Resilient cities have emerged as novel urban ecosystems that respond to the increasing challenges of contemporary urban development. A new methodological approach is needed to measure and assess the degree of resilience of the urban landscape during the ongoing planning process, considering different planning and design scenarios. Based on this consideration, the first attempt of this study was to develop a resilience index that summarizes the application of resilience theory in urban landscape planning. Is geodesign an appropriate tool to assess urban resilience? This was the main research question and the topic of the workshop ’’IGC—Resilient City of Belgrade’’ at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Belgrade (Master Landscape Studio). The main result of this research is a model for urban resilience assessment with IGC geodesign, which allows to measure scenario changes through developed resilience indicators (index), which are determined by a set of parameters (area, redundancy, diversity, porosity, carbon sequestration, edge type, edge length, etc.). The methodological approach allows quantifying the impact of adopted innovations in geodesign scenario proposals, which plays a crucial role in strengthening the connection between landscape planning and design. In the context of the novel urban ecosystem, future urban landscape planning should focus on resilience as a measure to achieve sustainable development goals, supported by geodesign as a collaborative and spatially explicit negotiation tool.

Negative trends in land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) are embodied in environmental, economic and social problems, keeping entire societies away from sustainable development goals (SDGs). This recognition incites a need for securing comprehensive and transdiciplinary knowledge on the complex interplay between LULCCs and their drivers. It should inform land use policy makers and produce adequate sustainable social responses. However, fragmentation in both academic and governmental arenas is an important impediment to the needed application of sustainability to land use policy. With this regard, the study offers a transdisciplinary, bottom-up and reproducible framework for understanding key drivers of LULCCs at the national/regional level where sustainable land use policies should be defined. Its main component is the repeated measure ANOVA of the experts’ survey data. The analysis allows aggregation of experts’ different disciplinary, professional and experiential perceptions and produces comparable results. It is tested in Serbia in three sub-periods during post-socialism. Main results confirm that LULCCs and drivers are complexly intertwined and need to be analysed within a comprehensive and transdisciplinary framework. Furthermore, the study should enable the transdisciplinary discussion, learning and knowledge coproduction that are required to inform land use policy makers about the needed trans-sectoral coproduction of policy responses towards SDGs.

Free fare public transport (FFPT) has gained popularity as a mobility policy aimed at increasing ridership, reducing car dependency, and enhancing social equity. However, its economic viability and environmental effectiveness remain contested. This paper synthesizes findings from multiple case studies to assess the real-world impacts of FFPT. The analysis reveals that while FFPT successfully increases public transport use, it seldom leads to significant reductions in car travel unless combined with complementary policies such as congestion pricing or urban redesign. Moreover, the financial burden of FFPT often outweighs its benefits, straining municipal budgets and sometimes compromising service quality. Targeted subsidies and service improvements emerge as more effective alternatives. The study concludes that FFPT alone is insufficient for sustainable urban mobility and should be implemented as part of broader, well-integrated transport and urban strategies.

Rural areas in EU today face many challenges, including declining and aging population, lack of infrastructure, difficult access to services, availability of public transport, weaker employment opportunities, along with specific challenges related to climate change and environmental degradation. At the same time, rural areas are critical for the EU transition towards an environmentally sustainable society and facing climate change and the challenges of environmental pollution, food production, renewable energy and biodiversity loss. In that context, European Union developed strategic framework that deals with issues related to the sustainable transformation of the economy and society and rural areas, including the European Green Deal and Long-term Vision for the EU's Rural Areas, as well as a number of strategies and policies, among which are: the Farm to Fork Strategy, EU Biodiversity Strategy, New EU Forest Strategy and Common Agricultural Policy.

This essay is dedicated to the old topic of the influence of politics on spatial planning. Planning is and has always been a state policy instrument in space and as such it is inevitably linked to the ideologies, interests and priorities of political structures. Under the circumstances of rapidly changing political parameters, both in Serbia and in the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for planning to keep pace, especially when it comes to the long-term and relative stability of politics in space, which is a requirement for good planning in general. This is certainly not helped by the statements that the market is more important than the plan and that in the neoliberal concept spatial planning must not become a so-called business barrier. As a result of the explicit interest of political power in spatial development in Serbia in the first two decades of the 21st century, there has been an excessive politicisation of planning. It is enough to mention the recent examples of spatial plans for special purpose areas for the Belgrade Waterfront, Rio Tinto and the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, regardless of the quality of the planning solutions. In public discourse, planning is often labelled as risky, impossible, impotent, malicious and even unconstitutional. On the other hand, there is an opinion that spatial planning is alive and well and that it takes place according to the circumstances. The hypothesis that is further developed in the essay is that in order to remain effective in a changing political environment, spatial planning must become more pragmatic and, what is not new, must sometimes save space from political visions with the quality of planning solutions.