Who misses and who hits in the Center

Is it and how it is possible that the elaborations of the Municipality of Centar for suspension of urban plans have so much "missed the topic"? The issue was opened after the expert commission at the Ministry of Transport and Communications assessed that with the elaborations for suspension of the disputed urban plans, the Municipality of Centar did not prove that their implementation would cause undoubted damage to the public interest. The public interest, among other things, was focused on the "fate" of the three towers of 16, 20 and 22 floors of the investor "MG Fashion" and MOC-OA, which now have the way open for construction.

Citizens of Skopje massively signed a petition against their construction, pointing out the inhumane aspects of housing and business construction, which can produce a concrete jungle in the last free space in the heart of the city, with numerous implications: traffic, spatial, environmental - all devastating for the quality of living in the metropolis.

Corrective tool

Sources close to the commission that prepared the reports claim that the topic has not been missed and that the damage to the public interest is clear. DW expects in the coming days to present their arguments, contained in extensive expert material.

They had at their disposal the possibility of suspension on an urban plan or part of it, if it turns out that it would cause harm to the public interest. This opportunity is offered by Article 23 of the Law on Urban Planning, adopted in February 2020. So far, that tool has not been implemented in any case. How it was used in this case - we asked for an explanation from Professor Miroslav Grcev, a member of the expert commission at the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

- The tool is strong and intervening, because it interrupts the implementation of the plan, which introduces a kind of discontinuity in the rule of law and - technically - introduces legal uncertainty in the governance and management of space. Therefore, this tool can be used only in exceptional situations in which the damage to the public interest that occurs or would occur with the implementation of the plan is obvious and significant, and can be proven and weighted in the expert suspension report. Due to the restrictive nature of the suspension, it must be selective and precisely focused only on that part of the plan - usually a building plot as a spatial unit - whose application does the damage, and must not be suspended due to a single spatial unit generating damage. planning scope. Thus this corrective tool will do more damage to the surrounding space, which for no reason will leave without a plan for development and use of space, explains Grchev.

Five reasons

If such a possibility is taken into account, then why did the elaborations not fulfill the goal, as assessed by the expert commission at the Ministry? Grchev points out five reasons.

- Unfortunately, the elaborates practically seemed to miss the whole topic and did not ensure the legality of the application of the suspension in accordance with Article 23 of the LGAP. There are several reasons for this, but the ones that are common to all reports are the following: First, suspension reports have a false legal basis, because they refer to Article 35 of the law, for a procedure regulated in Article 23. Second, in neither one report (out of 11 for which an opinion was requested) is not even a pointed problem in the plan that generates damage to the public interest, no data from the implementation of the plan are shown that indicate its harmfulness, and even less is proven 'undoubted damage to the public interest which is observed during the implementation of the plan, which would increase with its implementation, and arises from its opposition to the law and regulations adopted on its basis, due to its non-compliance with higher level plans or due to planning solutions whose harmful consequences for the public interest was not perceived in the procedure for its adoption ', as it is written in the law, explains Grchev.

Third, he says that the elaborations only point out the discrepancies between the detailed urban plans and the GUP. He points out that the non-compliance can be only one of the stated grounds from which the damage to the public interest can arise, which must be proven with the elaboration. According to our interlocutor, the discrepancy between the plans of higher and lower level of planning alone can not evoke the application of the suspension, it must do proven harm to the public interest, but in the elaborations no attempt has been made to prove it. .

- Fourth, the inconsistencies of the GUP and the detailed urban plans - especially in the case of the City of Skopje, where the detailed urban plan is in scale 1: 10000, and the detailed urban plans in 1: 1000 - is common and inevitable in the two-tier system planning, because the lines on a large scale are framed and oriented, to be specified in the detailed plans. In the elaborations, almost without exception, the discrepancy of the boundary of the planning scope in the DUP with the one drawn in the GUP is taken as a basis for suspension of the whole plan, but this discrepancy is conditio sine qua non of the two-stage planning and in neither one of the above examples does not cause any harm in the implementation of the plans, explains Grchev.

As a fifth reason, he states that all reports require the suspension of entire planning coverage of detailed urban plans due to disagreements with the GUP that are irrelevant in nature, do not cause harm to the public interest and are exceptionally located either within the scope or at some point of disagreement.

- This violates the very legal and moral expediency of the suspension, which must target only the specific cause of the damage, and in no case must take a whole fourth 'hostage' and introduce a general blockade of the urban legal order on the territory of the whole municipality, and only because of some individual locations, explains the member of the expert commission at the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

And Vodno?

Despite the remarks about the 11 elaborations, he expresses great surprise that there is no elaboration for suspension of the detailed urban plan with which the park-forest Vodno is destroyed.

- An unpleasant surprise was the fact that the ministry did not receive a report for suspension of one of the most glaringly harmful detailed urban plans - which, by the way, is in smooth implementation in the municipality - and that is the detailed urban plan for the settlement Dolno Vodno. Construction plots were formed in it at the expense of a whole hill (Malo Kurilo) which is an integral part of the park-forest Vodno, densely forested and formed as a real green paradise. The DUP envisages cutting of all trees and leveling of the hill with the formation of dangerous vertical excavations of several tens of meters. And, there are located the most criminal plots intended - and alienated - for the VMRO elite during their rule of the 'captured state'. For that plan, it is not even necessary to prove the damage to the public interest: it is so obvious, that it is enough just to state what the plan envisages in place of the city's lungs! Grchev reacts.

Taken from Deutsche Welle.

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