Serbia

The “Valjevo” Local Workshop dealt with problems related to mostly the city center of the city of Valjevo. The city of Valjevo is an administrative center of the Kolubara District in western Serbia. Fairly close to the capital of the country, it possesses great significance in urban planning, especially in regard to climate change and health.  According to the data from 2022. The administrative area of Valjevo had 82 169 inhabitants, while 56 145 of them were urban dwellers. The main characteristics of the city consist of its nature, rivers, and hills. Valjevo occupies an area of about 905 square kilometers, and in this area, there are three rivers – Kolubara, Gradac, and Ljubostinja. The inhabitants of the city claim that the biggest problem in Valjevo, and their biggest threat is air pollution. The city also had flooding issues in the past, before the construction of the new embankment of the Kolubara river in the city center. The problem with air pollution most likely lies in the fact that the majority of the city’s population lives in individual housing blocks, which are not connected to the city’s central heating system. During the winter months, these individual houses mostly rely on burning coal in their furnaces.  The residents also suffer from traffic congestion, lack of parking spaces (mostly in the city center), and from numerous heat islands, located in several places in the center of Valjevo.