Water management, environmental protection and spatial planning reconciliation: 'Accommodating' the Danube and the Tisa river in Serbia

Abstract

Water management in Serbia has been mostly operating in a framework of public companies and institutions focused on strictly sectorial and technical expertise on hydraulic engineering, environmental protection and navigable traffic engineering within the highly autonomous legislative framework. On the cross-point of spatial planning and water management there is a growing debate on the important discourses of the policy domains. Seeing rivers as an 'accommodated' generator of opportunities is a statement which is opposing the traditional consideration of strict separation of water from the land. Spatial planning as a framework for regulating the land use has an important function in integrating the water management and landscape more closely. In Serbian spatial planning practice there is growing practice of area-specific development planning (reflected through the Spatial plans for the special-purpose areas) which are considered to accommodate new ideas on spatiality better than the traditional, sectorial planning documents. The question is placed as to how these practices could direct new spatial arrangements of integrative collaborative spatial planning and not just merely reflect the framework of the existing planning order. This paper seeks the potential and actual role of spatial planning in addressing challenges related to particular river environments on the Tisa and the Danube rivers. The research is based on the analysis of two Spatial plans for the special-purpose areas which are still in conceptual phase - The Cultural landscape of Bač and Multifunctional ecological corridor of the Tisa river.