Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture, Chair of Planning and Design in landscape Architecture University of Belgrade - Faculty of Forestry
Linking Children’s Emotional Experiences of Space with Health-Oriented Urban Design: Towards School Streets in Belgrade Milena Vukmirović International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2026 Children’s everyday routes to school are increasingly recognised as important environments shaping physical and mental well-being. Yet, their emotional dimension remains insufficiently integrated into health-oriented urban design research, particularly in cities without formalised School Street policies. This study examines how children in Belgrade perceive and emotionally experience their everyday school routes and how such evidence can inform context-sensitive urban design. A mixed-method, child-centred participatory approach was applied with primary school pupils, combining participatory evaluation boards, cognitive route mapping, photo documentation, and facilitated classroom discussion. The material was analysed through qualitative coding, triangulation, and a health-oriented reinterpretation of the SCORELINE framework (h_SCORELINE). The findings reveal recurring stress nodes associated with traffic-dominated streets, complex crossings, obstructed sidewalks, and poorly legible route segments, which children linked to fear, discomfort, and insecurity. By contrast, greenery, recognisable landmarks, visually calm environments, and wider pedestrian spaces emerged as joy nodes associated with comfort, enjoyment, and emotional ease. These patterns suggest that children’s emotional-spatial evidence can enrich the assessment of school-route environments beyond conventional traffic indicators alone. By linking children’s lived experiences with health-oriented urban design, the study provides evidence-based support for the gradual introduction of School Streets in Belgrade. It offers a transferable framework for integrating child-centred experiential knowledge into healthier street design.
The Impact of the Small Urban Green Space on the Urban Thermal Environment: The Belgrade Case Study (Serbia) Snežana Kecman, Nadežda Stojanović, Milena Vukmirović, Nevena Vasiljević, Ivana Bjedov, et al. Forests, 2025 Small green spaces are the most common type of greenery in cities, but very little is known about their impact on thermal comfort. It has been established that larger green spaces (large city parks, urban forests, etc.) have a significant effect on the formation of thermal comfort in cities. Conversely, it has been shown that this effect is highly variable in smaller green spaces (particularly those <3 ha). This study investigated the impact of smaller green spaces (<3 ha) of various categories (parks, squares, and street tree lines) on the thermal comfort of urban open spaces. In total, 18 green spaces in Belgrade were selected, where specialised meteorological measurements were conducted during summer and winter, and the PET index and UTCI were calculated using the RayMan Pro (Version 3.1 Beta) software. Research has shown that green spaces ranging from 0.9 to 3 ha have an average difference of 4.04 °C in the PET index and 3.27 °C in the UTCI. For areas between 0.3 and 0.9 ha, the differences are 2.32 °C for PET and 2.05 °C for UTCI, while for spaces <0.3 ha, the differences are 2.19 °C for PET and 2.12 °C for UTCI. In all cases, the values of the PET index and UTCI were higher in green spaces compared to areas without greenery, with differences ranging from 2.19 to 4.04 °C for PET and 2.05–3.27 °C for UTCI. It was determined that green spaces <3 ha increased the PET index by an average of 2.75 °C and the UTCI by 2.41 °C. The results of this study showed that despite their size, small green areas can significantly improve thermal comfort. This study highlights the importance of these green spaces and provides a basis for the planning of new or renovated existing urban green spaces to mitigate the effects of climate change in cities.
Main city street transformation framework Future of Real Estate II Interdisciplinary Research on Real Estate, 2023
Industrial heritage preservation and the urban revitalisation process in Belgrade Milena Vukmirović, Marko Nikolić Journal of Urban Affairs, 2023 Urban regeneration is often driven by economic interests, while the preservation of the meaning and memory of a place is neglected. This could be considered as a reason a series of civil initiatives emerged in Belgrade to prevent damage to the built heritage and to indicate the need for stronger citizen involvement in the city’s development processes. This paper will focus on the issues of the Belgrade waterfront industrial heritage protection process by exploring eleven case studies, observed through a framework that includes key actors in the protection process. In order to determine the level of citizen participation in this process, the degree of their activity was studied by analyzing the social media content through which they communicate about this particular topic. Furthermore, possibilities of different approaches in presentation and utilization of the abandoned industrial heritage will be investigated, in order to define common procedures that will be in line with the city development goals, citizen expectations and heritage protection measures.
Design proposal development for a more liveable open public space Milena Vukmirović, Boris Radić, Suzana Gavrilović, Aleksa Jovanović Iop Conference Series Earth and Environmental Science, 2023 As a vital element of successful cities, public spaces play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals. The New urban agenda considers public spaces as a need in sustaining the productivity of cities, eco-social cohesion and inclusion, civic identity, and quality of urban life. This is also in line with the New European Bauhaus, as a part of European Green Deal, need to create beautiful places, practices and experiences that are enriching, sustainable and inclusive. In accordance with that there is undoubted importance of the public spaces, while its quality is generated in the symbiosis of various elements. On the basis of normative theories in urban design, SCORELINE framework for public space quality evaluation was developed and tested at the research group for planning and design in landscape architecture at the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Forestry. The framework covers six criteria which illuminate key aspects of public spaces such as safety and security, convenience, legibility, comfort, inspiration and sensitivity and liveability. For the purpose of this research, special attention is given to the criteria of liveability. It will be presented through its quantitative and qualitative indicators and its application in practice that cover the investigation carried out on Cara Urosa Street within the Lower Dorcol quarter in Belgrade, Serbia. The results of this analysis defined the inputs for street renewal design proposal, that was additionally tested using Space Syntax method, precisely Depthmap X simulation software to map potential issues and potentials that will be developed through design in order to achieve the defined goals concerning the liveability of open public space.
Twitter Data Mining to Map Pedestrian Experience of Open Spaces Milena Vukmirovic, Miroslava Raspopovic Milic, Jovana Jovic Applied Sciences Switzerland, 2022 This research investigated the classification and visualisation of Twitter user-generated data. Twitter data were classified based on their sentiment relating to pedestrian experience of the quality of open spaces, based on their content. The research methodology for Twitter data collection, processing and analysis included five phases: data collection, data pre-processing, data classification, data visualisation and data analysis. The territorial focus was on Oxford Street, London, UK. Special attention was placed on the questions regarding the potential of using Twitter data for extracting relevant topics for the public space and investigating whether the sentiment for these topics can relate to urban design and improvement of pedestrian space. The proposed research model considered amount and relevance, its possibilities regarding the interpretation of the collected sample, the potential of the data for the purpose of the analysis of pedestrian space quality, the precision of sentiment determination and the usability of data in relation to a particular open public space.
The spirit of time—the art of self-renovation to improve indoor environment in cultural heritage buildings Coline Senior, Alenka Temeljotov Salaj, Milena Vukmirovic, Mina Jowkar, Živa Kristl Energies, 2021 The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of an old low-standard urban district with a strong historical and cultural heritage and propose more sustainable renovation solutions, acceptable for the residents and municipality. The challenges of physical renovation or refurbishment are complex due to poor condition of the buildings, municipal ownership and governance, mixed management with community and low rents, which are insufficient to cover the costs. The paper discusses the proposed solutions of living standards, supported by the research in two directions: (i) available resources and reuse of materials, (ii) developing a renovation guidance for inhabitants from the building physics perspective, including indoor environment quality. Challenges related to energy efficiency are addressed from the decision-making perspective to overcome the barrier of lack of motivation to invest in energy-efficient measures at the individual and community level. The interdisciplinary approach complements engineering-focused studies with a focus on the comfort conditions and the influence of occupant habits in sustainable buildings. The methods used were literature review, case studies with observations and survey, looking to cover all technical, social, and historical aspects of sustainable renovation of cultural heritage buildings with the same level of importance. Results show that to keep a sustainable, low-cost urban living model, instructions for self-renovation are a valuable guidance for non-professional actors to make more sustainable choices. In conclusion, we can emphasize that inhabitants are accustomed to lower living standards, so the project is aimed to present the proper solutions for improvement as a balance between new sustainable technical solutions, personal self-renovation skills, habits, and health.