Spatial regularization, planning instruments and urban land market in a post-socialist society: The case of Belgrade

• The paper discusses spatial regularization and urban land policy in a post-socialist society.
• Existing planning instruments and untransformed urban land policy induce excessive urban sprawl in Belgrade.
• Belgrade has extreme urban land consumption (670 m2/per capita) compared to other metropolises.
• Massive illegal construction is the dominant form of urban sprawl in Serbia.
• This research proposes indicators for measuring urban sprawl and sustainable land use.

Over the last three decades, Serbia has moved from a mixed centrally planned – deliberative – self-governing economy to a market-based economy, but key institutional reforms are still not complete. Based on the contextual framework of post-socialist countries and theoretical background, this research focuses on the interaction between spatial regularization and existing planning instruments versus urban land market and land-use policy, and their impact on urban expansion in the Belgrade metropolitan area (BMA). The intention is to clarify the implications of urban land use policies and their (im) balance with planning instruments and the land market. The contextual framework of post-socialist Serbia, the transformation of its urban land policy as well as the land development management in the BMA illustrate complexities of spatial regularization, further emphasized by the delay in introducing and adopting new urban land policy. Key findings include: extremely inefficient urban land use and excessive urban sprawl (in the last two decades the urban area has tripled; with high urban land consumption of 670 m2 per capita compared to other metropolitan cities); and important role of urban land policy (existing, still untransformed instruments contribute to urban sprawl).