Achieving the Basic Sustainable Qualities in New Housing in Post-socialist Serbia: Regulation vs. Case-studies

In a period of post-socialist transformation, unexpected and sudden socio-economic changes in society have deeply reflected into urban space. Their influence has been specially observed in the most common spatial elements, such as housing. Thus, the housing has proved to be an evident example of both positive and negative characteristics of post-socialist transformation in urbanism and architecture. The regulation of housing in Serbia has been postponed compared with other post-socialist countries. A few different guidelines for housing design existed in socialist Serbia, but they were overcome in transition period, in early 1990s. Furthermore, the official evaluation of current housing is still an underdeveloped field, regarding to various factors. The differences and deficiencies between housing regulation and related statistic data are among the most noticeable. The implication of such state can be overviewed through housing construction in situ; the quality of new housing projects varies greatly, even by basic characteristics, such as housing area, number of rooms or accessibility to natural lighting. The methodology is critical analysis of existing regulations of housing in Serbia, through the official Act of conditions and normative for the designing of housing buildings and flats, adopted in 2012. The differences and deficiencies between regulation and statistics were the starting-point to define criteria. The relevant case studies were checked through them. The expected contribution of the paper is providing the set of recommendations and guidelines for the improvement of evaluation process of the basic elements of new housing in Serbia as well as other countries with similar background