IS THERE SPACE FOR CITIZENS IN URBAN PLANNING?

According to research conducted by the Ministry of Spatial Planning, public participation in urban planning barely exceeds the legal minimum - thanks to the efforts of citizens to exercise that right despite numerous obstacles.

In the Media Center, on Monday, March 28, members of the Ministry of Space collective, Iva Čukić and Antonije Ćatić, together with urban planner Ana Graovac, presented Report on citizen participation in urban planning processes in 2021. This Report is the result of observation and analysis of various stages of the production process 109 spatial and urban plans which were exposed to the public in the given period.

We remind you that during 2021, it was decided, among other things, that Fr PGR of Belgrade and Spatial Plan of RS, then about the urban plans that concerned the construction National Stadium, Line Park, Metro, Serbian-Chinese Industrial Park, objects on landslide on Banjički venc, including urbanization of the "Mitićeva rupa" park, replacement of the object ALTA Bank in Block 32 and the commercial center in Block 8 on the corner of Bulevar Mihajla Pupin and Goca Delčeva, and tripling the area of ​​commercial facilities on Green wreath.

As stated by Iva Čukić, the average realized participation of citizens amounts to everything a third of the total possibilities, which represents a slightly higher result than the legal minimum. The highest degree of citizen participation was achieved during public and early public inspections, through submission of objections and participation in public hearings. Of the four examined stages in the procedure of making plans, the lowest degree of participation was achieved during the decision-making process (only 19%) and the plan itself (28%), while the conceptual stage of early public inspection (41%), and the stage of the draft and public inspection (42%) ), as expected, achieve more, because the legal solution is also focused on them. These data show that the biggest scope for improving participation is actually the preparation and decision-making of the plan, which is mostly done "behind closed doors" and without the constructive participation of citizens and the general public.

It was noted that the city administration exceeded in a negligible number of cases (<10). legal minimum participation in the form of duration of public inspection and informing citizens about the same, and that they often resorted to various ways to avoid it - by setting up public hearings during holidays and public hearings during vacations. Despite this, the data on the attempt of citizen participation in urban planning show that it is the public is very interested for this topic, but also that the only way they can do it, by sending objections, is completely pointless in that they are mostly rejected without clear argumentation. As Čukić and Graovac emphasized, the focus of this Report was on the normative conditions, that is, the analysis of formal ways of participating in the planning process, and not a qualitative insight into the content of the planning documentation and the sent objections. The quality itself remains for the next stages of the research, however, it can be argued from experience that real efforts and mechanisms for citizen involvement were absent this year as well.

Antonije Ćatić referred to the availability of information of public importance through the example of the PDR for Prokop, in which case instead of the 15 days prescribed by law for obtaining information (extended to 19 days due to the COVID40 virus), this process lasted 124 days, i.e. a third of a year.

In the end, Ana Graovac highlighted the key conclusions of the Report and emphasized that the documentation that is published on the official website of the city of Belgrade during the early public and public inspection is not complete, public hearings are held in the basement of the city administration, during 2021 the decision of the Planning Commission was in force, limiting the attendance of citizens/objectors to public meetings, the full agenda of meetings of the Belgrade City Assembly is not published on the website of the City of Belgrade, etc. , even the Central Register of Planning Documents CRPD, within which all planning documentation must be publicly available, does not function properly.