In June, 296 building permits were issued - 39 percent more than in the same month last year. The projected value of the buildings is 6,363,610 thousand denars, or around 103.5 million euros, up 31 percent year on year. The plans cover 754 flats with 64,266 square metres of usable space.

The figures come from the State Statistical Office and at first glance look like good news. Construction is working, investment is growing, the housing stock is expanding. A living city needs new homes, business premises and infrastructure - nobody disputes that.

The problem is that building and urban planning are not the same thing.

Where the money goes

Of the total, 200 permits (67.6 percent) are for buildings, 26 (8.8 percent) for infrastructure, and 70 (23.6 percent) for reconstruction. Individuals filed 218 permits, or 73.6 percent, but their share of the investment value is around 21.5 percent. In other words, almost four fifths of the money comes from companies - around five billion denars.

The bulk of the value is concentrated in the Skopje region, around 3.48 billion denars. By number of permits the Pelagonija region leads with 70. Among the flats, two- and three-room units dominate - 267 and 214.

What is not growing by 39 percent

The State Audit Office found that 22 of 34 municipalities fail to meet the standard of 25 square metres of green space per resident. Between 2020 and 2024, 77 percent of procedures for detailed urban plans missed their statutory deadlines.

Skopje, meanwhile, is operating under a General Urban Plan covering the period 2012-2022. The new one, for 2022-2032, was started back in 2019 and still has not been adopted. So the city is issuing permits worth 103.5 million euros a month under a plan whose term has run out.

Chaos rarely arrives as one big project everyone recognises. It arrives gradually, through individual permits that each look perfectly tidy on their own and together produce neighbourhoods with no greenery, no parking and no traffic logic. The difference between a city and a building site is whether the permits add up to a system or only to a number. So far we have only the number.