Making Better Cities Together Municipal Spatial Planning Support Programme (MuSPP) Issue No. 05/02 • February 2008 Editorial Let’s talk about the spatial status of Kosovo! With political decisions taken about the Send us your ideas how to make future of Kosovo, it’s time to deal more seriously with the physical and social Kosovo and its cities a better place status of this part of the Balkans. “More to live, to work, to move about and seriously” means that sustainable de- velopment should be on everyone’s lips to express oneself and in everyone’s minds. Kosovo needs development and it has to be sustain- able in terms of economic growth, social welfare and well-being, and last but not
[email protected] least environmentally. And to be clear, this is the opposite way of the current applied it to ourselves too. The focus international experience and promote trend; in other words, we have to break was-and still is-mainly on drafting the the role of public transport in sustain- the trend of the unsustainable develop- Municipal and Urban Development able urban development in Kosovo. Also ment of the past decades and particu- plans–but we also launched new tools the Kosovo-wide Workshop on Infor- larly the years after the conflict. like participatory visioning and “new” mal Settlements showed the readi- issues like sustainable urban mobility ness of many stakeholders, MESP, OSCE, The way we organise the limited space and “place-making”. We also supported Association of Kosovo Municipalities and of Kosovo–what we call spatial plan- firmly an innovative approach towards UN-HABITAT, for a multidisciplinary and ning–is crucial in this aim; the way we the challenge of Informal Settlements inclusive approach, marked by “heart” organise and manage growing cities in in Kosovo, and last but not least we to these settlements as living and liv- Kosovo–what we call urban planning is launched seven small urban projects to able communities.