Excluded communities and participatory land-use planning

What is it about?

We presented and discussed the application of an innovative participatory approach designed to ensure active involvement of an excluded ethnic minority, the Roma community, in the process of formulating and adopting land-use plans for informal settlements in Serbia. By analysing the development of land-use plans in 11 municipalities, we observe that the applied participatory approach enhanced the inhabitants’ active participation and helped build consensus on the planned solution between the key actors.

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Why is it important?

Our findings suggested that further work with citizens, planners and administration capacity building and secured financial mechanisms are needed to move citizen participation in urban planning beyond the limited statutory requirements.