Report: The intercultural legacy of privatisation and decentralisation in post-socialistcommunitybuildings and civil society buildings and civil society institutions in Struga and southwest Macedonia

Report: The intercultural legacy of privatisation and decentralisation in post-socialist community buildings and civil society institutions in Struga and southwest MacedoniaStructure of the report:

Research questions:

Introduction

ThisThis report has been produced out of research conducted over the course of a 15-day residency in September 2016, based in Struga and organised by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Creative & Active. The purpose of the programme is to support neutral, foreign experts to gather an understanding of some of the intricacies regarding issues, internal to southwest Macedonia encompassing Struga, Ohrid, Kicevo and Debar, which are inhibiting its ability to fully realise potential growth in the region.

Research questions – overview of 3 fundamental topics of investigation forming the study.

Introduction – including specification and explanation of the remit of the study, and explanation of the questions listed below.

Methodology – explanation of: semi-structured interviews, qualitative social research, participant observation.

Findings relating to –

the recent history of the target institutions

the funding, current activities and political positions of the target institutions

the target institutions’ activities in relation to interethnic cohesion

Recommendations

Bibliography

1)1) How have different non-essential civil society institutions changed and responded to transformations in the economy of Macedonia since independence in 1991 in ways which have contributed or mitigated changes in ethnic and national cohesion?

2) In what ways do different institutions perceive a correlation between privatisation, decentralisation and interethnic cohesion or tension since independence?

3)3) What can the perspective of urbanism bring to dealing with problems of inter-ethnic tension in Macedonia? In this context, does the main potential of urbanism involve tourism, or can it help in other ways?

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Of particular importance to the remit of the project is the cultural and political impasse regarding ethnic tensions in the region, which constitutes a significant barrier to economic, cultural and social development.

WWithin this problematic, the expert-in-residence (referred to from this point on as the resident) utilised a multi-disciplinary perspective—incorporating urban sociology, historical geography and post-socialist studies—in order to investigate how the dramatic economic changes of the past 25 years have affected inter-community and interethnic cohesion in a way that was open-ended. This means that the study’s outcomes were not entirely pre-given in the remit, but were flexible and adaptable to knowledge gained on site – a mode of investigation considered favourable given the purpose of sensitively gathering relevant information in a neutral manneneutral manner.

Figure 1 A socialist-era roadside monument on the northern entrance to Struga

Some of the terms commonly used in the region to refer to the dramatic political-economic transformations of the last 25 years are independence and democratisation. Most favoured, however, appears to be transition – a term which makes clear the unfinished nature of the process, implying that it is not so much a transition from state socialism (hereby referred to as socialism), but rather-more to a poorly specified if not arguably utopian idea of Western democratic progression. The most notable date within the history of post-independence Macedonia is 2001, when the National Liberation Army (UÇK)—a militant group of ethnic AlbaniansAlbanians with close affiliation with actors in the simultaneous conflict in nearby Kosovo—responded violently to the degradation of rights associated with Albanian culture and politics in Macedonia, in particular regarding the use of the Albanian language in public office, and flag. This led to armed intervention from state forces which only ceased in response to a US-brokered agreement—the Ohrid Framework Agreement—to grant greater rights for the ethnic Albanian minority in Macedonia (from here on referred to as ‘Albanians’.) This, however, led to resentment and anger from the ethnic Macedonian population (from here on referredreferred to as ‘Macedonians’), leading to a situation of widespread mutual-distrust. It is stated my most historians that the contemporary state of nationalism was created by the dramatic resurgence in nationalist politics which began in the 1980s.

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1) Albania itself was never a part of Yugoslavia; the vastly different historical experiences of the 20th century between the culturally isolated and politically Stalinist Albania (as the centre and cultural source of Albanian nationalism), and Yugoslavia, a member of the non-aligned movement and non-member of the Warsaw Pact for the vast majority of its existence, constitute a significant complicating factor in understanding the historical genesis of present-day tension in Macedonia.

2) Balkaninsight.com.(2016). True Cost of ‘Skopje 2014’ Revealed :: Balkan Insight. [online] Available at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/true-cost-of-skopje-2014-revealed [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016].

3)3) Nixon, N., Always already European: The figure of Skënderbeg in contemporary Albanian nationalism, National Identities, 12, March 2010, Routledge, doi:10.1080/14608940903542540

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of the study that more technical representatives of civil society organisation, both historic and contemporary, were not included in the research – in particular the historic urban planners of socialist architecture, some of which still exists for the most part unchanged (see for example Figure 2, below.)

Figure 2 A view of construction underway from the upper floor of the Struga Bazaar - a socialist-era shopping complex

TheThe research question development articulated thus far is only one of two directions through which the study was formulated. The specific parameters of research question were also arrived at through a more abstract questioning of the meaning of ‘the urban’ in southwest Macedonia. In that under state socialism, the social totality of work/employment, education and leisure was intended to be integrated—and the modern discipline and practice of urban planning itself emerged in many ways from these social and political conditions⁴ - the perspective of the city, an in particular the neighbourhood unit, had a well-defined logic as the materialmaterial basis of the socialist social totality. Regarding the open question of society and urbanism after socialism, however, an entire field of post-socialist urbanism is devoted. The resident is of the opinion that the urbanism of the so-called neoliberal city is unlikely to be a particularly meaningful category, but considers one of the likely indicators of ‘neoliberalisation’ to be to do with the privatisation and striation of urban space. As such, the civic quality of civil society organisations is likely to constitute a spatial crux or indicator of this process. In response to these academic questions, the sometimes confusing question of the “town as a whole” was often raised in interviews by the resident in order to encourage interviewees to reflect on the totality of relations collected around the urban unit. In many cases, this question led straight into a discussion of tourism, as the main impetus for much contemporary ‘city-branding’, especially in the Balkans. This topic could have been the basis of an entirely different way of framing the study; as such, the final research question relates to the social value of such a perspective on society.

4) Specifically, the experiments in modern living structures of Moisei Ginzburg in the early Soviet Union were of great influence in the architecture of the Congress Internationale d’Architecture Moderne. See Eric Mumford (2009) CIAM and the Communist Bloc, 1928–59, The Journal of Architecture, 14:2, 237-254

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The research interests of the resident correlates significantly with questioning whether and how the emergent discipline of ‘urban studies’ (within which ‘post-socialist urbanism’ is a part) constitutes a lens through which to understand society that is meaningful and useful today. As such, another aim of the report is to contribute to this field of literature – to better understand how the concept of the city and the urban has developed in light of changed historical patterns of social organisation.

OneOne final way of conceiving the focus of the research, which was not pursued, was as a comparative study—between Macedonia and the United Kingdom—of civil society institutions and their interfacing with issues of local community development and interethnic cohesion. This is, in a sense, the taken-for-granted role of the expert-in-residence, and is an approach most relevant to the recommendations section which concludes this report. The next section of this report outlines the methodology used to move from these parameters towards locating findings of use to making recommendations. Proceeding from this is the findings section,section, which is structured around three broad content categories: history, funding/activities/politics and interethnic cohesion, and within these, categorises institutions in relation to (de)centralisation. The report concludes with the recommendations section.

Methodology

The first decision following the devising of a research topic was to compile a series of categories through which to structure to research. These were carefully selected after thinking through the introductory parameters of the residency; over the first few days, giving time to consider some of the matters at stake in the research. The approach used in deciding these categories was not entirely fixed, but was open to flexibility as findings developed. Also considered was the way that the categories would work together when structuring the findings of the report. Once these categories were decided, the next step waswas to devise questions related to each topic, which were used to guide semi-structured interviews.

So as to do justice to the multifarious research questions, the resident decided that it was appropriate to utilise a variety of research methods. The primary method, already mentioned, was semi-structured interviews, which involved bringing questions to the directors of institutions that had been preselected, while also encouraging a certain amount of conversation away from the main topics. The decision to make the interviews semi-structured was appropriate given the research question, as a fully structured interview method would risk failing to gain information that didn’t fit into the predetermined categories,categories, which may not have been the ideal division of data. The process of deciding on who to interview was guided by two principles: firstly, the aim to make the data representative in multiple ways – by different sectors (governmental, NGO, voluntary/charitable), activities (culture, amenity, arts, leisure), ethnicities (Macedonian, Albanian, other) and locations (Struga, Ohrid and Kicevo). The second principle was more content-oriented, and regarded different levels of power: although not strictly necessary if the research remit was interpreted narrowly, the resident thought it important to understandunderstand and represent the perspective of different municipalities and authorities in the area, particularly regarding political tensions and the ‘overall’ perspective of urban strategy. As such an interview was conducted with the secretary of the Ministry of Culture in Skopje, and with two municipal representatives of culture, in Kicevo and Struga.⁵

5) Here, these governmental institutions are being taken for granted as separate from civil society – as closed and without content from the perspective or urbanism. The three such interviews were not interested in the geographical or urban space of the institutions themselves, but rather with the subject perspectives of the representatives, and with their views in response to the questions posed. Whether this was an appropriate assessment of these institutions under socialism is a separate and interesting question, but was not considered directly as a part of the research.

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In addition to the interview research method, a more open ended approach known as participant observation was utilised. This technique, taken from anthropology, involves the researcher integrating himself into the society under question, and noting down, in detail, observations and impressions made throughout the study duration. As part of this approach, the resident attempted to speak seriously but personably, outside of the interview context, with a variety of individuals within the geographical area – particularly across ethnicities, but also across political divisions, genders and ages. Additionally, the resident made attempts to visitvisit different areas of the region, particularly rural and suburban, as these were unlikely to be taken full notes of otherwise, given the urban scope of the residency.

In addition to conducting interviews and acquiring a more general feel for the area, it was also necessary to take detailed notes and reflections in order to later compile data across interviews, as well as to later collate information relating to the previously determined topics. These were subsequently analysed alongside the participant observational research in order to structure findings along the lines of the five aforementioned categories. The final part of the process involved writing up the report to include a reflective introduction on the purpose of the residency, and a recommendations section which concludes the report. This section was writtenwritten in response to the findings and to wider research into existing academic literature, and is the most reflective regarding the resident’s perspective, involvement and positionality, coming from the United Kingdom.

Findings - regarding the recent history of target institutions

This category was used to collate information relating to the recent history of both the different institutions interviewed themselves, and of the wider society under question; in most cases, content related to the institution itself, but in some interviews, interviewees were happy to talk about wider civic transformations of the last 20 to 30 years. The clearest division between institutions interviewed involved their relationship to central government – while institutions which remain under the authority of the Macedonian state had undergone the fewest changes, institutions which are now run voluntarily had changed the most and were the mostmost poorly funded. Other contemporary institutions which came up during interviews all related to the NGO sector; the only exception to this was regarding former institutions referenced by others, no longer active, which had previously been run as workers’ cooperatives.

The centralised institutions interviewed comprised two cultural centres, in Struga and Kicevo and the museum in Struga. These institutions’ physical assets have changed remarkably little – in the case of the Struga cultural centre in particular (figures 3 & 4), this made itself apparent as a problem rather than as a strength. Investment into renewing the architecture of the centre had been severely underfunded; the heating system no longer works, and the building’s physical environment is in obvious disrepair. However, the director was keen to emphasise that it is not in the state of some other cultural centres in the country, referred to asas having leaking ceilings and other problems which seriously compromise their ability to function on a day-to-day basis.

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Figure 3 Struga Cultural Centre

RRegarding changes to the functioning of these centralised institutions, there is a similar pattern of continuity rather than change. A representative from the Kicevo cultural centre (figure 8) enthusiastically described how their activities are for the most part unchanged from its opening in 1980 (“98% the purpose of the institution hasn’t changed since opening”). The opposite opinion was given in response to a similar assessment made by the Struga museum; the director of this institution was unhappy with its stagnant and apparent fading from public life, and described their current project to be to “re-open the museum to the public.” (“The museummuseum was a closed institution in the past; we’re starting to reopen, literally! – there’s a whole generation which has never set foot in here.”)

Figure 4 Struga Cultural Centre

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Decentralised civil society institutions interviewed in the region including the rowing club in Struga and the Drimon arts festival in Ohrid. These institutions were chosen to be intentionally representative of two important aspects of non-essential civil welfare which continues 25 years after independence – organised sports and the arts. The rowing club (figure 5) was perhaps the institution interviewed with the most tenuous ongoing existence. Under socialism it had been well financed through a state-sponsored system of coupons for tax exemption; the institution’s existence in the present is dependent on the goodwill of a number of volunteers andand supporting organisations. The Drimon arts festival is a relatively new institution, but its director was willing to speak at length about changes external to the organisation which has occurred in the last 25 years. A sentiment expressed not only by this director, but also by all the cultural institutions except for the Kicevo cultural centre was a kind of exasperation with diminishing attendance – a generalised sense of lack of interest in cultural activities in society. The most thoughtful explanation for this change was given by the director of the Drimon arts festival, who described how the ‘ownership’ of culture had changed – having previously been withwith the workers as a whole, there is now a sense that it rests in a certain select group of people. Following this, the director brought up the apparently disparate shrinking of school curricula and extra-curricular activities, a question connected by a sense of widespread change in the extent to which ‘culture’ belongs to society as a whole. The final comment of interest here made by this director has to do with how under socialism, every factory had some kind of section of culture, and that this was not only for the utilitarian purpose of socialising, but was also for a much more holistic form of education and civil reproduction – a conception of culture which begins with everyday politeness.of culture which begins with everyday politeness.

Figure 5 Struga Rowing Club

The final category of civil society institution only appeared to the resident through discussion and interviews over the course of the research. Important under socialism, the model of co-operative ownership was dominant within society in the whole of Yugoslavia. However, it appears to have not, on the whole, survived into the present day. Indicative institutions included workers’ campsites, houses of pioneers—institutions where young people participated in a variety of collective activities related to state ideology—and ‘community neighbourhood units’, spaces which functioned as an essential interface between municipalities and local community units.community units.

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One of the qualities embedded in all these institutions—many of them formerly categorised as ‘enterprises of social capital’—is the bridging of the gap between spheres of civil society and governance under a form of direct but hierarchical social organisation, a form is alluded to in footnote 5, above. These ownership structures produced an extreme form of civic social space, the typology of which is today most forgotten, perhaps found occasionally in outdated shopping complexes. Given the presence of widespread corruption in the country, the organisations which regrettably continue this ambiguous legacy today are political parties; involvementinvolvement in political parties is seen as a steadfast route to secure jobs in the public sector, and as such, membership and involvement levels are very high.

- regarding the funding, current activities and political positions of target institutions

All the institutions interviewed had different funding mechanisms in place. Most successful appeared to be Hotel Solferino, which has managed to combine political backing from the Red Cross with very effective leadership and an embedded culture of volunteering – a collective, ideological force of labour and morale, to motivate its employees and users to work efficiently. Many interviewees spoke about building bridges between institutions in society or about attempting to build collaborative programmes with other institutions for mutual benefit. However, the successfulness of these exercises seems limited, on the whole by the dual issues of access to funds and lack of interest in participation.by the dual issues of access to funds and lack of interest in participation.

Figure 6 Hotel Solferino, Struga

PPolitical differences expressed in interviews tended to map on to ethnic divisions. The interviews which yielded more abstract information tended to produce much data regarding the political context of the region. In particular, the two interviews with municipality representatives were most useful in relation to these questions. The most common response to the question of ‘politics’ from those interviewed, as well as in many conversations outside of interview based research, was dismissal, considering corruption a problem of such magnitude that it will require enormous change to begin to rectify. A variant of this view was voicedvoiced by the director of the Struga Museum, who claimed that political division is the biggest barrier to the growth of the town as a whole.

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Specifying further, the director of the rowing club located the point of tension and conflict in the town as being between the central government and its relationship to the municipality of Struga – a political body whose charismatic elected mayor, Ziadin Sela, holds a position of national influence as the leader of an influential and fast-growing party, LR-PDSH, which split from the main opposition Albanian party, DPA, in late 2014.⁶ In interview, the representative of the department for culture and education of the Struga municipality voiced criticism of the central government for not adequately funding the decentralisation which they make political appealsappeals to. He was particularly critical of the Macedonian authority over the cultural centre and the Struga Poetry Evenings – an annual festival of Macedonian poetry long hosted in the town and formerly of significance to the whole of Yugoslavia (the cultural centre was designed specifically to host this festival). This, notably, remains organised centrally by the Ministry of Culture and, to the anger of the municipality, is only held in Macedonian and English – a situation which has led to the mayor and municipality boycotting the iconic cultural event since 2013.⁷

Figure 7 Town Square adjacent to Struga Municipality

Decentralisation was a controversial topic which arose across very different interviews. As a political process, it is very much favoured by the EU and by Albanian parties. While the Macedonian state makes appeals to decentralisation, political will amongst Macedonian parties is lacking due on the whole to the fear of ceding authority to the authority of Albanian parties and municipal organisations.

albanians-in-macedonia-05-09-2016 [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016].

6) Balkaninsight.com. (2016). Ziadin Sela, Mayor Aiming to Unite Macedonia's Albanians :: Balkan Insight. [online] Available at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/ziadin-sela-the-mayor-aiming-to-unify

7) Telegrati, LR-PDSh: Behixhudin Shehabi gënjen, përfaqësimi nuk është 32%, por 13% - Telegrafi. [online] Available at: http://www.telegrafi.com/lr-pdsh-behixhudin-shehabi-genjen-perfaqesimi-nuk-eshte-32-por-13/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016]. [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016].

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However, more balanced explanations of anti-decentralisation views were given by some interviewees, who argued that the necessary support structures and economic conditions were not present to make decentralisation a feasible improvement.

—regarding target institutions’ activities and positions in relation to interethnic cohesion

AA huge variety in views were expressed regarding interethnic cohesion; in order to consolidate these different opinions, two anecdotal sentiments are presented below, indicative of patterns of wider attitudes. The first of these comes from the secretary of the Ministry of Culture, who authoritatively spoke at length giving his support to the study and its geographical remit, regarding the geographical area as unique and full of cultural richness in its multiculturalism. However, in a statement that many would see as contradictory, he argued that “culture very important to affirming the country.” These mixedmixed messages – between a tolerant, localist, multicultural citizenship, financed by the EU and USA amongst other external authorities, is in tension with a self-contradictory post-socialist nationalism. The criticism of ‘decentralisation and multiculturalism in words but not in actions’ is one widely perceived from Albanians and their political representatives, and has been voiced by the Struga municipality regarding the very individual interviewed in Skopje.⁸

Figure 8 Kicevo Cultural Centre

The second anecdote comes from the director of the Struga museum, and is expressive of some of the types of frustration felt by Macedonians in the face of the politicisation of ethnicity: the director described how a local Albanian-language newspaper had complained that there are only Macedonian managers based at the museum. However, he claimed that no Albanians even applied for the roles. Furthermore, he claimed that, of the last three directors, two of them

8) Telegrafi. (2015). LR-PDSh: Behixhudin Shehabi gënjen, përfaqësimi nuk është 32%, por 13% - Telegrafi. [online] Available at: http://www.telegrafi.com/lr-pdsh-behixhudin-shehabi-genjen-perfaqesimi-nuk-eshte-32-por-13/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016].

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had been Albanian. Implied was a criticism of the Albanian media and parties for looking for Macedonians to victimise when no such injustice has been directly committed. Such resentment at interethnic policies from Macedonians is most concentrated around the question of affirmative action policies which, in aiming to address ethnic balance in institutions, can lend Albanians status within job application procedures by virtue of their ethnicity. However, it is inevitable that such suspicious behaviour takes on a much larger psychological role in the wider political context than in examples of other affirmative action policies.policies. It is inevitable that, in the absence of any non- or super- national, progressive alternative to the awkward sovereignty imposed by the Ohrid Framework Agreement, that these issues are used by Macedonians to justify undue prejudice; this is itself of course responded to, like-for-like, with prejudice.

Recommendations

The purpose of the recommendations section is not so much to produce or compile novel approaches to approaching the problematics with which the residency was concerned. Rather, it seeks to combine the findings from the residency with consistent conclusions made within existing academic literature in order to make a thoughtful, balanced and transparent assessment of the present situation of southwest Macedonia.

TTo recapitulate one of the opening theses of the study – privatisation and decentralisation constitute the dual process of transition in contemporary Macedonia. The former was the central implementation of an economic transformation from socialism, and began in 1993 with the introduction of the Law on the Transformation of Enterprises with Social Capital. This was followed in 1996 by laws regulating the privatisation of state capital in companies and privatisation of the agricultural sector. Decentralisation was initiated originally in 1995 under the Law on Local Self-Government, which was introduced in order to transfer power to municipalities,municipalities, increasing the responsibilities of local government.⁹ However, it was not until the Ohrid Framework Agreement that decentralisation took centre stage as the principle of 21st century civic reform.

In his article on the Ohrid Framework Agreement, historian Ulf Brunnbauer argues that the case of Macedonia “proves the claim … that nations are not so much the causes but rather the consequences of the creation of modern national states and their specific policies aiming at national integration and cultural homogenization.” The key period of Macedonian state formation was therefore in fact within Yugoslavia, when Macedonians received “all the attributes of a self-confident nation (language, history, religion, ancestry.)”⁰ This can help to begin to explain the contradictorily post-socialist character of Macedonian national identity. Likewise,Likewise, the focal point of the research of Ljubica Spaskovska is on what she calls the “new and still not stabilised Macedonian citizenship framework.” After two weeks of being unusually engrossed in both sides of a debate of nationalisms, the resident came to agree with the orientation advocated by Spaskovska – that “citizenship in the former Yugoslav and the Macedonian context is yet to have its dimensions of status, rights and equality strengthened and its dimension of membership/belonging weakened in importance.”

9) Stefanovska, J. and Koželj, J. (2012). Urban planning and transitional development issues: The case of Skopje, Macedonia. Urbani Izziv, 23(1), pp.91-100. (95)

10) Ulf Brunnbauer, “The Implementation of the Ohrid Agreement: Ethnic Macedonian Resentments” in Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe Issue 1/2002 p.10 accessed 28/09/2016 at http://www.ecmi.de/fileadmin/downloads/publications/JEMIE/2002/nr1/Focus1-2002Brunnbauer.pdf

11) Ljubica Spaskovska (2012) The fractured ‘we’ and the ethno-national ‘I’: the Macedonian citizenship framework, Citizenship Studies, 16:3-4, 383-396, p. 384

12) Op. cit. p. 39212) Op. cit. p. 392

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Furthermore, “enhancing the role of the civic and diminishing the political significance of ethnicity - thus shifting the perception of the ethnizen towards that of a citizen - would be a commendable overture to a new era.” Resolution to the problem of interethnic conflict can only come about through a bipartisan agreement to rapidly reduce the extent to which citizenship is based around nationalistic ideas and tropes. This is a difficult prospect, most likely requiring an external agent, perhaps an expansionist European Union with strengthened ideas of European citizenship. However, in light of the failure of neoliberalism as witnessed in thethe fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, renewed calls to return to an economic and social system more akin to the socialism of the 20th century, and a reassessment of the culture of socialism after the hysteria of the 1990s, also offers an opportunity, if only very distant, to overcome national divisions for a second time.

What can the practice of viewing society through an urban-centric lens offer? Sasha Tsenkova makes the case for an urban studies perspective in understanding recent urban change in Skopje, arguing that the approach “explicitly links the changes in the external environment (national and global), which are much more dramatic and revolutionary, to changes in the internal environment (the urban system and the city itself), by emphasizing the nature of the ongoing transformation and diversity.”⁴ The transformation from a form of socialism in which civic society was not static but was unfolding and developing, to capitalism as fundamentallyfundamentally based around the commodity form, is intelligently put forward by Mariotti & Pencnic in their comparison of housing in two contrasting neighbourhoods in Skopje, which “illustrate the changing relationship between politics and urban environment through which housing, in the first period, was contributing to the social changes, while after socialism and since the 1990s it became merely a commodity. The different values attributed to housing contributed to the changing perception towards the neighbourhoods, generating a different understanding of urbanity within the city boundary.”⁵ Like this transformation of housing in Skopje,Skopje, what became apparent during the residency was that the transition away from socialism, through privatisation, is still very much an on-going project. The widespread but somewhat illiberal-sounding opinion of interviewees that citizens are uninterested in culture and lack responsibility, can be understood more generously as less a cause of a shrinking of civil society in itself, but rather as a byproduct of a changing society, moving to one whose focal point is found less on the social collective, but rather around individual identification.

It is perhaps no accident that the urban perspective of post-socialist urbanism lends itself uncannily to making recommendations about the effective promotion of urban tourism – under socialism the society of the region surrounding Lake Ohrid was mediated significantly by this geographical feature, in ways unimaginable in the United Kingdom: specialist hotels still exist in some form, built next to the lake, to serve the entire nation, with specialist facilities located in this most pleasant area in order to facilitate rehabilitation. Similarly, youth camps and centres for people with physical disabilities were also constructed but for thethe most part no longer survive. If the region, particularly the town of Struga, decides to seriously focus energy on reconstructing tourism, then joined-up, urban-centric thinking will be important to ensuring the success of such a project. Not a view which was stated explicitly during the research, the resident is at odds with many, including most extremely

13) Spaskovska, L. (2016). Macedonian citizen: ‘former Yugoslav’, future European? CITSEE.eu. [online] Available at: http://www.citsee.eu/citsee-study/macedonian-citizen-%E2%80%98former-yugoslav%E2%80%99-future-european [Accessed 10 Oct. 2016].

14) Sasha Tsenkova (2014) Planning trajectories in post-socialist cities: patterns of divergence and change, Urban Research & Practice, 7:3, 278-301,

15) Mariotti, J. & Pencnic, D. Changing Perspectives of Urbanity during Socialism and after: the Case of Two Neighborhoods in Skopje. studies in History & Theory of Architecture Vol. 3 / 2015 p.175

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in holding the opinion that relying on tourism as the central development principle is in fact unwise, and risks further social striation. Instead, political will needs to be for a balanced, careful but also pragmatic strategy for economic and social development to be put in place in order lead the region forward in a non-sectarian direction towards growth.

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