Danube Strategy in Serbia: Education-Based Research of the Potentials of Serbian Towns on the Danube

Abstract

The Strategy of Danube Region of European Union is one of new European development initiatives and documents on regional development. Its central element is the Danube, which is the main European river and one of the key transport corridors of Europe. This is the reason why it is inevitable element of future development of the EU. Serbia is one of central states in the Danube region with long flow of the Danube. In accordance with this the importance of Serbian cities and towns on the Danube is visible for its future development and competitiveness and its integration in the wider, “Danubian” region and EU. All these towns have extraordinary position as a potential, but they also have many local characteristics and differ notably in numerous fields. Therefore, the implementation of the “global” actions and priorities of the strategy can be the challenge on local level in Serbia. Finally, it is questionable how the strategically proclaimed integral approach can be used in so different cases in Serbia. These questions were the fundament for education-based research in the course at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade. The theory of regional and urban planning was the keystone for the structuring of the course aims and process. The phases were organized to achieve the permanent relation between global/regional and local/urban level. Accordingly, course participants had two roles; all of them had one Danube town as a “research field” and everyone was the part of the team with responsibility of making networks between towns. The result of the course was the set of actions, options and models of both development of the towns separately and the development of whole region in Serbia. This paper aims to present how the research can be good illustration for “real” planning actions, where the main focus is making of connections and networking between global/regional and local/urban level.