Using heritage as a cultural artifact in city development is not new, but little has been explored about how urban heritage can be utilized as new generative value and a new planning instrument for the revival of cities. The purpose of this paper is to show the creative and the generative use of urban heritage, both for the extension of cultural and tourist offer of the city and for the improvement of the quality of life in physical, social and economic terms for the community. The case study method was used for the adaptive reuse of projects for heritage buildings and urban revival in Kikinda. We argue that urban heritage has to be used, bearing in mind its spatial, economic and social sustainability aspects, and become a generator of urban revival. We go beyond recognition of the value of heritage as a cultural artifact that should solely be preserved and used as a static element in urban development, and view it more as a dynamic asset for city revival processes. We found that for the heritage nodes to be utilized as the new generative value for the revival of cities, they have to be perceived from the network perspective, thus influencing the urban environment in a sustainable way.

The influence of place branding in urban development has more importance than ever. Nevertheless, little attention is given to how place branding strategies are interrelated with planning, especially in post-socialist urban development. The purpose of this paper is to critically explore experimental educational projects conducted through cooperation between academia and local governments in Serbia, perceived as a simulation of strategic planning and place branding. We argue that educational projects hold power to create additional value in place and contribute to place branding by using a variety of planning and design instruments as a means of transformative spatial and social change both for communities and students as future planners. This paper uses theoretical exploration to develop reflective structural elements and a set of criteria essential to interlink strategic planning and place branding, thus providing a unique apparatus for the evaluation of educational projects. By emphasizing the possibilities and limitations of educational projects, the paper contributes to the theoretical advancement of place branding and strategic planning interlink and sheds light on the effects that those projects may have on spatial development and governance of the territory.

The growing perception of heritage as a public commodity encourages rural communities to recognize their natural and cultural heritage as a potential for tourism development. This creates the need for an appropriate presentation of heritage sites that ensures that their cultural and natural assets are appreciated and protected. “Negotinske pivnice” are cultural heritage sites in Serbia, nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List. They are architectural complexes of wine cellars in rural region with a long tradition in wine production and industry and are unique in terms of their settlement structure. This emphasizes the spatial dimension of their interpretation and presentation, and highlights the importance of urban design for their sustainable use for tourism. Based on understanding urban design both as a process and a product, and cultural heritage site as a place, we argue that participatory urban design contributes to appropriate heritage presentation by widening design knowledge base to include local communities’ lay knowledge. Following the case study methodology, we explored the relationships between participatory process, the knowledge gained, and urban design solutions for presentation of cultural heritage sites as living places in “Wine Cellars of Negotin Participatory Urban Design” project. The research reveals that the wider knowledge base affects urban design at both strategic and project levels and sets the grounds for diverse presentation forms through which harmonization of heritage protection and touristic presentation is possible.

Collaborative strategic decision making has to be widely informed, communicated and knowledge-based in order to innovate transformations toward local and global sustainability. It is unimaginable that this process could be effective without computer-aided information support, but the research indicates the utilization constraints within human capacities to recognize their usability and usefulness. These constraints seem to be even more challenging within the intensively transitional social contexts, such as Serbia. We argue that understanding the relationships between sustainability, governance, and planning in a specific social context has profound importance to gain usefulness of information support and to ensure its increasing utilization. Identifying the practical path of information support modeling requires an operational framework that encompasses innovative and socially valid initiatives. Therefore, an integral theory framework was chosen to comprehend all social influences on the information support of successful utilization. This article presents the integral framework of the information support’s conceptual setting, which was used to build up community-based collaborative action research (CBCAR) as a transformative social learning process that enables information support utilization, and it was tested in six municipalities of Serbia. The implementation of pilot territorial information support (TIS) initiatives resulted in continuous and proactive local community efforts in information support development and usage.

Il termine Balcani ha una definizione geopolitica piuttosto che geografica. Sebbene sia sempre stata nella stessa posizione geografica, Belgrado ha cambiato notevolmente la sua posizione geopolitica nei Balcani nel corso della storia. Sempre al limite, Belgrado si trova in una posizione unica dove culture e civiltà si incontrano, combattono e interferiscono nel tempo. Gli Stati hanno sempre avuto un ruolo chiave nella formulazione del quadro politico-economico e burocratico-legislativo del urban design e dei suoi effetti spaziali e organizzativi. Ma Belgrado non ha mai avuto continuità né nella legislazione né nello sviluppo e l'unica costante è il suo status "inbetween", culturalmente, politicamente e tecnologicamente. La betweenness come fattore architettonico nella Belgrado del secondo dopoguerra ha prodotto spazi di rappresentazione del radicale cambiamento di paradigma politico - una scena ideologica eroica che muta in uno spazio di vita ordinario - dove la "inbetweenness" è ancora un destino quotidiano di Belgrado.