Institutional and Planning Configurations Shaping Industrial Heritage Transformation Under Development Pressure: A Comparative Study of Belgrade, Serbia

Industrial heritage transformation increasingly occurs under sustained development pressure, requiring conservation objectives to be reconciled with competing planning, governance, and investment priorities. Although previous research has extensively examined heritage conservation, adaptive reuse, and urban regeneration, less attention has been devoted to explaining why comparable industrial heritage sites experience different transformation outcomes within the same institutional and legislative context. This study examines how institutional and planning configurations shape industrial heritage transformation under development pressure. An integrated analytical framework is developed and applied through a comparative multiple-case study of five industrial heritage sites in Belgrade, Serbia, representing different protection regimes, planning approaches, and redevelopment trajectories. The findings demonstrate that heritage protection provides the institutional foundation for conservation, but its effectiveness depends on the continuity with which conservation objectives are integrated into successive planning, governance, and implementation processes. The cross-case analysis identifies distinct case-derived institutional and planning configurations associated with alternative transformation pathways. Development pressure functions primarily as a contextual condition rather than an independent determinant of heritage loss, while planning emerges as the principal institutional mechanism translating conservation objectives into spatial transformation. The findings highlight the importance of tracing how conservation requirements are maintained, modified, or discontinued across successive stages of heritage protection, planning, governance, and implementation.