摘要：The fact that 399 of the 460 settlements in Vojvodina are villages should allow us to assume that there exists a special spatial development plan for the whole network of settlements. However, planning is governed by the following conditions: (a) the overall need for the development of rural settlements is insufficiently defined, (b) there is a constant process of rural depopulation, especially in the smallest villages, (c) the macro strategy is undefined, (d) there is no relevant methodology, and (e) the practice of planning is inconsistent. This article elaborates the circumstances under which villages live and indicates the basic factors of spatial planning needed to plan their development. In other words, the author tries to shed light on the illusion that a formal spatial plan, i.e. an arrangement of space (in fact, merely the existence of this kind of documentation) is a priori enough to ensure favourable conditions for rural development. The need for a complex approach to planning the development and arrangement of rural areas includes at least two macrolevels: (a) regional, i.e. external, and (b) urbanistic — within the framework of the village territory itself. Even if there are no systemic changes in the sense of regional planning, it is still necessary and possible to perform the following adaptations in urbanistic (rurist) planning on the level of the settlement itself: (a) in the immediate surroundings of the settlement in the sense of a maximum consideration for the natural environment, (b) the establishment of a typological foundation that will differentiate among the morphological characteristics of the individual (groups of) settlements, and (c) the redefinition of normative urbanistic programming for the needs of rurist planning.
