Đorđe Milić, Deputy Director of the Serbian National Agency for Spatial Planning, in his contribution to the CIRSD VIP Blog on Sustainable Development devotes attention to the problem of uncontrolled spatial development in Serbia. He underscores the importance of the country’s existing legal framework for spatial planning, noting however that the key issue lies with “the inefficient implementation of plans”. “Whilst plans help in reserving space in the long run, they still lack proper support from the legislative, institutional and fiscal apparatus to ensure a consistent implementation of planned solutions. This effectively makes them appear more declarative than normative, with the key problem still being both the vertical and horizontal coordination of actors“.
Milić claims that “the unplanned use of space, that is to say the irrational and inefficient use of natural and infrastructure resources, seriously undermines efforts to lay the groundwork for sustainable spatial planning. Space is a limited resource and as such requires careful planning, arrangement, use and protection.“
He then asserted that there is “a necessity for an exigent change of the existing planning practices“. To find out more on what needs to be done in order to foster sustainable spatial planning in Serbia and the region, please click here.
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