Spatial-demographic misbalances as a challenge to the population policy

Abstract

The significance of the regional disproportions at the territory of Serbia, when it comes to demographic resources, imposes in front of the social community a task for public policy measures to be more efficient and more precisely addressed towards the local communities where the limit of their possible acting has not been perturbated yet. Thus, defining of coherent public policies requires good research of the demographic processes and problems on all levels and defining developmental solutions in accordance with them. Dimensioning of demographic potentials is one of the challenges and priorities of spatial planning as well, as a controlling instrument that has been gaining significance in modern conditions. Foreign experience in this field, i.e. the system of spatial planning in European countries, with the special attention paid to the ways of solving problems connected to demographic processes and appearances, is undoubtedly instructive for the domestic practice and the establishment of public policies on state and lower regional levels. Given the fact that the inequality in development is caused, above all, by the expressive metroplization and polarization of the Serbian territory, in modern conditions it is considered that the application of the polycentric development model could help avoiding further excessive economic and demographic concentration. It includes economic competitiveness and social equality (sustainable development) as pre-requisites for the diminishing of local disparities to the acceptable minimum. In that sense, it is considered that a group of middle sized towns represents a pivot in establishing homogeneous national urban system which would lead to the increase in the degree of settlement network consistency. It is necessary that the endeavour to decentralize Serbia be elaborated with concrete measures and instruments that would route further state development, meaning affirmation of the middle sized towns.