Donja Grebaštica Settlement Developmental Conditions Caused by Urbanization and Modernization

The author displays the results of the case study of Donja Grebaštica settlement, carried out in the summer 2000 within “The village in Transition” project. Donja Grebaštica belongs to Šibensko-kninska County ant the town of Šibenik is the nearest bigger urban centre to which it gravitates and to which it depends in every sense. It is a mixed and transformed type settlement, and even today it is significantly influenced by the process of urbanization and modernization. This process is manifested in decrease of purely agricultural population, and in increase of population in other sectors. Since the mixed sector is a coupling of agricultural and non-agricultural sector, making the inhabitants of rural areas so-called peasant-workers (both peasants and workers), such transformation of rural areas and of types of activities their population occupies with opens a new phase of rural social system, the so-called recomposition phase. Donja Grebaštica is actually in this very phase. Today, tourism is an important activity in this settlement, and it is expected to gain even greater importance in the future and to be the sector the settlement’s development and progress will lean on. For that reason, the main intention of this work was to examine general demographic and economic characteristics of this settlement as well as its developmental potentials and perspectives. The author concludes that difficult economic situation of Šibensko-kninska County, particularly since the end of the Homeland War till today, has left deep traces in all fields of work and living all over the County, and in Donja Grebaštica as well. Only the start of development cycle will change this situation