Crisis headquarters workshop with the "Blok je naš" initiative

Crisis headquarters in urban planning is a service of our organization that provides citizens with professional help and tools in situations where the community specifically wants to get involved in the process of creating a specific urban plan. In this particular case, citizens from blocks 61, 62, 63 and 64 in New Belgrade, self-organized into a local group called “The block is ours”, they approached us at the beginning of the year asking for support. At that moment, the development of an urban plan for their settlement was in progress, which foresees a significant reduction of green areas, and commercial construction is planned instead. These self-organized citizens are against this proposal, but the city administration had no intention of including them in the decision-making process on their own initiative and carrying them through this process.

That is why, together with this initiative, we organized a workshop with the aim of informing and educating citizens about procedures, their rights, ways of participating in formal mechanisms of participation, but also how to critically read and analyze the plan. We have been organizing this type of workshop for several years, but what is specific for each of them is the adaptation of the workshop to the specific plan and needs of a particular community.

Citizens living in blocks 61, 62, 63 and 64 in New Belgrade are directly affected by this plan, and therefore it is unacceptable to exclude them from the planning process because they are the primary users of this area. With the "Blok je naš" initiative, we went through every step of the urban planning process, so that they had all the information and could participate equally in the making of the plan.

The workshop was held during the early public review of the plan, which is the first phase of formal public participation. At the workshop, citizens gained basic knowledge about planning procedures, formal public participation and its shortcomings, opportunities for public participation, reading and analyzing planning documents, writing official objections to the proposed plan, as well as organizing and mobilizing the community. 

All these resources and tools will be especially useful at the moment when the plan appears for public review, and afterwards in the process of public discussion. This initiative will continue to share the acquired knowledge with other neighbors who could not attend the workshop at that time, so that the information reaches everyone who is concerned with this plan. We believe that workshops like this are very important for the community that lives in a certain area and that they strengthen solidarity and trust between experts and citizens. Our goal is to continue this cooperation in the further planning process, which can be both exhausting and time-consuming.

During such processes, we believe that it is very important to have cooperation with the media, so that these stories reach the public, so this is also a segment that we pay special attention to when we hold workshops, but also in our own work.