Integrating Gender Perspectives in Participation to Guide Changes in Urban Planning in Serbia

Abstract

Participation is an essential instrument for the expression of diverse knowledge and interests in urban planning. It ultimately influences outcomes in the built environment, fostering inclusive, safe, and accessible spaces and environments. However, urban planning is often viewed, by the public and practitioners alike, as an expert-driven, administrative, and semi-closed system, focusing on the provision of resources that are fit for all, seldom targeting the participation of gender expertise in decision-making. Drawing on empirical qualitative research conducted with planning practitioners in Belgrade in 2023 within the UN Women project “Safety of Women and Girls in Public Spaces”, this paper investigates if and how gender perspectives are integrated into urban planning policy and practice in Serbia, and the role of knowledge creation and participation in informing planning about diverse needs at the local level. The research draws on practical insights from practitioners in the fields of urban and spatial planning, traffic, and urban safety. The findings reveal how limitations to modifying the national legislative framework in terms of gender integration could be overcome at the level of planning policy and practice. The importance of including the participation of gender expertise alongside achieving gender parity in knowledge creation is highlighted.

1. Introduction

Addressing gender inequalities has been recognized as crucial in the formation, implementation, and evaluation of public policy for sustainable urban development [1,2,3]. Planning and governance practices are expected to incorporate gender perspectives into knowledge creation, considering how new planning solutions impact the most vulnerable, ensuring that no one is left behind [4,5,6,7].

As a strategy to systematically integrate gender perspectives into all stages of policy development, planning, and decision-making across sectors, gender mainstreaming was established in the late 1990s by the United Nations to advance equality, justice, inclusivity, and sensitivity to the diverse gender-related needs [8,9]. The goal of gender mainstreaming is to ensure equal opportunities across various spheres of everyday life for all genders, to address their needs, including those related to the care economy, which are often unrecognized, and to guarantee accessibility both in decision-making processes and in the planning of urban resources, including public spaces and services [1,10,11]. Integrating these goals into national urban planning frameworks requires prioritizing safety, affordability, accessibility, and a sense of belonging in urban areas by identifying the needs regarding the provision, access, and usability of public resources that significantly impact the daily lives of women and men [12,13]. While gender mainstreaming has been considered to be a political and organizational strategy across the EU, the prevalence and effectiveness of gender perspectives in urban development across countries diverge with regard to legal, organizational, and cultural aspects [14]. According to Zibell et al. [14] the integration of gender perspectives in urban development in Europe is led by initiatives and programs of international and EU research. However, its implementation at the local level depends on the openness of institutions, with one of the most successful examples in Europe being the city of Vienna [11,14].

Research in the field of gender and planning suggests that, at the local level, gender perspectives should be integrated through the substantive representation of women and gender expertise in planning processes to challenge drivers of inequality [10,11,15,16,17,18,19]. This perspective is supported by the communicative planning model in planning theory, which involves fostering participation and communication to acquire knowledge representing diverse consumption decisions, work responsibilities, social practices, and economic habits within communities [18,19]. Participation helps to shape the knowledge base among process participants, including practitioners, the general public, private sector representatives and decision-makers, to guide more just planning decisions and outcomes [1,20,21]. It operates on the premise that social groups and individuals learn from one another during the process, which influences their decision-making behaviors [22]. Knowledge is considered the most significant outcome of a dynamic, collaborative approach to planning, providing a base for decision-makers’ and professionals’ actions that reflect the diverse meanings of a good quality of life [22,23,24,25]. However, planning processes can remain in a semi-closed setting due to the established “rules of the game” and the weight of resources, which may influence what counts as knowledge [26,27]. A fuller picture of power relations in planning, including those related to gender perspectives, thus requires constant updating [28]. While the literature in this field on more developed democratic societies has evolved [1,2,3,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20], there is a limited understanding of how gender perspectives are integrated into the hybrid planning and participation of transitional and post-socialist societies, such as Serbia. This research problem is addressed in this paper.

Participation in planning practice, among other forms of representative democracy, is widely viewed as a means to uncover and address inequalities, challenging the assumption of homogeneity among urban populations and their needs [24,29,30]. This perspective aligns with institutional frameworks in many developed democracies, where the state actively supports the realization of essential community interests by promoting the exercise of individual human, civil, and political rights through participatory practices [31,32]. Still, in some planning practices, the integration of gender perspectives in knowledge production has been marginalized for decades [33,34,35]. Urban planning in Europe has long been dominated by technology-driven models and investment-oriented priorities [34]. This approach often reduces complex socio-spatial challenges—such as public infrastructure, healthcare, sanitation, public space hygiene, and affordable housing—to technical or engineering solutions [35,36]. Urban planning still struggles to integrate the gender perspectives of diverse daily needs and experiences in planning proposals due to “…the lack of tools to clearly highlight women’s needs to decision-makers, practitioners, technicians and the local community” [1] (p. 2). Furthermore, in some post-socialist countries transitioning to market-based economies, societal human rights were significantly more developed than political human rights during the era of state socialism. Current planning systems have thus retained elements of the unitary and collectivist principles established during that period through norms at the level of planning policy and institutions [37,38,39,40]. At the same time, substantive aspects of planning, such as practitioners’ values, relationships, and experiences of working under the uncertainty brought by transition, enhance our understanding of how acting in little ways may help achieve more inclusive planning and participation [41].

In Serbia, the citizens’ rights to participate in urban planning processes have been safeguarded by law since 1949 [42]. The planning system has traditionally relied on technical rules and normative planning standards as the most accurate reflection of socially framed standards to organize public spaces and services [38,39]. Until 2014, the legal requirements for public participation in the plan formation process entailed informing the public about participation options via local newspapers, media and/or municipality websites, public inquiry on the draft plan for 30 days in the premises of the local self-governance unit, and reporting responses to the comments and complaints received during the participation process during public discussion. The transition to an urban governance framework, alongside Serbia’s ongoing process of European integration, has introduced changes to the participatory practices [41]. These include the formalization of two-tiered public participation processes from 2014 by conducting an early public inquiry on the concept plan for 15 days in addition to the traditional public inquiry on the draft plan. Testing innovative participatory methods primarily takes place within new governance initiatives, such as the formation processes of sustainable and integrated urban and territorial strategies in Serbian cities [43]. Moreover, the importance of participatory planning has been highlighted by increasingly vocal citizen groups and grassroots movements responding to the usurpation of public space and services, as well as the threats posed to the environment and cultural heritage by new developments in Belgrade [44].

Along with the process of EU integration, Serbia adopted the Strategy for Gender Equality in 2016 [45,46], and the Gender Equality Law [47]. This framework made local authorities responsible for the integration of gender perspectives through gender mainstreaming and gender-budgeting in the planning and implementation of policies financed from the national, regional, and local budget. However, in 2024, the Constitutional Court of Serbia temporarily suspended the implementation of the Gender Equality Law, citing concerns that it might not be aligned with the Serbian Constitution [48]. These circumstances, along with the lack of participation from the planning and construction sector in the working group for the development of the national strategy for gender equality, may challenge the integration of gender perspectives into urban planning policies and their implementation [49,50].

Introducing gender perspectives into planning legislation and practice in order to address the needs, roles, identities, and limitations of different societal and cultural groups requires adjustments in both the normative institutional framework and, substantively, within the planning community [15,19,40]. Using the conceptual framework of duality between the normative and substantive aspects of planning [40,51], this research explores the potential for integrating gender perspectives into hybrid planning systems in transitional and post-socialist societies, such as Serbia, through the following questions. From a normative perspective, it examines how gender perspectives are integrated into Serbian policy in the fields of planning, participation, and governance as a planning norm, and how coherence is achieved between the respective policy goals. From a substantive perspective, the research considers how gender perspectives are used as a standard in practitioners’ work. It emphasizes “niches” and small-scale changes in planning and participation that foster knowledge creation, aiming to better meet diverse local needs.

Researching planning practice from the practitioners’ viewpoint allows the opening of the “black box” of formal processes where planning agendas are set [52,53,54,55]. The paper will demonstrate that, although the gender equality framework is not significantly integrated into planning policy and practice in Serbia, there are areas of planning policy and practice where gendered participatory action may be able to improve urban development.

2. Materials and Methods

The research methodology is based on the assumption of critical pragmatism that joint work towards transformation and acting in “little ways” may enable the realization of different outcomes in a given political, historical, and socio-economic context [56,57]. Creating experiences through collaboration may allow for the re-evaluation of previously held beliefs [22,23,24]. The research design thus considers the experiential and practical knowledge of practitioners as essential for reflecting on and co-producing innovative, gender-responsive practices through small, pragmatic steps [57,58].

This empirical research of gender perspectives in participation and planning in Serbia is part of the UN Women project “Safety of Women and Girls in Public Space” that was implemented in Belgrade, Serbia, between April and September 2023. The project aimed to improve gender responsiveness in planning legislation, practice, and research by promoting collaboration among practitioners in urban planning and related fields. The research was conducted in a live fashion throughout the five workshops with practitioners and policy makers situated in the project process (Figure 1), with the overt position of researchers. The main research methods are the content analysis of recent Serbian legislation and policy in the field of planning, participation, and governance, and ethnography with empirical qualitative research methods during the workshops with practitioners [56].

The content analysis of the legislation and policy was conducted to address the first research question regarding the normative aspects of integrating a gender perspective in planning and participation. To address the second research question, the qualitative research included data collection via monitoring conversations at workshops, taking notes, “observing behavior, listening to what is said in conversations both between others and with the fieldworkers, and asking questions” [56] (p. 432). This was followed by anonymous questionnaires completed during the final workshop to assess the effectiveness of the project process towards building capacities to integrate gender perspectives in planning. The questionnaire used a Likert scale with three levels: “agree”, “partially agree”, and “disagree”. It also included open-ended questions, enabling participants to express their views on the topics discussed during the workshops.

The original notes, questions, and responses derived from the workshop discussions and the questionnaire were in Serbian and have been translated into English. At the linear level of analysis, the coding of the narratives used a thematic approach [56], where practitioners’ inputs were examined through identified normative and substantive aspects of gender perspectives in planning and participation. At the analytical level, the narratives were contextualized in relation to the results obtained from the questionnaire to explore the relevance of gender perspectives in practitioners’ work, their willingness to apply the knowledge about gender-differentiated needs in urban spaces, and the recognition of their role in creating opportunities for more inclusive public participation.

The methodology for conducting “real-time” research within the project implementation process is grounded in Patton’s assertion that engaging in and monitoring open communication and the reflections of participants during the working process enriches researchers’ understanding of the research phenomena through direct interpersonal engagement [58]. The data analysis and interpretation decode the robust, specific, and tacit experiences of practitioners and policy makers, providing a contextual understanding of planning processes and the opportunities to change usual practices. Understanding how practitioners subjectively experience and interpret gender perspectives in urban planning and participation can encourage the reflection on their behaviors, practices, ethics, and relationships, generate context-dependent knowledge, and contribute to gradual change [59,60].

The practitioners who participated in the project workshops are the main subjects of the research—they include urban and spatial planners, traffic planning practitioners, urban safety experts, policy makers, representatives of universities, urban enterprises, international organizations, local associations, NGOs, and individuals. The sample of practitioners was chosen using a purposive sampling strategy [56], where researchers deliberately selected participants that were most likely to provide valuable insights to address the research questions. The practitioners were invited to participate in the workshops through contact with the legal representatives of the enterprises. The pool of practitioners was expanded through a snowball sampling approach, where the initial contacts pointed out other practitioners working in the institutions and fields relevant to the project aim [56]. A total of 96 individuals attended the workshops, 86% of whom were women. The high female representation can be attributed to women being asked by their supervisors to attend the workshops due to the project topic.

Purposeful sampling implies that the participants possess an intimate knowledge of the local context in which the researched phenomenon is shaped and articulated. Therefore, several preconditions were necessary in choosing the sample:

• All practitioners had to have experience in working on the planning of public resources (public land use and services of general economic interest) at the city or neighborhood level.
• All practitioners had to have experience in facilitating public participation and communicating with stakeholders of different interests, i.e., the general public, private investors, and the representatives of other public enterprises.
• At least some practitioners had to have experience in the application of gender equality provisions from the Gender Equality Strategy in planning practice.
• At least some practitioners had to have experience in the field of urban safety.
• At least some practitioners had to have experience in working on reevaluating planning policy or are currently in the position of policy makers who are in charge of it.

To protect participant anonymity, the researchers did not disclose their names or affiliations. The inputs are presented based on participants’ sectors of employment (

Table 1. Research sample.

Sector	Institutions	Code
Public—national level	Gender Equality Coordination Body of the Republic of Serbia Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure of the Republic of Serbia Agency for Spatial Planning of the Republic of Serbia	PNL
Public—authority, city level	City of Belgrade Office of the Chief City Architect Secretariat of Public City Transport Police Department for the City of Belgrade Municipality of Vračar	PCL
Public enterprises and institutes	City of Belgrade—Public Transport Greenmarkets Fortress of Belgrade Belgrade’s Subway and Train Public Lighting Transportation Institute CIP Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade Institute of Protection of the Heritage of Belgrade	PE
Professional associations	Serbian Chamber of Engineers National Association of Architects National Association of Urban Planners National Association of Spatial Planners	PA
Education and research	University of Belgrade—Faculty of Geography, Department of Spatial Planning University of Belgrade—Faculty of Transport Institute of Architecture and Urban and Spatial Planning of Serbia	ER
Non-governmental	Academy for Female Leadership Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities	NGO
International organizations	UN Women British Embassy Belgrade	INT

).

The workshops were designed to introduce participants to the topic of gender in urban planning, provide practical examples of gender-just participation and co-creation in planning and governance practices in EU countries, and leverage their collective professional expertise to generate ideas on how to integrate gender perspectives into policy and daily planning practices at the local level. The duration of each of the workshops was around four hours, which included brief presentations followed by group work and joint discussion. The different thematic scopes of the workshops meant that practitioners from different backgrounds were invited to each event.

The aim of the first workshop was to increase the knowledge capacities of participants from all sectors on gender approaches in urban planning and participation. A total of 50 participants were present (about 78% of the total invited).

The aim of the second workshop with planning practitioners and third workshop with experts from the field of communal space maintenance and urban safety was to reevaluate the urban planning methodology and procedures. These workshops included a joint analysis of four public micro-locations in Belgrade through focus group discussions. A total of 22 participants were present at the second workshop and 20 participants were present at the third workshop (about 80% of the total invited).

The aim of the fourth thematic workshop involving practitioners and policy makers was to facilitate discussions on the proposed measures to integrate gender perspectives in urban planning policy. A total of 19 participants responded to the invitation to participate at the workshop (about 73% of the total invited). Before the discussion on the measures for the integration of gender perspectives in planning policy, a content analysis of the policy and legislation supporting participation and governance was presented to the practitioners.

The aim of the fifth workshop was to gather all-sector participants in a joint discussion on the possibilities of modifying their practice-as-usual and implementing measures to increase gender responsiveness in planning. After the workshop, an anonymous questionnaire was distributed to the practitioners. There were 42 participants present at the final workshop (about 65% of the total invited), while 36 participants filled in the questionnaire.

At the workshops, practitioners were asked to analyze four public micro-locations in Belgrade through group work in four teams. Most of the participants were already familiar with these locations, as they live and work in Belgrade. The plans of the areas were the main tool for analysis, coupled with the insights from female users (practitioners) who took part in the workshops. Each team elaborated issues through mapping and proposed targeted measures to facilitate inclusive participation and planning standards that address the needs in public spaces from a gender perspective (Figure 2). The teams presented their proposed measures to the other groups, followed by a joint discussion. The cases selected represent typical neighborhoods in Belgrade, serving as critical examples that allow for learning and replicating knowledge [56] in the planning of urban areas across Serbia:

• the central city residential area of Vračar Municipality surrounding a busy green market, representing traditional mixed-use development;
• block 70 in New Belgrade, an open block neighborhood developed under socialist-modernist planning principles;
• the Kaluđerica neighborhood on the city’s outskirts, characterized by informal, individually built houses in an underdeveloped area lacking infrastructure; and
• Ušće Park, a large-scale open public space along the central city riverbank.

3. Findings

The findings relating to the qualitative analysis of practitioners’ inputs were contextualized with the content analysis of the legislation and policy in the fields of planning, participation, and governance to answer the first research question of how gender perspectives represent a norm in planning. To answer the second research question relating to the integration of gender perspectives as a substantive standard in the work of practitioners, the results are presented on the basis of practitioners’ practical experiences, suggestions, and insights during the case study work, leading to an understanding of their underlying values and actions, which may enable the realization of different outcomes in planning.

3.1. Gender Perspectives as a Planning Norm

During the workshops, practitioners noted that, despite the adoption of a gender equality policy in 2009, the current formal planning policy remains gender neutral. This means that it does not prioritize or specifically address the needs, interests, or experiences of any gender in particular, assuming that their needs can be met without special consideration. One of the practitioners noted that the term “gender” is not represented in both the procedural participation elements and land use standards of the Planning and Construction Law [61]—a key normative framework for planning and development in Serbia. Furthermore, the Draft Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia [62] does not distinguish between the needs of women and men in the use of space but emphasizes the importance of considering the needs of all societal groups (including vulnerable groups) when defining priorities for physical development, such as the accessibility to services of general economic interest [62]. These findings suggest that the integration of gender perspectives in formal planning legislation at the national level remains infrequent. Still, one of the practitioners at the workshops recognized the following:

“…reaching more differentiated data on needs through decision-making can be achieved by making extra efforts and small steps in informing those who are often excluded from decisions about their living environment, even if this is not mandatory by formal planning law”

(PS, workshop 2).

Thus, despite the notion that formal planning legislation does not explicitly integrate gender perspectives in planning and participation, some practitioners spoke about the possibility of including them through informal, voluntary practice. The informal practices of planning professionals were previously registered in smaller municipalities in Serbia, where planning initiatives are announced through local radio, TV stations, and the municipality’s social media platforms. In other cases, wider citizen participation is carried out at local festivals, which attract a diverse public, alongside more traditional methods such as newspaper ads and official websites [63], but they remain at the level of individual initiatives.

Broader political support to widen the scope of participatory practice in policy and legislation in field of governance can be traced to recent initiatives ratified by the government in line with the EU accession Chapter 22 on Regional Policy and the coordination of structural instruments [64] and the testing of governance initiatives in Serbia. In 2018, the government signed the Additional Protocol to the European Charter of Local Self-Government [65], which requires consultative processes, local referendums, and other tailored methods of participation for local decision-making in self-government units, particularly for residents of larger geographical areas, including rural regions. The need for broader geographical discussions on gender justice was raised by the practitioners at the workshops, as well as the following:

“We need to decentralize the discourse on gender in planning from Belgrade to smaller urban and rural areas, where women tend to be unpaid household members who spend most of their time engaged in caregiving activities… in villages they are rarely homeowners, and also have limited accessibility to public services”

(PS, workshop 5).

Besides the need to reevaluate the spatial scope of participation, another novel legislation in the field of governance, the Planning System Law of 2018 [66], stipulates the broader involvement of diverse citizen associations and civil society organizations in public policy formation. The Law provides a basis for the broader inclusion of gender expertise from the non-governmental sector, which resonated with practitioners at workshops:

“There is a need for recognition and involvement of diverse groups of participants in decision-making processes, primarily the NGO sector that is making breakthroughs in the domain of gender equality in Serbia”

(NGO, workshop 2).

Strengthening effective partnerships and dialogue between different sectors requires the support of subsidiarity in urban planning through an openness to other forms of knowledge. In Serbia, planning has traditionally been viewed as a public sector activity. However, the demands for democratization and governance highlight the need to reassess the traditional hierarchical roles between the public, private, and non-governmental sectors in planning.

The Local Self-Government Law of 2021 [67] aligns with the above-mentioned legislation and policy in the domain of governance and participation, emphasizing mandatory public hearings during the preparation of strategic, spatial, and urban plans. This article concerning this law is important because it outlines the need to tailor the participation process to different levels and types of planning documents—both formal and traditional plans, as well as strategies supporting governance approaches—which are typically considered to be less binding. Currently, all of the planning instruments follow the same procedure and have the same duration, regardless of their scale or territorial coverage.

The participants who attended workshop 4, which was dedicated to proposing measures to integrate gender perspectives in urban planning policy, highlighted that the Sustainable Urban Development Strategy of Serbia until 2030, adopted in 2019 [68], explicitly calls for the consideration of women’s needs in its measures to provide accessible public spaces and services in Strategic Goal 3: Societal Wellbeing. The strategy also outlines a set of measures to implement multilevel and multi-stakeholder governance initiatives through participation in Strategic Goal 5: Urban Governance. Measure 5.1.5, titled the “Application of an integrated approach in urban development, synchronizing “new” strategic planning for urban settlements with traditional urban planning”, implicitly supports the integration of gender perspectives in participation through both strategic and traditional planning.

Some of the initiatives to expand the formal framework for participation in planning presented at the workshops were recognized by the practitioners as “…small doors for the integration of gender perspectives in participation processes” (INT, workshop 1). One of the practitioners correctly noted that the institutionalization of such processes requires individual and institutional capacity development:

“I thoroughly enjoyed the workshops and gained valuable insights into women’s perspectives in the context of urban planning —something I had never considered before, even as a woman and a planner […]. This highlights the need for institutional capacity development within local government to integrate gender perspectives into decisions regarding space. However, it also requires a shift in our mentality. For decades, we have planned public spaces and services under the assumption that they suit everyone, while simultaneously prioritizing private developments and aligning them carefully with investors’ interests.”

(ER, workshop 5).

Capacity development and widening the scope of traditional participatory planning requires giving stronger support to urban governance, sharing responsibilities, and considering different forms of expertise and knowledge outside of the public sector. Additionally, the practitioners emphasized the need for broader geographical discussions on gender justice, where both gender and planning policies should address gender-specific issues, such as land management and land ownership patterns in Serbia, where women are significantly underrepresented [69,70].

The above findings reveal a deficiency in the integration of gender perspectives in formal planning legislation. Although the policy framework and legislation in the field of governance supporting inclusive participatory action, aligned with the EU Cohesion Policy for 2021–2027 [71], creates opportunities to enhance gender representation and expertise in urban planning, some practitioners highlighted the challenges related to institutional inertia. They expressed concerns about the lack of guarantees that the provisions outlined in the legal framework would be effectively implemented without strong political commitment at the local level, improved institutional capacities, and sufficient funding to support the institutionalization of rare initiatives, such as the project discussed in this paper, into standard practice.

3.2. Gender Perspectives as a Substantive Standard in Practitioners’ Work

To investigate how gender perspectives could become a substantive standard reflecting practitioners’ values in urban planning, we triangulated the quantitative data obtained from the case study work at the workshops with the questionnaire results. Figure 3 presents the results from the practitioners’ responses to the anonymous questionnaire, highlighting aspects such as the relevance of the workshop themes—including the re-evaluation of planning for public spaces and services, as well as participatory planning—in their work to achieve more equitable urban planning processes and outcomes (1); practitioners’ willingness to apply knowledge about gender-differentiated needs in urban spaces gained through the workshops in their ongoing practice (2); and professionals’ recognition of their role in integrating gender perspectives as a professional standard in their work (3).

Most practitioners gave the highest rating to the relevance of the workshop themes for their practice, while 11.1% partly agreed. During the workshops, they noted that the “case study approach was particularly useful for identifying different barriers and issues in space that women may encounter more frequently than men” (PLC, workshop 5). The method of analyzing the accessibility to public resources in four plans representing different types of neighborhoods in Belgrade, combined with joint discussions on the diverse issues and opportunities encountered by women and men in urban spaces, deepened practitioners’ understanding of their varying needs related to consumption, transportation, and caregiving. After the analysis, each group proposed a set of measures to integrate gender perspectives in planning norms and standards, as well as to include gender expertise in plan formation processes through the recognition of diverse stakeholders and strategies to reach them. The exercise generated a large amount of data, but here, we focus only on a few key findings.

From the aspect of care, the practitioners observed that neighborhoods in the “open block” urban typology, with larger public open spaces typical of a socialist development in New Belgrade, provide a safer and more comfortable environment for women pedestrians and women with children compared to the high-density neighborhoods in the inner-city Vračar Municipality. From the aspect of mobility and transportation, the practitioners observed that public transportation stops were denser and more accessible by foot to the inhabitants of the New Belgrade, Vračar and Ušće neighborhoods, than in the informal neighborhood of Kaluđerica located on the outskirts of Belgrade. The professionals highlighted the issues of urban public safety, low level of mobility and accessibility to services of general interest for women in informal development neighborhoods, such as the Kaluđerica neighborhood. The theme of informal development is specific to the local planning context in Serbia where, according to the database of illegally built dwellings without a construction permit in Serbia, there were 2.05 million dwellings, or 43.52% of the total number of dwellings in 2017 [72]. The mapping of unsafe and inaccessible areas and services for women in Kaluđerica spurred the discussion at workshops 2 and 3 about the importance of planning standards in cases where inconsistent law enforcement contributed to unregulated construction on green and open public space and agricultural areas on the periphery of cities [73]. As integral components of urban plans, planning standards directly impact quality of life at the micro level [39,73]. Violating these standards in the built environment of informal settlements leads to a reduced accessibility to caregiving services, long distances to public transport stops, the absence of open green spaces, and a lack of safe and comfortable pedestrian areas. These deficiencies particularly affect women, especially caregivers. At the same time, it can be argued, from a gender perspective, that the government’s decision to legalize illegally constructed housing en masse—built to address the basic housing needs of internally displaced persons and those unable to afford housing after the collapse of socialism—could be viewed in a positive light.

The high relevance of gender perspectives in planning and participation was agreed on by most of the participants, predominantly in the domains of practical application and the reinvention of planning standards, such as building regulations for public resources. The discussion around the possibility of influencing more inclusive participation by applying knowledge about gender perspectives in their usual practice was highly marked as well by 83.3% of practitioners. Some of them shared practical experiences in participation where gender parity was not achieved during the plan formation process:

“In that particular case, it was important to involve as many diverse groups of citizens as possible, as this new plan represents the basis for urban and rural development of the municipality for the next 10 years. We advertised the participation process on the municipality website. However, at the public hearing there were only about twenty men present, and one woman who came from a larger city. As heads of family and landowners, we usually see men most often on such occasions. I wish we approached this process differently to reach more women and understand their perspective regarding the issues of mobility, agricultural land use, transportation needs and public services use, which are key to their wellbeing”

(ER, workshop 2).

The practitioner observed that women did not participate in the public inquiry procedure, except for one who was present, and expressed a willingness to change their usual practices. In such contexts, targeted and tailored actions are necessary to involve gender experts from local action groups, gatekeepers representing individuals with care responsibilities, and self-organized actors in urban development [74]. The methods applied for informing, consultation, and active participation should consider that the diverse public may not be accustomed to engaging in planning processes or may be unaware of the impact of the plans [41,63].

All of the practitioners who filled in the questionnaire recognized their role in integrating gender perspectives as a professional standard in their ongoing practice. The results confirm previous research where planning practitioners in Belgrade see themselves as “protectors of the public interest” by adhering to planning standards for public land use and services [39,73,75] and through facilitating participation [41,63,76]. Some of them expressed a willingness to apply small steps to improve collaborative endeavours:

“We should have enough time and resources to conduct in-depth stakeholder analysis before initiating participatory planning processes, with particular attention to those often excluded from participation, such as individuals with disabilities, women with children, youth, and the elderly. Additionally, we need to collaborate more closely with urban sociologists and demographers early in the planning process […]. As a planning practitioner, I was especially pleased that these workshops provided an opportunity to discuss spatial issues with a representative from the police department. This interaction offered me a broader perspective and a new dimension for understanding neighborhoods’ spatial scale. Multidisciplinary collaboration was standard practice during the 1970s planning era but has since been lost in the transition to a market economy and the push to make planning processes more efficient and shorter.”

(PS, workshop 2).

Multidisciplinary and multilevel collaboration in planning requires fostering coordination to integrate gender expertise into decision-making across various areas, including gender equality, social wellbeing, urban safety, the care economy, climate adaptation, mobility, and transportation. Having multidisciplinary teams working on case studies demonstrated that gender perspectives play a multifaceted role in planning and the use of public space. For instance, the insights provided by police officers about “blind spots” in the case study neighborhoods were considered to be crucial by traffic planners and urban designers in the initial stages of the planning process. They acknowledged that the pressure to speed up planning and construction processes requires pragmatic steps to counter-balance development imperatives, which is in line with the research of participatory processes in other European countries [77].

4. Discussion and Conclusions

This research examined the potential for integrating gender perspectives into urban planning in Serbia, using a conceptual framework that highlights the duality between normative and substantive aspects of participation and planning [40,51]. From a normative perspective, the empirical research conducted with practitioners in Belgrade, combined with a content analysis of the relevant legislation and policies, indicates a lack of gender references in the formal planning framework. Exceptions are found in the novel governance framework supported by the programs and initiatives of international and EU organizations [68,78,79,80]. At the national level, gender perspectives are explicitly incorporated in measures promoting equitable public space design and service provision, as outlined in Serbia’s Sustainable Urban Development Strategy [68]. At the local level, these perspectives are reflected in the set of indicators used to monitor the implementation of territorial strategies, influenced by EU policies and the Sustainable Development Goals [80]. However, it is important to note that practitioners often view territorial and urban development strategies as informal planning instruments that operate alongside, rather than fully within, the formal framework of urban and spatial plans, despite their formal recognition under the Planning and Construction Law [61].

The Serbian practitioners involved in this research acknowledged the broader political support for inclusive participation driven by recent legislation in the field of governance initiatives. These initiatives are viewed as beneficial for acquiring new knowledge and strengthening institutional capacities to secure funding for integrated urban development projects aligned with the EU integration process. However, their impact on the practitioners’ routine practices has been limited [53]. The interplay between formal and informal planning frameworks—where the latter ones are often subordinate—combined with the shortening of planning procedures and the institutional hierarchy, makes integrating gender perspectives into planning a complex task that requires more inclusiveness in the methods used to organize participation [14]. These findings highlight the efforts needed to establish a continuous loop in the dialogue between different sectors and levels of governance that have the same goals, i.e., societal wellbeing, but have different roles in governance regimes [14,74].

A question that is briefly addressed in this research but merits further exploration concerns the influence of socialist path dependency and unitary collectivist approaches on the integration of gender perspectives in planning and participation from a normative perspective. Participation, as a right to engage in decision-making and urban governance, is a political human right. Along with political rights, the corpus of human rights includes civil, social, economic, and cultural rights based on the principle of solidarity, which encompass the right to development, environmental protection, and housing [37]. The affirmation and implementation of these rights is supported by the United Nations, as well as the European Union, where the impact of international policy lies in its ability to transcend national jurisdictions. This is crucial for Serbia’s efforts to integrate a gender perspective into planning, since, in former socialist countries, societal human rights were more developed, while political human rights were less emphasized [37,81].

From a substantive perspective, the research investigated how gender issues are reflected as a standard for practitioners’ work by focusing on small-scale changes in planning and participation that foster knowledge creation, aiming to better meet diverse local needs. According to Healey [82], this process can be facilitated by creating experiences that allow for the re-evaluation of previously held beliefs during collaborative efforts through small, pragmatic steps, which was exemplified through joint work on the case studies of four Belgrade neighborhoods.

Integrating gender perspectives in case study work through the lens of other practitioners, including gender experts, in the traditionally technical plan formation process, challenged the established frameworks through new, alternative ideas that encourage change. Reflecting on the gendered experiences of urban space was described among practitioners as an important exercise at the workshops, highlighting their professional responsibility as “protectors of the public interest” by adhering to standards in participation and the planning of public land uses and services. They acknowledged the need to reinvent planning standards towards diverse users’ needs and geographical scopes, including, but not limited to, the aspects of new transport options, shorter distances, the proximity of public services and mixed land use through a gender perspective lens, which resonates with the international research in counties beyond the EU framework [83,84,85]. New standards impacting households should be re-evaluated to determine whether they generate new economic possibilities for both women and men, or impose additional responsibilities on caregivers [13,14,19]. Participatory planning and governance practices, shaped by socially constructed criteria in addition to technical criteria, should thus guide the organization of human environments through participation by taking into account the “multiplicity of life courses or patterns for women and men” [12] (p. 91).

The research setting revealed a collective effort to transform the “rules of the game” [86], such as some of the established norms and processes of urban planning and governance in Serbia. Additionally, the question of changing the local mentality to be more responsive towards gender perspectives, as a substantive aspect of planning practice, was also raised. However, the reframing process is inherently complex, influenced by factors beyond the planning process, including the country’s economic and human development, resource availability, power imbalances, income inequality, participation capacity, and overarching societal values and principles, coupled with the low participation of women in political, economic, and social spheres [87]. The transition from one socio-economic and political regime to another may have significantly impacted how gender perspectives are expressed in planning, leading to the emergence of hybrid models distinct from those in developed democratic contexts.