Urban hierarchy in Serbia

Despite numerous urban studies that analyzed various aspects of Serbia's urban network, little attention was paid to examining the phenomenon of urban hierarchy and urban primacy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the nature, level and progression of the urban hierarchy in Serbia, as well as its causes and consequences. In achieving these goals, the paper begins with a review of urbanization in Serbia and the methods of its measurement, followed by a discussion of the results obtained. This paper uses data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia on the number of inhabitants and active population employed in the tertiary-quaternary sector in the period between 1971 and 2011. This paper tested the Rank-size rule, known also as Zipf's law, Urban Primacy Index, and Schmook and Rochefort methods to display the results. This paper concluded that urban primacy is an obvious phenomenon in Serbia. There is a clear distinction between the polycentric urbanized Vojvodina, a somewhat less urbanized central Serbia, and a large range in Belgrade's functional capacity.