The Challenges of Housing Regulation in Serbian Legislation: Towards European Context and Best Practices

Abstract

The reflection of social, political and most of all economic transition in Serbia has brought the challenges of changes in the field of planning and building laws and regulation and consequently in planning and building standards and norms for housing. The process of shifting from state driven, socialistic legislative framework and practice to the market driven is still shaking the planning and building environment and leaving the sensitive urban function of housing unattended and exposed to the negative influence of these changes. Hence the appropriate housing regulation, in accordance with EU legislative housing context and good practice, is treated as initiative factor for housing development in Serbia. The subject of the analysis in this paper is the Act of the general rules of parcelling, regulation and building, which is important because it is strongly related to the current urban planning practice in Serbia. Accordingly, selected norms defined by the Act will be compared to the cases of best EU practice, with the aim to examine its potentials and the possibility of improvement.