Cities In-Between

abstract from the Master Thesis: "Cities In-Between. The prospects for Knowledge-based Economy Region in Macedonia"

by Stefan Lazarevski

At the end of the XX century, the fragmented totality of Europe was exposed to the mighty forces of functional integration, competition, cooperation, dependency and interdependency of the different entities. The so-called globalization, derived on these principles, became the structural bond between the divided east and west, north and south. Freed from political and ideological chains the urban landscapes surfaced as the most important “playground” for these integrative processes. However, while the mega-cities thrived, the small and medium-sized cities were faced with fundamental challenge: how to become constructive part of the global arrangements? This question is even more liable in the European urban context, dominated by the lower-tier cities. As a result, many scholars proposed the idea of networks and knowledge, as the key aspect of any modern socio-economy milieu.

Flanked between several Balkan metropolitan regions, there is a group of so-called cities in-between that have experienced development in rather conflictive environment. These cities are neither large nor small; neither global, nor local; neither fully connected, nor marginal, which makes their status fairly ambiguous. Being such urban agglomeration, the metropolitan region of Skopje embodies the “fight” of the European medium-sized cities to get a fair place in the regional and global urban system. Many studies have shown that crucial prerogative in achieving this objective is maintaining strong bond between the economy and the urban planning. The relationship between these two aspects has always been a two-way, cause – consequence interplay, which depicts the ups and downs of any society. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is examining the prospects of Skopje to develop and maintain a stable and progressive knowledge-based economy that will immanently reflect on the quality of urban planning in the wider micro-region. In which way, this goal can be achieved is searched through several steps: evaluation of number of indicators that depict the score of the city within knowledge foundations; review over different actions and policies undertaken by variety of actors and constructing own coherent development strategy.


Additional texts to follow.