Dejan S. Đorđević

In accordance with the current normative framework in the Republic of Serbia, spatial and urban planning documents must be harmonized, so that a planning document of a lower hierarchical order must be in accordance with a planning document of a higher hierarchical order. The compliance control of the regional spatial plan for the area of the autonomous province, the regional spatial plan for the area of the city of Belgrade, the spatial plan of the local self-government unit and the general urban plan, with planning documents of a higher hierarchical order, the Law on Planning and Construction and the regulations adopted on the basis of this law, is carried out by a commission formed by the minister responsible for spatial planning and urbanism, that is, for planning documents on the territory of the autonomous province, by a commission formed by the competent body of the autonomous province. As one of the final steps in the process of preparation and adoption of planning documents, which is carried out after public review, and before the adoption of the planning document, compliance control is a very important step in the planning process, which cannot be reduced only to checking the fulfillment of formal conditions. Therefore, after a brief review of the history, the paper discusses the normative framework for the implementation of the procedure for compliance control of planning documents in the Republic of Serbia, then presents the basic stages of the procedure itself, in order to come up with a proposal for improving the situation in this area by pointing out the observed problems.

In accordance with the valid normative framework in Serbia, the decision on preparation of a planning document is rendered by the authority competent for its adoption, upon securing the prior opinion of the authority responsible for professional control, i.e. the planning commission, except for the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, for which the decision on the preparation is rendered by the Government of the Republic of Serbia, on the proposal of the ministry responsible for spatial planning. Although one of the initial ones, the decision on preparation of a planning document represents a very significant step in the planning process, which in practice very often focuses only on meeting formal conditions, without sufficient consideration of possible consequences in the further process of preparation and adoption of planning documents. In this sense, the paper discusses the normative framework for the decision on preparation of a planning document, it presents the basic characteristics with examples from domestic and foreign practice, and it points out the problems that arise, in order to provide proposals for improving the situation in this area in the concluding part of the paper.

In May 2001, the first scientific-professional conference was held under the name "Local self-government in planning and arrangement of space and settlements", organized by the Serbian spatial planners association and the Faculty of Geography of the University of Belgrade. In October 2024, the tenth jubilee scientific-professional conference will be held under the same name, guided by the same organizers. The opportunity arose to briefly present the topics and basic information about these conference to the professional and scientific public in one place, aiming to remind us how it all started and to consider how to continue with this topic because of the strong belief that the published research papers and the discussions at the gatherings have made a huge impact on the profession, with the possibility to continue to contribute to the improvement of the state of planning and arrangement of spaces and settlements in local governments in Serbia to a certain extent.

With the amendments to the Law on Planning and Construction from August 2023, the Agency for Spatial Planning and Urbanism of the Republic of Serbia was established. In the first part of this work, the normative framework of the Agency's management will be presented. A special focus will be on the competences that the Agency has and the tasks entrusted from the Ministry of Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure in Republic of Serbia. In the second part of this paper, the normative frameworks defined by the amendments to this law will be presented, which refer to the competence of the local self-government unit and the Agency as the competent authority for coordination, preparation, management, and implementation of spatial and urban planning documents under the competence of the Republic of Serbia. The ways of arranging the settlement and providing professional assistance in the preparation of planning documents to the local self-government units will be pointed out, as well as other activities that will be presented in more detail in this paper. The expected results of this work will indicate the mutual cooperation of the competent authorities with a special review and proposals for improving the current actions in the field of planning and arrangement of settlements in the Republic of Serbia.