Eleven Public Spaces in Serbia for World Urban Forum 11 and for Sustainable Development Goal 11

There are many activities in the domain of public spaces planning in Serbia with different approaches, more or less successful. The quality of public spaces needs additional efforts in order to have livable cities with an adequate quality of life. Serbia is committed to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals and its targets until the year 2030.

The target 7 of SDG11 that has public spaces for topic is one of challenges and that topic has been chosen to be presented at WUF11 as a topic that needs additional efforts in Serbia. International context, recommendations and guidelines as well as exchanges of experiences can have positive effect on the topic of public spaces.

The event will have three parts (twenty minutes each): - presentation of public spaces theme in the national urban policy and presentations of eleven public spaces in Serbia from three different cities: capital city of Belgrade, city of Niš and city of Kruševac taking into account public participation, youth, green spaces, nature-based solutions and urban mobility, - panel debate of stakeholders from local level (from cities of Belgrade, Kruševac and Niš), representative of the ministry in charge of urban planning, representative of NGO sector as moderator, transfer of experience from National Urban Forum to be held in Belgrade in April 2022, - discussion with the audience based on the presentation and the panel.

Republic of Serbia has expressed the interest to upgrade its cooperation with UN Habitat. Based on the mission of UN Habitat Executive Director and its team in September 2021 and with the support of Frist Lady of Serbia the idea was conceived for symbolic eleven public spaces in Serbia for the WUF 11 and to strengthen the efforts towards realisation of SDG11 in Serbia.

Monthly meetings between representatives of UN Habitat and stakeholders from Serbia followed and eleven public spaces were identified in cities of Belgrade (1166763 inhabitants), Niš (183184 inhabitants) and Kruševac (58745 inhabitants). Identified public spaces are in different phases of realisation (realised, in progress or planned), with participative involvement of different stakeholders (citizens, NGO, youth, academia, public institutions).

The projects that are going to be presented are compared with recommendations and guidelines of UN Habitat and they contribute to the implementation of relevant paragraphs of New Urban Agenda and International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning which are both document translated into Serbian language.