Rakovica

Rakovica occupies the hilly southern edge of Belgrade proper, between the inner municipalities and the open ground running out toward Avala. It is a residential municipality of 104,456 people (Census 2022), built in layers rather than to a plan: post-war housing blocks on Miljakovac, Kanarevo Brdo, Labudovo Brdo and Petlovo Brdo, streets of single-family houses between them, and the older village cores of Resnik and Kijevo that the city simply absorbed as it spread.

The name still carries an industrial association in Belgrade, from the engine works that employed the area for decades. Nobody comes to Rakovica to sightsee; it is where roughly a hundred thousand Belgraders live, shop and get their children to school, with the centre a bus or train ride away.

The name is older than the city that caught up with it: a village and the Rakovica Monastery stood here on the southern approach to Belgrade long before the built-up area arrived. The break came in the twentieth century, when Rakovica became Belgrade's industrial workbench.

The engine works here grew into one of the country's better-known plants and drew workers from across Serbia, and housing followed the factory: estates went up on the surrounding hills for the people who staffed it, and in the 1970s Rakovica became a municipality in its own right. Industry contracted sharply after the 1990s, leaving large sites half-used, and growth shifted to housing — 601 dwellings completed in a year (2024) against 301 permitted (2025).

The case for living here is space and price. New build averaged 2219 €/m² achieved in 2024, against an average net salary of 1158 € a month (April 2026); a family-sized flat adds up here in a way it does not closer in. Greenery comes with it — 104 mapped parks and green spaces and 116 sports facilities in the municipality, and the wooded slopes above Miljakovac are used rather than just looked at.

It suits families, people who would rather have a hill and a view than a café on the corner, and anyone working south or west of the centre. It suits students, night owls and car-free households much less: there is no university here, restaurant density is low at 0.73 per 1,000 residents, and the gradients turn a car-free routine into a planning exercise. The population is settled, average age 43.4.

Daily life is local and domestic. Sixteen schools and twelve kindergartens serve the municipality (0.15 schools per 1,000 residents), with 33 pharmacies and nine mapped hospital and clinic locations (0.40 healthcare points per 1,000) covering routine needs, and 63 supermarkets for the weekly shop. Eating out is thin — 76 restaurants and cafés, or 0.73 per 1,000 residents — and cultural provision thinner still at five mapped venues, so theatre and concerts mean a trip into town.

What Rakovica has instead is outdoor space: 104 parks, 116 sports facilities, and wooded hills that residents walk and run year round. The population mixes long-settled families from the industrial decades with newer arrivals priced out of the inner ring; 33.8% hold a higher-education qualification.

Rakovica is better connected by rail than most outer municipalities: the line south runs through it, and the stations at Rakovica and Resnik are served by BG Voz suburban trains that reach the centre without touching street traffic. Buses do the rest, running down the main roads into the inner city; frequency is reasonable on the arteries and noticeably thinner in the hillside estates above them.

By car, Kružni put crosses the municipality and links the east and west of southern Belgrade, while the roads south get you out of the city quickly. Within a neighbourhood everything is walkable; between neighbourhoods the height difference is real, and households on the upper streets usually keep a car.