At the beginning of the nineteenth century, less than 10% of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Today, more than half of the global population resides in cities, and according to United Nations projections, that share is expected to reach nearly 70% by 2050.
Serbia is no exception. Over recent decades, the population has become increasingly concentrated in larger cities, while a significant number of other settlements have experienced a prolonged population decline and unfavorable demographic trends. According to the 2022 Census, Serbia has a total of 4,709 settlements, of which as many as 1,317 have fewer than 100 inhabitants. The largest settlements are Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Niš, which together are home to one-third of the country’s total population.
The same pattern can be observed globally. Cities attract people because they concentrate employment opportunities, educational institutions, healthcare and social services, transport and digital infrastructure, cultural amenities, and a range of other resources that shape quality of life and individuals’ development opportunities. In this context, it is reasonable to ask what place and role villages continue to have. However, before attempting to answer this question, it is important to acknowledge a conceptual limitation.
In Serbia, villages are not a clearly defined category. Official statistics generally distinguish between urban and other settlements. At the same time, rural development policies increasingly rely on the concept of rural areas, which refers not to a specific type of settlement but rather to the spatial and demographic characteristics of a given territory.
For that reason, the question of whether the concept of the village has become outdated in Serbia can be considered on two levels. The first is a practical question: in the context of long-term urbanization, does the village still play an important role in Serbia’s development, or are economic and social activities increasingly shifting to cities?
The second is a conceptual question: is the traditional concpet of the village still sufficient to describe contemporary rural areas and their increasingly diverse functions?
At first glance, the growing concentration of population, economic activity, and public services in urban centers may create the impression that the importance of rural areas, within which many settlements traditionally identified as villages are located, is gradually declining.
However, such a conclusion overlooks the fact that the significance of rural areas does not derive solely from the number of people who live there. To understand their role, it is necessary to consider the functions they perform within the broader social and economic system.
Rural development is not just a policy aimed at people living in rural areas.
Food production, agricultural land management, renewable energy development, the conservation of forests and water resources, biodiversity protection, and the maintenance of settlement across large parts of the national territory all depend to a significant extent on rural areas.
This is precisely why one of the limitations of public debates on rural development is that they are often viewed primarily through demographic indicators – population size, age structure, or migration trends. While these indicators are important, they do not in themselves explain why rural development matters.
Rural development is not just a policy aimed at people living in rural areas. It is also a policy of importance to society as a whole, because it concerns the management of natural and economic resources located in rural territories.
Rural development and urbanization: opposing or complementary processes?
Supporting rural development does not imply opposing urbanization. It is unrealistic to expect that long-term migration trends from rural to urban areas can simply be reversed. Nor is it certain that such an objective would be either economically or socially justified.
The key question is not how to stop urbanization, but how to ensure that rural areas remain a functional, sustainable, and developmentally relevant part of society as urbanization continues. The objective of rural development cannot be solely to retain population at all costs; rather, it should be to preserve and strengthen the functions that rural areas perform in contemporary society.
An additional challenge lies in the fact that the role of rural areas today differs significantly from the role they played a century ago. Whereas their traditional function was primarily linked to agricultural production, contemporary development policies increasingly recognize their importance in energy production, the bioeconomy, natural resource management, sustainable tourism, climate resilience, and various forms of the digital economy.
Viewed from this perspective, rural areas are not remnants of the past but spaces that contain numerous resources and development potentials that are vital for the future.
For that reason, a modern approach to rural development cannot be based on preserving the status quo or on an idealized image of the traditional village. Its objective should be to create conditions that enable rural areas not only to continue performing their existing functions but also to develop new ones that are important for whole society.
In that sense, rural development is not a policy of preserving the past; it is a policy of preparing for future economic, energy, environmental, and social challenges.
This is precisely how the Institute for Development and Innovation understands the essence of contemporary rural development – not as an attempt to halt long-term societal processes such as urbanization, but as an effort to create conditions in which rural areas remain an important contributor to the sustainable development of the whole country.
Author: Milica Dolašević, Institute for Development and Innovation
