Interactive urbanism is an online platform launched with the aim of improving the understanding of complex processes of implementation of urban policies.

The complexity of these processes is caused by the rapid changes of the development context and the existence of diverse and fluid discourses and often conflicting interests. Conflicting interests are a normal consequence of the democratization of society, whose level of development is measured by the fineness of mechanisms that allow groups of people to express and defend their interests. Although conflicts of interest are a key feature of modern society, they can be destructive to communities, and instruments must be developed to prevent them from escalating.

Faced with increasingly complex development problems, urban and spatial planning in Serbia shows an increasing helplessness embodied in a growing number of escalated conflicts. The position and role of urban planners are still significant in formal procedures, but their real impact on decision-making is shrinking, as well as their action in the public sphere. The reputation and respect of the profession, in all different forms of practice, is significantly declining in the eyes of politics and the general public.

The platform offers professional support for the professional, but also for the wider community by providing access to information of importance for understanding the process of planning and governing spatial development. Its aim is to empower active, constructive and continuous participation of all involved, as well as those in charge of implementing the process.

It’s an interactive effort, which can be used to build new understanding and institutional capacities in the hopes that we will once again be able to establish a minimum of mutual values together, which can serve as a basis for building a mutual idea about the purpose and the concept of developing a society/city in which we want to live.

The platform Interactive urbanism contributes to a renewal of a forgotten culture of communication and strengthening of the public sphere, which is a key instrument in the fight against various types of visible and invisible powers dominating the public discourse.

The goal of the platform is to provide an access to reliable information and seeing the relations between different parallel processes and procedures, and so provide informed opinions, solid argumentation and increase the capacity for critical reflection for all interested individuals and groups. The plan is for the platform to become interactive in the future, and enable two-way communication and mutual interaction, or rather to provide additional information, an exchange of ideas and raising new topics of discussion.

The platform contributes to the building of the public sphere which has dramatically collapsed in the past several years with the collapsing of the media as the most powerful instrument for the support of society to articulate public good and public interest in public discussions, in the name of which individual and personal interests must be withdrawn, and whose protection and promotion will be worked on by public institutions.

The platform Interactive urbanism aims to spread knowledge, encourage informed opinion and argumenta discussions. It is a contribution to the understanding that the rules and procedures must be continually critically reflected on and changed in accordance with reality.