Čemu i zašto prostorni i urbanistički planovi

Why We Need Spatial and Urban Plans

29 June 2011, Marin Krešić

Serbia, Europe and the International Community

The period that started in 2001 is merely the first decade of our transition from a socialist to a contemporary democratic society, in which we are managing the way we are and in which every one of us has his own perception of the success or failure of the reforms we are implementing or not implementing on that road. In any case, we cannot analyse that topic in greater detail on this occasion, but we will conclude that Serbia cannot pass that test successfully without the help of two important partners: one of them -- Europe and the broader international community and the other -- all the future builders whom we call foreign and domestic investors or partners.

Europe and the international community and numerous funds are helping us pursue that process with their credits, donations, training and in various other ways, which we assess we are in need of. In other words, they will help us in areas in which we ourselves seek help: from building schools or kindergartens, to the construction of a main sewage collector, a road, a street or a recycling yard. Municipalities have over the past ten years or so been provided with various kinds of financial and non-financial aid and support by the UNDP, MSP, GTZ, SDC, EBRD, WB and numerous other institutions and funds.

However the prerequisite for any donation is that the local self-government makes a clear decision and commitment that it needs precisely this kind of donation -- in other words, a donor will always first check whether a municipality has adopted a development programme, or a spatial or urban plan, whether all the procedures were followed during their adoption, whether they were democratic and transparent, and whether all the necessary project documentation has been prepared and all the required permits obtained for the investment. This check proves to them in their internal procedures that the sought assistance or donation is not merely a whim of the current municipal leadership, but the result of a clear, long-term political agreement and decision by all the local stakeholders.

Foreign or domestic investors or partners are helping us by investing in new facilities, buildings, factories and anything else needed for production and doing business out of their own interest, investments which will ultimately result in the opening of new jobs and the generation of new income, to the general benefit.

They will not, however, invest their capital before they check whether the plans of local self-governments allow for the construction of the facility they want to fund, whether they can obtain the permits easily and quickly, whether their investment will be safe and permanent, and what public utilities already exist or will be built at the site they are planning to invest in. In other words, municipalities, which have spatial and urban plans pursuant to which site permits may be issued to the interested partner-builders, can count on investors. Those lacking the planning documentation cannot provide answers to any of the above mentioned questions by potential investors – because they cannot say what the purpose of the land will be, whether the construction of anything on will be permitted, they cannot foresee when and where the new traffic and utility infrastructure will be built. They cannot even provide them with information about the site, let alone issue them a site permit, whereby they have no legal grounds to issue them a construction permit either.

Spatial and Urban Plans

The above can be summed up in the following conclusion: one of the main tasks of the local self-governments is to adopt all their development and spatial planning documents, which will be generally accepted and thus stand a realistic chance of implementation. In other words, it is not enough to merely formally adopt the plans and programmes; the local governments also have to ensure the involvement of the public, citizens and other local stakeholders in their design, review and adoption in transparent and democratic procedures entailing a high degree of awareness, public insight and the possibility of submitting initiatives and making objections and suggestions. 

Therefore, the municipalities today have numerous obligations to fulfil before issuing an investor a site or construction permit: to adopt the municipal spatial plan and the necessary regulation plans (general regulation plans for the municipal seat and detailed regulation plans for parts of urban settlements and other special purpose areas). The municipalities, the seat or another urban settlement of which has a population exceeding 20,000, must also adopt strategic (general) urban plans, which are not implemented directly, but further specified in general regulation plans.

The whole matter is regulated by the Law on Planning and Construction, which codifies three areas – spatial and urban planning, construction and construction land. Let us now only emphasise that this matter boasts a long tradition and history in Serbia and that there can be no valid justification or excuse for the non-fulfilment of the planning obligations. The following brief overview of the changes in construction law serves merely to corroborate this assertion.

Construction Law of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

King Aleksandar wrote the following in Zagreb on 7 June 1931: “At the proposal of Our Construction Minister Dr. Kumanudi and upon hearing the Chairman of Our Ministerial Council, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Honorary Adjutant of His Highness the King, Army General P. R. Živković, We hereby prescribe and promulgate the Construction Law”, and confirmed that the Keeper of the State Seal and Justice Minister Dimitrije V. Ljotić thereunto set his hand and official seal in witness thereof.

The Law had four sections – the first was entitled Cities and Towns (Commercial Centres), the second Villages, the third Industrial and Mining Settlements, Baths and Spas, Health Resorts and Tourist Settlements, and the four Interim and Final Orders.

A Decree adopted by the Construction Minister with the consent of the Chairman of the Ministerial Council specified which cities and towns this Law would apply to.

The Construction Minister subsequently adopted a rulebook on the design of regulation plans and general instructions for the drafting of a decree on their design and a construction rulebook, and every head of county was under the obligation to issue detailed instructions within the following six months by which the specific municipalities in his county would design their construction rulebooks.

The Construction Law of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was generally assessed as the best of the kind in Europe at the time. Its long-term enforcement was prevented by the events that ensued, the war, the social changes and everything else that happened in the decades to come. Let us now merely emphasise that it essentially comprised the REGULATIONS that the plans and rulebooks had to define.

1946 - 2003

The post-war period, which I would personally define as an extremely long one, from 1946 to 2003, was marked by various changes in urban and planning legislation and practices, which we cannot analyse in detail here, but which can be characterised as the time of drifting and searching. The essence of the approach during all the stages of such drifting lay in the obligation to set the CONDITIONS in the plans.

The difference between conditions and regulations is that conditions defined what, where and how something had to be built, while regulations merely provided the framework within which something could be built. In other words, conditions are a restrictive and univalent determinant, while regulations are a system which merely sets the limits to investors’ potential decisions.

2003 - 2011

Apart from introducing a series of reformatory provisions and codification, the 2003 Law on Planning and Construction restored the system of REGULATIONS after seven decades, after two decades of spatial plan designing. The overall system of plans established under this Law and the instruments and procedures required for legal construction departed from the presumptions that every investor obeying the regulations was welcome and that the non-existence of regulations was not sufficient reason to prevent construction – this is why the Law opened a channel for construction in a number of ways: it obliged the municipalities to design spatial and urban plans, allowed for the adoption of temporary construction regulations in the interim period, and, in case the municipalities failed to fulfil either of these obligations, laid down state construction regulations (the so-called general parcelling regulations) which enabled legal construction.  The 2003 Law on Construction and Planning was qualified as a reformatory, pro-European and democratic law by the World Bank, UNDP, MSP and numerous representatives of institutions entrusted with various tasks of following, assisting and monitoring our transition.

The implementation of this Law did not, however, last long, partly due to the absence of a campaign or assistance to the municipalities to enforce it, partly due to the lack of will among municipalities to apply it, partly due to the character of the political changes that ensued, and, maybe, partly because the excessive flexibility and breadth it brought with it came too prematurely given the local construction culture. The 2009 Law by the same name, but essentially entirely different, thus departed from a totally new presumption – that no construction shall be permitted until all the mandatory plans are adopted. The latest amendments to the Law in 2011 additionally simplified the design of the plans and adoption procedures, cut the number of steps one needs to make to obtain a construction permit and enabled the local self-governments to fulfil their obligations more easily and rapidly.

In conclusion, back to Serbia, Europe and the International Community

Not one local self-government in Serbia has any valid excuses for failing to fulfil its obligations and adopt spatial and urban plans – the laws have been adopted, numerous rulebooks have been published, the competent ministry has for a long time now been implementing the programme of funding and co-funding the design of plans by municipalities which cannot fund their design themselves, while numerous European, donor and other international institutions have been implementing ambitious programmes of support to municipalities by training them to enforce the Law on Construction and Planning, by funding or co-funding the base drawings needed to design the plans, the design of the plans and providing all other assistance regarding planning that local self-governments ask for in clearly formulated projects. 

Marin Krešić
Architect, Planner, Urban Planner and PROGRES Consultant
on the Design of Plans and Planning Documentation

The attitudes outlined in this article represent personal beliefs of the author and do not necessarily reflect viewpoints of the European Partnership with Municipalities Programme, or the European Union, the Government of Switzerland and the Government of Serbia.

Please be informed that the European Partnership with Municipalities Programme – EU PROGRES was completed on 31 March 2014. If you would like to learn about the activities and results of the European PROGRES, which is a continuation of development support of the European Union and Government of Switzerland to the South East and South West Serbia, please visit www.europeanprogres.org