Here, on the banks of the Danube, we must build… a town wit
the happiest residents in the entire Kingdom of Yugoslavia… (1934) 
Tomo Maksimović, director of the Bata-Borovo factory

When the Renaissance philosopher Franjo Petrić, a native of Cres, wrote in 1551 his famous treatise La città felice (The Happy City), considered the first theoretical work in the history of Croatian town planning, such utopian vision of the city in our country at that time could possibly refer only to the new Pag by Juraj Dalmatinac (1443); Karlovac, a formal materialization of the ideal city of the Renaissance, or Bjelovar, recalling the ancient towns of the urbs quadrata type, had not even existed as an idea.