Project implementation is one of the key activities in the process of ensuring development. In public institutions, the challenges in project management are particularly evident. Organizational inflexibility and an inability to adequately evaluate work are particularly emphasized, often creating problems during project implementation. These challenges become even greater if the financing of the project is planned with EU grants or other financial instruments that require great precision and thus exceptional project management skills. This document will present an effective project management model, as well as programs and portfolios in regional self-government units. A methodology has been developed to encourage the transformation of public systems from rigidly functional to project systems. The methodology was tested in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Republic of Croatia. An analysis of the quality of implementation of twenty projects has been carried out: an analysis of the final results of ten projects in which the methodology has been applied and of ten projects in which the methodology has not been applied. After conducting empirical research and analysis, the quality of the proposed model was proven at all levels of governance within the public sector. By applying this methodology, significant advances can be made in the quality of realized projects while ensuring the realistic dynamics of this realization and rational financial costs.

This research analyzes the phenomenon of the reduction of urban green spaces in the post-socialist city. Belgrade was selected as a post-socialist city of the former Yugoslavia. The article analyses the views of urban planners on the reasons for the reduction of urban green areas in the post-socialist city based on semi-structured interviews with representative samples for urban areas. This result research confirms the hypothesis that post-socialist city planning reduces urban green areas due to the lack of new mechanisms in documents for the planning of urban green space. The concept of sustainability should connect and balance the skills of urban planners and focus on how urban planners develop and apply standards and protect them in market-democratic systems. In other words, a new mechanism of post-socialist city planning implies a balance between the private and public sectors. In the planning document, urban planners should find a common denominator between the public interest, citizens, investors, and spheres determined by the sustainable principles of the development. City institutions should provide opportunities for the application of those standards. With the new approach, planning would imply work in the service of citizens in the concepts of a sustainable and green city.