Nezavisen investigates: Skopje covered in concrete, everyone finds excuses in DUPs and GUPs


The urban madness, the chaotic arranged apartment buildings, the usurping and concreting of the greenery, along with the Baroque-Styrofoam facades in the center of the city – are the sad picture of Skopje in the last ten years. The people of Skopje do not recognize the neighborhoods they grew up in, especially the city center that suffered the greatest disfigurement with the Skopje 2014 project. The damage is great and the public’s impression is that the urban mafia does not stop, despite the promises of the new authorities to put an end to such a trend.

Twenty-story apartment buildings and hotels are already being built at the Old Railway Station, and the Skopje East Gate will be constructed on 152,000 square meters at the Skopje Fair. There won’t be any 100-story buildings at the Holliday Inn, but skyscrapers will still be built. In Aerodrom, many of the building markings are practically drawn over green areas, such as the one at Majcin Dom, while in Karpos there are plans for concreting the green belt alongside Ilinden Street. According to the analysis of the non-governmental organizations, in some parts of Skopje, the building was so megalomaniac that in in a year or two there will be no free space for building not only residential buildings, but also for public buildings in Debar Maalo. The question is – will there be an end to the urban madness in Skopje?

Where did Skopje go wrong?

The General Urban Plan of Skopje, adopted in 2012 and is valid until 2022, is bad and is one of the main culprits for the chaos in the urban planning of the capital, said Miroslav Grcev, Professor at the Faculty of Architecture. According to him, even if the detailed urban plans are ideally adjusted to the GUP, they will still cause damage in the spatial organization, since it is itself adopted on the basis of old and unreliable data and practically does not offer real projections, as well as in which direction Skopje is supposed to be developing.

“Since we did not have a population census, when the General Plan was prepared, there was no fresh data on which the projections would be based, so they used data from the 2001. This means that the document from the very start was made according to a decade-old data, a decade that was incredibly turbulent in terms of migration, evictions, immigrations, etc. So, for instance, in 2012 the GUP predicted Debar Maalo and Bunjakovec reaching up to 12,000 inhabitants by 2022, and even then this overcrowded settlement had 18,000 inhabitants,” says Grcev.

He points out that planning and building were much better four decades ago than now.

“When we say that all the parameters of the GUP, such as maximizing the built-up area and increasing the number of floors, were made in the preparation of the detailed plans, it should be known that the GUP itself goes beyond almost all of these parameters,” said Grcev, assessing it as the basis for the urban chaos in the country.

“One of the most important preconditions for the urban chaos and the megalomaniac building was the abolition of the local tax on the use of construction land or city rent, a significant revenue for municipalities, paid by all residents. Municipalities that were given competencies that were difficult to endure became financially dependent on the collection of utilities by future investors. Thus, if there’s no building, there are no means of survival for the municipalities. It is a devastating and unsustainable solution that must be changed,” Grcev said.

Uncoordinated plans

The City of Skopje started preparations for the preparation of the new General Urban Plan, which will be valid from 2022 to 2032. The responsibility of the local government is great, because it will depend on this document in which direction Skopje will continue to develop, that is, whether it will get a chance from turn into a decent place for living from a concrete jungle.

“The new GUP will collect data from a population census that will be implemented in 2020. At the moment, part of the preparations for this voluminous document, or more precisely the parts that can be projected through the statistics available to us, are underway,” said Skopje’s Mayor Petre Shilegov.

Although the new GUP is underway, in many municipalities there are detailed plans that are not at all aligned with the existing one that is out of date. In the municipality of Centar, for instance, as many as 31 Detailed urban plans are not in line with the General Plan of 2012, according to the finding of the new local government. The most urban municipality in the capital was disfigured with the Skopje 2014 project, which, aside from adding megalomaniac buildings, intended above all for state institutions, also built controversial monuments, changed the appearance of dozens of residential buildings in downtown Skopje and “dressed them up” in Baroque. Detailed plans had to keep up with the building appetites of the then government, so the public in many cases suspected irregularities in their adoption.

The moratorium still applies to 29 of them in Centar, which was introduced by the new Mayor Sasa Bogdanovic in December, 2017. These plans are still being audited and finalized. Only one has already been revised and adopted by the Council of the Municipality. It is DUP City Quarter J 07, localities Kapistec, Institute for Medical Rehabilitation, Staro Vodno, Dolno Vodno, Malo Kurilo and Cvekjara. The DUP I 03 site Mirce Macan went through all stages of the audit and will be revised by the advisors at some of the following sessions.

Mayor Bogdanovic says the moratorium will be valid until the end of April. The goal is for the plans to pass a process of completion, coordination with the GUP, public poll and public presentation, and then they will be sent to the Council. Bogdanovic says one of the goals is increasing the percentage of greenery, at the expense of the urbanized square.

“We want to correct the urban errors made by previous managements. Our tendency is the increase of greenery and green areas wherever this is feasible. In the preparation of the new Detailed Urban Plans, the tendency is also clear for enabling a more humane movement and living of the citizens. The residential facilities in the preparation of the new detailed urban plans do not get advantage over the greenery and public buildings. This is evident from the first revised and adopted plan, DUP City Quarter J 07, where the maximum free space for new green areas is used. At the same time, there are plans for reducing the errors envisaged by past DUPs, such as 100-story buildings, Spanish Steps, etc. While the moratorium is still valid, the municipality will not issue new construction permits and will not charge for utilities,” says Bogdanovic.

He explains that for the needs of the Skopje 2014 project, several plans in the past have been brought in a criminal and mysterious way, with various pressures and usually in the late evening hours. One of the efforts is the return of the public, both expert and general, especially the inhabitants of the sites that are the plan’s subject, in the urban planning procedure.

New parks instead of concrete buildings

With the completion of the audit and the adoption of the new detailed urban plans, Bogdanovic thinks that there will finally be order in the construction of new facilities on the territory of the municipality and at the same time, free space will be humanized and maximally used for the introduction of new green spaces. The mayors of Karposh and Aerodrom, Stefan Bogoev and Zlatko Marin, also wished for more greenery at the expense of concrete buildings for their inhabitants.

Karposh should be developed according to a plan and more equally, especially in the peripheral parts, said Mayor Stefan Bogoev. In the past few years, this municipality along with Aerodrom, Kisela Voda and Centar, has endured the greatest pressure on non-urban urbanization. The construction of new residential buildings did not bypass the urban core of the settlements in Karposh, and attacked the Vardar bay, especially the stretch from the Boris Trajkovski Sports Hall to Karposh 4.

Therefore, says Bogoev, one of the goals that the local government firmly persists and works is revival of parts of the municipality that, due to the overcrowding of the urban core, remained neglected and undeveloped. It is the stretch around Bardovci, Zlokukjani, Zdanec, Trnodol and the part around the Ilinden barracks.

“We have already brought a new Detailed Urban Plan, precisely for the part around the Ilinden barracks (DUP for SSI 03 Block 4). The peripheral development of Karposh will allow for the infrastructural connection and revival of a number of settlements in Karpos which in the past were completely forgotten and abandoned. In the past years, the main focus was placed on the urban core, whereby a number of objects were built without a plan. Now it is necessary to move the urbanization from the central parts of Karposh to the periphery,” says Bogoev.
He says that in the past years some of the detailed urban plans have been brought illegally, by breaking the rules of procedure and conduct.

“On several occasions, the Decision on failure to implement a strategic environmental impact assessment was not posted on bulletin boards on the website of the Municipality of Karposh. Also, the transparency of their adoption was threatened, with Council meetings being scheduled shortly before major holidays in order to reduce public interest.

In order to correct part of those illegal activities, we supported all civil initiatives in the Constitutional Court, where more detailed urban plans were challenged, with concrete evidence of the main shortcomings in the procedure for their adoption. As a result of these evidence, the Constitutional Court abolished part of the urban plans that had been filed for the stretch around Taftalidze 1, Vlae 2, Karposh 4 and Karposh 3,” explains Bogoev.

The Karposh Mayor emphasizes that all detailed urban plans of Karposh, adopted after 2012, after the adoption of the new GUP have been aligned with it. However, he points out there are DUPs dating from long ago and that they will also aligned with the latest GUP in the future amendments.

Usurpation of green areas at the expense of construction of new residential buildings is a practice that in the last decade was particularly present in the Municipality of Aerodrom. The new DUPs that are being prepared at the moment, says Mayor Zlatko Marin, will include more greenery. We are also working on the DUPs in the unurbanized parts of the municipality, in order to reduce the pressure in the urban core.

“Over the last eight years, more than 100 buildings in the municipality have been built thanks to the previous leadership. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to prevent the construction of the adopted detailed urban plans and those who have the right to build, such as the buildings in Star Aerodrom. What I promise, and I will realize, is that the new detailed urban plans will be primarily in the interest of the citizens and the environment. My commitment is that all future plans will be on many more green areas, even more than the predicted 30% in the Law on Spatial and Urban Planning,” says Marin.

Although he is aware that one of the main ways of financing local governments is through the collection of utilities, he considers that the quality of life must be taken into account. Therefore, the municipality will build three parks in Star Aerodrom, with a total area of ​​about 9,000 square meters. Construction of a new park with an area of ​​2,500 square meters is planned also between the buildings along the boulevard Treta Makedonska Brigada, and Michurin will also get a new park.

“For better regulation of urban planning and correction of mistakes from the past, I think that a law change is needed first, and the government is working in this direction. Ensuring a greater percentage of greenery in urban planning is already regulated by law. Additionally, all controversial regulations that are currently limiting the alteration of the detailed urban plans should be revised.

For instance, in accordance with the Rulebook on standards and norms in urban planning adopted in 2015, when one urban plan determines the dimensions of a building or construction mark they can not be reduced with future plans, just increased or they will stay the same. So, first of all the laws are a problem, and the Government is preparing solutions that will essentially solve this problem,” said Mayor Marin.

Profit before citizens

The Health before Profit platform recently reported the DUP’s analysis versus the GUP for the location at the Holiday Inn hotel, concluding that the density of housing at that location surpasses the most populated parts of Mumbai and Hong Kong.

There are many aspects that are problematic in relation to the Detailed Urban Plan for the city quarter opposite the Holiday Inn hotel, which is currently stopped by the Moratorium introduced by the Municipality of Centar. According to the GUP, 1.250 inhabitants should be accommodated in this area, on a total area of ​​40.625 m2 at all levels of housing and buildings to be built up to a maximum of seven floors. With the detailed plan, the platform claims, 8,8 times the parameters of the GUP in terms of the area of ​​housing and the number of inhabitants are exceeded. The permissible density of the GUP is itself very high – 805 inhabitants per hectare, but the DUP provides for 2,400 inhabitants per hectare (or 240,000 inhabitants per km2), a density that does not exist in even the most inhumane parts of Hong Kong and Mumbai.

In the analysis of the non-governmental Reactor for Bunjakovec and Debar Maalo, the possibilities for building in these two settlements are almost exhausted, and the damage is irreparable, which is most evident from the destroyed green areas. According to the analysis, currently in these two settlements there are 13.9% of the green areas, but when the current detailed urban plan is realized in 2020, it will have only 4.5%, compared to 21.60% in 1991!

Sanja Naumovska

Photo: Boris Grdanoski