Underground space is increasingly positioned in contemporary urban discourse as a strategic resource for sustainable spatial and territorial development, particularly under conditions of limited surface capacity, growing infrastructural demand, and the need for long-term urban resilience. However, its implementation remains constrained by insufficient institutional, planning, and governance integration. Starting from this problem, this paper assesses the institutional readiness of Serbia’s spatial and urban planning system for the integration of underground planning into the territorial development system. The methodological approach is based on the development of an analytical framework for institutional readiness, structured around three key dimensions: regulatory–institutional, spatial–infrastructural, and governance–coordination. This research is conducted through a qualitative analysis of legislative, strategic, planning, and supplementary sources, using stratified criteria—normative, operational, and integrative levels—which enables a structured, document-based diagnostic assessment of the current state of the system. The results indicate that institutional readiness in Serbia is at a low to medium-low level. Although a partially developed normative framework and certain technical-informational capacities exist, underground space is not clearly recognised as a distinct planning category or as an integrated three-dimensional spatial resource. The spatial–infrastructural dimension reveals the existence of relevant cadastral, geospatial, and infrastructural foundations, but without their sufficient integration into a unified 3D planning and governance system. The key limitation is identified in the governance–coordination dimension, where fragmented competences, uneven local capacities, and the absence of dedicated coordination mechanisms hinder the systematic application of underground planning. The paper concludes that the integration of underground planning in Serbia requires gradual institutional transformation toward an integrated, three-dimensional, and long-term-oriented model of spatial governance. Its contribution lies in formulating an initial diagnostic framework that connects debates on planning systems, institutional fragmentation, spatial data integration, and territorial governance, and may serve as a basis for further research and policy development in the field of integrated territorial development.
Šipetić et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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