intended to prevent soil erosion and damage to existing biodiversity, while the Republic Water Inspection later found that certain conditions had not been respected during implementation.
What problem is the massive stone bank protection intended to solve, why was this particular solution chosen, and what is the cost of that intervention for the natural character of the riverbank?
The project exists. The public did not know it as a whole
According to information the City Administration presented to the Center for Environment, the main design was completed in 2025. The Center had previously pointed out that the complete project solution had not been presented to the public and that it obtained part of the documentation only after access-to-information procedures and court intervention.
That creates an unusual situation: citizens learn about a major transformation of shared space primarily by watching it being built.
The excavator becomes the project presentation.
For a multi-kilometre transformation of a riverbank, that is a rather late stage for public debate.
What was assessed before the first excavator arrived?
We do not claim that no environmental assessment existed, or that every section of the works necessarily required the same type of environmental procedure. That conclusion would require complete documentation.
But it is legitimate to ask what was environmentally assessed before the design was selected: which species and habitats were recorded, what the baseline condition of the bank was, how vegetation removal was assessed, how interventions in the bank and riverbed were analysed, whether alternative solutions were compared, and how conditions will be monitored after construction.
Without a documented baseline and subsequent monitoring, it is difficult to answer a simple question: what did we gain through construction, and what did we lose?
Who decided that this is what it should look like?
Banja Luka has been changing its visual identity intensively in recent years. Parks, roundabouts, installations, promenades and other public spaces have been given new designs.
In 2021, the mayor publicly said that the City had a “creative team of six or seven people” performing the work of the landscape architect and city architect, and that its members were City Administration employees from different professional backgrounds. The Creative Team also received a City award that year for innovation and ideas aimed at improving the urban environment.
Yet publicly available information does not make it easy to establish the team’s full composition, formal status, the qualifications of all its members, its powers, how it takes decisions, or its responsibility for individual major interventions.
Civic Forensics submitted an access-to-information request to the City concerning the Creative Team. The request was formally registered, and the City stated that it would seek the information from the Mayor’s Office. We did not receive a substantive reply clarifying these issues.
We do not claim that the Creative Team designed the Vrbas riverbank project. We have no evidence for that.
The institutional question is different: if the team was, in the mayor’s own words, performing the work of the city architect and landscape architect, what role does it play in decisions that reshape Banja Luka’s appearance?
The clothespin as a small test of a larger system
In 2023, a monumental clothespin installation appeared on a roundabout in Banja Luka.
According to a statement reported in local media, the City described the installation as a donation and an attraction intended to complement the city’s urban image. The same outlet separately identified Milan Knežević and Aleksandar Savić as the authors, but the published text does not show that the City itself officially confirmed the authorship or identify the primary document on which that attribution was based.
Media outlets quickly pointed to the strong visual similarity with Skin, a body of work by Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal.
Civic Forensics therefore contacted Pi Artworks, the gallery representing the artist. In a reply dated 17 August 2026, the gallery stated that neither Uysal nor the gallery had previously known about the Banja Luka installation; that none of the actors named in the inquiry had contacted them; and that Uysal had not authorised, licensed or otherwise consented to the reproduction or adaptation of his work. The gallery considers the Banja Luka installation to be an unauthorised reproduction or adaptation of Uysal’s work.
That is not a court ruling on copyright infringement, and we do not present it as one.
But it is enough to justify another question: what professional checks does the City carry out before accepting an artwork that becomes part of public space?
When is a gift really free?
Some new public-space features are presented as donations or gifts to the City.
Private financing of public space is not inherently problematic and can be useful. But a donation should not mean less transparency.
When a private company finances a park, installation or other public amenity, the public interest requires clarity about who the donor is, what was donated, how much it was worth, who accepted the donation, and whether other business relationships exist between the donor and the City.
That, by itself, does not prove a quid pro quo.
Transparency allows citizens to check that there was none — including by examining later public procurement contracts, planning procedures, transactions involving municipal land, or other decisions whose economic value may be far greater than the original donation.
Cities must change
The point of this case study is not to freeze Banja Luka in time, nor to prove that the new promenade is “ugly”. Aesthetic judgement remains subjective.
But the popularity of an aesthetic result cannot replace transparency of process.
The larger, more expensive, more permanent and less reversible a change to public space is, the clearer it should be who designed it, on the basis of which professional analyses, what alternatives were considered, who financed it, and when the public was given a meaningful opportunity to influence the decision.
The Vrbas is not empty space waiting to be designed.
The river, its channel, trees, vegetation, tufa, stone, grass and natural banks are already part of Banja Luka’s identity.
So the question is not simply:
Do we need a promenade?
We do.
The more important questions are:
How much of the river do we need to change in order to walk beside it?
Who has the right to decide what shared space will look like — and when should citizens be involved: before the first excavator arrives, or after the last truckload of stone has been delivered?
Method note: This case study draws on publicly available statements by the City of Banja Luka, the Center for Environment, the Republic Water Inspection and media reports, as well as a reply sent by Pi Artworks to Civic Forensics on 17 August 2026. Claims by interested parties are not presented as legally established facts where no such ruling exists.