Strategic city projects as a strategic planning tool: an overview of terms and models

Sa？etak New urban development processes generate a need for new forms of urban management. Traditional (sectoral) spatial planning, oriented toward location, intensity, form, and balanced development and lacking an aspect of active encouragement and synergy with other policies, is losing ground to strategic spatial planning. Strategic spatial planning is a process involving a large number of stakeholders which establishes a format and framework for transformation of strategically key areas, based on a long-term vision, activities, and means for implementation; and focuses on decisions, activities, monitoring, and evaluation of results. Strategic city projects are a logical tool to enable integration of economic, social, and environmental aspects of urban planning, programming and construction, which strive to leave their mark on the spatial, functional, social, morphological, physical, and organisational structure of the city via comprehensive targeted activities of renewal or new construction. This paper aims to highlight the lack of a single definition of strategic city projects and to pinpoint functional similarities and differences among the existing terms, referring to them most frequently as flagship projects, megaprojects, strategic city projects, and large-scale strategic city (development) projects and to point to different models of their implementation—e.g. urban renewal/regeneration model and new construction/regulation model