Public Spaces in Serbia

Summary

Topic of public spaces is the topic recognized in the Agenda 2030, New Urban Agenda, International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning and in the Sustainable Urban Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia until 2030. This topic is chosen as one of the initial topics for cooperation of UN Habitat with Republic of Serbia reflected in the Habitat Country Program Document. During the mission of ED of UN Habitat to Serbia in September 2021 it was agreed to mainstream this topic having in mind low quality of public spaces in Serbia, necessity of their inventory, improvement of activities on their planning, making, maintenance and monitoring. During the WUF 11 in Katowice in June 2022 the event of type SDGs in Action was presented with the title "Eleven Public Spaces in Serbia for WUF11 and SDG11" with examples of efforts made by cities of Belgrade, Niš and Kruševac to improve the quality of public spaces. Cities of Niš and Kruševac are proposing two public spaces as declared actions to start the activities on their improvement before the WUF12. Two chosen spaces are going to use the recommendations of above mentioned international and national strategic urban development documents, to use local potential of public, private, civic, academic sectors and all interested citizens in order to have two representative public spaces as pilot projects that can be used as examples for future activities on public spaces in Serbia and potentially in the macro-regions of Southeast Europe, Eastern Europe or wider.