The Mayor of the Municipality of Center, Sasha Bogdanovik, at the #ActionIntegration conference spoke about the one-year work as head of the Municipality of Center, about the urban planning, green alternatives, and about the need for better cooperation between the local and central government…

“For the first time, we introduced a building moratorium, which means starting new procedures. Unfortunately, we already had procedures started from previously, which have already reached certain phases, and anything you do afterwards can cause legal consequences for the municipality. We already have such cases from previous mayors, and that cost the municipality, I am talking about the financial part. This leads to other things not being able to function properly”, adds Bogdanovik.

He outlined that detailed urban plans used to be changed overnight in the past, and green areas, which after that became buildings.

“While there was communism there was also urbanism. Let’s take for example the neighborhood ‘Prolet’, you can see that there are small buildings there, a school, a kindergarten, where there is also a park, trees and parking”, said Bogdanovik.

He is decisive that we have good laws when it comes to the local self-government, but that they need to be made more precise and start being applied in practice. However, all issues must also be solved systematically, from the local level, to their smallest cells – the local communities, up to the civil society associations and initiatives, but that it should also be practiced at a very higher level as well.

“It is very difficult when you are trying to introduce some values, which we are discussing now, but were destroyed previously”, highlighted Bogdanovik.

The #ActionIntegration conference on European values, green alternatives and antinationalism was organized by CIVIL – Center for Freedom in cooperation with the Heinrich Bὅll Foundation from Germany.

Dehran Muratov
Camera: Аtanas Petrovski
Editing: Аrian Mehmeti