Municipalities of Serbia - Cities and City Municipalities

Cities and City Municipalities

Cities are another type of local self-government. The territory with the city status usually has more than 100,000 inhabitants, but is otherwise very similar to municipality. There are 24 cities (gradovi), each having an assembly and budget of its own. Only the cities have mayors (gradonačelnik), although the presidents of the municipalities are often referred to as "mayors" in everyday usage.

As with a municipality, the territory of a city is composed of a city proper and surrounding villages (e.g. the territory of the City of Subotica is composed of the Subotica town and surrounding villages). Every city (and municipality) is part of a district. The only exception is the City of Belgrade, which is a district on its own.

The city may or may not be divided into city municipalities. Five cities: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Kragujevac and Požarevac comprise several city municipalities, divided into "urban" (in the city proper) and "other" (suburban). Of those, only Novi Sad did not undergo the full transformation, as the newly formed municipality of Petrovaradin exists pretty much only formally; thus, the Municipality of Novi Sad is largely equated to City of Novi Sad. Competences of cities and city municipalities are divided. The city municipalities of the five cities above mentioned also have their assemblies and other prerogatives.