Приступ неразвијеним подручјима у региналном развоју Србије / Approach to undeveloped areas in regional development of Serbia

Generally, the policy of the regional development, observed up to the making of new strategic documents, was inefficient and unsuccessful: inefficient because it was dominated by branchy, i.e. sector approach over structural and spatial one, short–term over long–term aims of regional the development, while unsuccessful because it led to the increase of disproportions in the level of development and irrational of activities. The changed socio–economic circumstances and development of spatial non implementation of the aims of the previous regional policy caused the change of researching approaches to the regional development in the direction of its understanding as complex and dynamic process of transformation of the regional structures. New approach was based on larger number of indicators for measuring the instrumentarium enabled the following: 1) interregional distribution of activities and population instead to the reduction, neglecting the interdependence in the development of all regions, changes within the regions, and particularly the stimulation of territorial division of labour was missing on the basis of the specialization units. Therefore, “one– dimensional” understanding of the regional development was exceeded, by which it identified with the defining of the status of undeveloped areas and stimulating mechanisms. The supplemented methodological comparison by introducing new indicators for some dimensions of development, defining and observing the regions as statistically functional territorial wholes and classifying the regions according to degree of development and 2) categorisation of area in dependence on the specificity of developmental problems; besides the traditionally economically undeveloped areas, new problem areas appeared in which the underdevelopment was additionally emphasized due to incapability of adjusting the economic structure to the reformation processes and expressed structural problems (devastated areas–“cities of unemployed”) or due to expressed spatial dimension of underdevelopment (barrier of “conditional” border expressed in the contact area with AP of Kosovo and Metohia and particularly in Serbian communities on AP of Kosovo and Metohia). As it has already been mentioned, dealing with undeveloped areas is not possible out of the context of the regional development. The reduction of the regional unevenness in the Republic of Serbia means the formation of the new institutional framework (on the national, regional and local level), as well as the appliance of stimulating mechanisms and measures defined in numerous developmental policies (credit, agrarian, industrial, fiscal, etc.). In order to have efficient policy, the developmental programmes have to be in accordance with regional specificities, i.e. the characteristics of underdevelopment of “endangered” areas. Thus, the previously present “adaptable problem” approach would be transformed into “developmental–programmed”, which would, according to Derić and Atanacković (2000) mean that “the regional dimension turns from the passive follower into active factor of the overall development