ABSTRACT
There is no denying that Skopje (Macedonia’s capital) has construction fever. New statues and monuments have sprouted like weeds in the city’s plazas and parks. The Vardar River is lined by recently-constructed, neoclassical buildings, and spanned by recently-unveiled pedestrian bridges. It’s all part of Skopje 2014, an urban revival project that has proven as controversial as it is ambitious.1 In recent years, Skopje has undergone a process of civic re-branding, reinventing itself in a dubious past. The project presented itself as a way of ‘dignifying’ the city’s landscape and attracting tourists, but it mostly attracted international media’s scepticism and ridicule, and exacerbated the long-running
Figure 11.1 The new government buildings along the river Vardar (source: Jane Stojanoski).
