Potential Accessibility to Population as an Instrument for Sustainable Territorial Development: The Case Study of Serbia

The potential accessibility has been widely represented in the scientific literature since the 1950s and in the work of Hansen. Until today, different sets of measures have been developed for evaluating it in different scientific areas such as transport infrastructure, land use planning, regional development, and others. In the Serbian scientific literature, this concept received limited attention, so this paper represents a new contribution to the field of managing territorial development within spatial planning. The main aim of this research is to view the sustainable territorial development of the Republic of Serbia from a new perspective, which combines demographic and socioeconomic indicators with infrastructure development. Considering that, the potential accessibility to the population of local self-government centers index was calculated at the settlement level. This approach corresponds with demographic and economic trends in Serbia that are present in recent decades and some newer analyses in the scientific and professional literature regarding processes within the Serbian urban system. Findings from this research can make a significant contribution to further understanding of Serbian urban system patterns and sustainable territorial development.