How could the Best Cities to Live, Work and Visit in South-Eastern Europe Look Like?
A while ago, my colleague Tim Taylor opened a chapter of “five cities of south-eastern Europe” with his intro-story about the journey these five city communities are going through - with a shared vision to became some of the best possible places in Europe to live, work and visit by 2025.
Here, I would like to bring you closer to Sarajevo, Maribor, Križevci, Skopje and Niš, so you can build a better picture and hop-on this journey with us. We need many collaborators to help us drive the wheel of enabling transformational change, maybe it’s you?
Besides the vision that connects the five cities, there is a lot of vibrancy, diversity, warmth and a rich inter-connected history. There are divine tastes, warm colours, sounds that are happy and melancholic at the same time. Lush green valleys and hills or sharp white mountains, blueish-coloured rivers that go grey sometimes. There is also a common language with a bit of variety between Sarajevo, Križevci and Niš, and a bit more of variety between Maribor and Skopje. Still, we can understand each other quite well.
And there are scars of the war in the nineties still visible in some places. Where there are no war-scars, there are tiny bleeding wounds of the economic transition and all the nonsenses or “childhood struggles” of political systems that are typical for young democracies — corruption, broken institutions, processes and trust.
Let’s dive a bit deeper together.
The downsides
In some places more, in some less, what is discouraging is to see how politics and bad governance drain the good energy from people and force their inhabitants to leave and look for their fulfillment somewhere else, in some other country, where they are appreciated with all the qualities they bring with them. Even in Slovenia, with the longest EU-membership history, Maribor is still facing an insufficient long-term development orientation of the city. The lack of vision, strategy and partial nature of development approaches has resulted in not enough job opportunities and affordable housing for young people.
For Skopje, but Sarajevo and Niš as well I’d say, what makes one sad is the underappreciation of its potential. A big part of this comes from the institutions and it hugely affects the people living there. People are leaving their home to find better opportunities. People shouldn’t feel that they are being “pushed out” of their “home” in order to provide a bright future. The bright future is here, we just need to be an active part of the change. Exactly!
The upsides
Enough about downsides. What never broke, nor will it, is people and their dreams of prosperity, ideas of progress, the will to do something big. That is the upside and the basis this journey is built upon. This is the purpose why we do it — we want our people to live in some of the best possible places in Europe, and it will be Sarajevo, Maribor, Križevci, Skopje and Niš.
Sarajevo is a city with unbreakable spirit, energy and humour of citizens. About 275.000 people live in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that stretches along river Miljacka valley and is surrounded by mountains Bjelašnica, Jahorina, Trebević, Treskavica and Igman. Have you heard of (have you been at?) the Winter Olympic Games in 1984?
Skopje is a city with the sweetest of all the sweet watermelons and the hottest summers I remember from my childhood. Skopje lays on Vardar river valley and at the foot of Vodno mountain. With a population of 630.000 Skopje is the largest amongst these five cities and it is the capital of North Macedonia. Have you tried to follow the irregular rhythm of seven-eights, typical for Macedonian music? You should try…
For the City of Niš, the first reason for loving it is its size — “it is an optimal city for living, without crowd and noise”, says Stela. If all traffic stops, one can come to any destination on foot. Niš lays on river Nišava in South Serbia with population of about 260.000. The best source of stories from the old times is a big Turkish fortress that is the symbol of the City. You have just one chance to guess where, 1300 years ago, one of the greatest ancient emperors Constantin the great, was born.
Maribor is neither too big nor too small, the second largest in Slovenia with the population of about 100.000 that makes it a very convenient place to live. According to urbanists, cities that are so large are the most suitable for living. Maribor also has good contact with the surrounding mountainous and it lies at the junction of the pre-Alpine and Pannonian worlds. The Drava River and proximity of Austria and Croatia, contribute to the regional, natural, cultural, ethnological, historical diversity and Maribor’s geographic advantages.
Križevci is like a cherry on top, a tiny and cute city with population of 21.000, no river but a landmark mountain Kalnik behind. With the ruins of old town Kalnik now crowded by free-climbers, a right mix of agriculture, some industry, culture and history, and a Mayoral vision to become energy-independent by 2030.
All of the five cities are bursting with vibrancy, diversity, liveliness and warmth. These are perfect places to get inspired just by strolling around, by architecture, people, food and culture. Their hospitality and friendliness are well known, one will always offer to a stranger some drink, food or help. “Once we were describing the people of Sarajevo as part of this work, and we invented a word for it ‘ćejfative’ ” says Nermina. It is all about ćejf, a specific type of pleasure and enjoyment that stands equally for Niš and Skopje. In Maribor and Križevci it’s called gušt.
To sum-up, these five cities are full of history, stories, but also ideas. There is still a lot of positive energy, strength, innovation, creativity and good spirit. It is an encouraging environment full of opportunities. What we wish for, is that these cities reach their full potential. Jože from Maribor summarises this as including:
- Higher level of well-being of the city’s inhabitants. Many of them live financially and economically in bad conditions; there is the problem of unemployment and the problem of an aging population;
- Higher level of education, information and social and community engagement of people;
- Higher level of connection, integration and solidarity of the city’s inhabitants;
- Lower level of car use and higher level of use of collective means of transport, walking and cycling;
- Better connection between the city and its surroundings;
- Becoming economically more resilient, more important and more influential and to have connecting regional roles.
We all wish for an inclusive and supportive society, a prosperous economic environment and an overall better way of life. Or in simpler terms, when Sofija asked young people from old Skopje what they wish for their city — it is a proper waste management system, no dumps on city roads and jobs for all! Is that a radical vision for the city? Jobs for all, sure it is!
What comes next?
- Finalising the formation of a well-coordinated and ambitious project-core YES team in each city;
- Finalising a clear and sufficiently detailed plan with implementation phases for the next several years, upgrading projects and partnerships.
- Forming portfolios of investment actions and tuning-in the financial mechanisms needed to deploy capital at the speed and scale needed.
- Working in synchronicity on all the elements of the enablers of change, remember the wheel?
As we work on strengthening our enablers of change, I’d say we are at the forming and testing collaborative communities stage, building-up the enabling economies and triggering municipal momentum in the five places. So that smarter systems can plug-in and help to bring back the smart people. Something like that.
Although this is a long and difficult process, we have faith and enthusiasm that drives us. We all belong to the necessary category of people who, YES, can do it — dreamers, believers, busy-bees. We are ready to share knowledge, to move things, to transfer optimism to others…. This is enough to believe in Future Cities of South-East Europe.
Join us!
I thank all the team-members from Maribor, Križevci, Skopje, Sarajevo and Niš for their contributions to the content of this story: Jože Kos Grabar, Nermina Suljević, Lejla Bešlagić, Sanela Mikulčić, Stela Jovanović, Jana Neshkovikj and Sofija Bogoeva. And a big thank to Tim Taylor for the edits!
