The mayor of Bitola, Toni Konjanovski, has published a video postcard of the city with a clear message: Bitola is increasingly earning the label "velograd". The bike lanes on "Vasko Karangelevski" and "Partizanska" streets are used daily by residents of all generations, he claims, and that is proof that investment in functional infrastructure pays off.

"Enjoy this video postcard of modern Bitola. It makes me happy to see citizens of all ages using the bike lanes," Konjanovski wrote on social media. "Tidy, orderly and urban spaces are our vision for the whole city."

By Balkan standards, two boulevards with functional bike lanes is real progress. Even so, the gap between a "velograd" in the Viennese, European sense and what Bitola has today is significant. Velograd means a network - the ability to get from any point in the city to any other point by bike. Two streets are the start of a network, not the network itself.

The question Bitola residents could be asking is simple: what next? Are connections to other neighbourhoods being planned? Will there be secure bike parking at schools, hospitals, the municipality? Will data be released on how many cyclists use those lanes per day, per week? Without those numbers, the video postcard is a political narrative, not an urban transformation.

At the same time, the video postcard does have a real effect. If other mayors in Macedonia see that investing in cycling infrastructure pays off politically, small but concrete changes in other towns become easier to justify. Bitola, in that sense, can be a model not because it is a "real velograd", but because it opened the conversation about what a city should be. Now what is needed is to keep going - neighbourhood by neighbourhood, lane by lane, and within five years the label will probably be earned.