The paper addresses the regression of contemporary urban planning, which is increasingly abandoning its fundamental function - the creation of spatial values in the public interest - and is instead reduced to the protection of remaining resources from the destructive interventions of political and economic elites. In the context of post-socialist transition in Serbia, planning has been instrumentalized for the purpose of profit maximization, whereby the public interest is selectively interpreted or entirely disregarded. The paper analyzes how public interest can be operationalized through the norms of common good, social justice, and cultural values, but also how these norms are lost in practice through destructive planning mechanisms. Special focus is given to the cases of "Belgrade Waterfront" and the Belgrade Fair complex, which illustratively demonstrate the mechanisms by which existing spatial values are erased and new ones are not created. Ultimately, the paper proposes a framework for returning to the original goals of planning: the creation and maintenance of healthy, high-quality, and valuable spaces in cities, villages, and natural areas. The protection of existing values is only one aspect of such a serious and complex process, for if we do not create something valuable today, we will have nothing to protect tomorrow.
Graovac et al. (Mon,) studied this question.