A systematic approach to designing the sustainability indicator sets for local spatial planning in Serbia

Despite considerable efforts invested in design of sustainability indicators (SI) capable of pointing out and measuring the key features of spatial phenomena and estimate sustainability of the planned outcomes, their consistency, relevance and practical usefulness often remain unsatisfactory. Therefore, improvement, proper implementation, and evaluation are crucial for their further application. The presented study aims to improve this situation in Serbia and provide a context-specific contribution to general understanding of the subject. Building on fundamental definitions, concepts and models of sustainable development, it introduces a systematic approach to examining the structure and correspondence of Serbia’s two principal SI sets (SDI and SDS), applicable also in similar contexts. Analysis of inherent and contextual challenges, sets’ structures (SDI: 4 sectors, 40 themes, 204 indicators; SDS: 5 goals, 37 objectives, 106 indicators), conceptual coherence and applicability, highlights the critical importance of adequate formulation of sectors/goals and themes/objectives for ensuring relevance and effectiveness, and provides directions for sets’ improvement and possible integration. The study also proposes a self-regulated meta-evaluation framework, optimised for Serbia yet adaptable to similar environments, to guide sets’ future applications and integration. Additionally, several general guidelines, useful for sustainability assessment, emerged from the research, as well.