Taking place, (re)making nation in 'Skopje 2014' socio-spatial politics of nation and urban (re)imagining in the capital of the F.Y.R. of Macedoni

Urban revitalization plays an important role in the processes of economic restructuring. In the case of the post-socialist Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and its capital Skopje, restructuring has been intertwined with the issues of national identity, past trauma, and anxieties regarding the country's place within the international community. This study explores the discourse of elites surrounding the current socio-spatial program of urban reconfiguration known as 'Skopje 2014.' Skopje 2014 has a threefold aim to generate nationwide economic renewal, boost international prestige, and reorder both the ideological urban and national landscape. The program has been discursively constructed on the binary opposition of the ideological narratives of urban dystopia and urban eutopia. Utilizing the conceptual and methodological framework of discourse analysis, this case study excavates the meanings around which political and cultural elites have formed their respective dystopian and eutopian representations. As a project that aims to create a space of regulation for the newly (re)imagined grand narrative of the Macedonian nation, 'Skopje 2014' has deliberately sought to counter the aesthetic and political heritage of the modernist Yugoslav era. My analysis contributes to understanding how and to what degree restructuring can be explained, rationalized, and justified within the context of the city and the nation. The importance of discourse and discursive formations becomes relevant in constructing and informing alternative urban policy.