"Dame Gruev" street in central Skopje is getting a new look. The Centar municipality is carrying out the first phase of a project to landscape and green the stretch from the Green Market to "Makedonija" street, plus the section by Parliament - with new benches, waste bins, a children's playground and an outdoor gym.

Mayor Goran Gerasimovski says arranging public spaces remains a municipal priority: "We are creating functional, tidy and green public spaces where citizens can rest, recreate and spend quality time with their families." A message that sounds nice - and, unlike so many other announcements, this time we're talking about something concrete and visible: benches, greenery, space for kids.

This is the kind of project that rarely sparks debate - it's hard to be against new benches and green space downtown. And precisely for that reason it's worth staying a little skeptical: this sort of makeover is easy to announce and pretty to photograph, but the real test comes later. Will the new playground actually be maintained, or in two years will it be vandalised and forgotten, like so many other "landscaped" spaces across the city?

Green public spaces are genuinely needed - Skopje has been drowning in concrete and short on shade for decades, so every tree and every bench is welcome. But the difference between a city that invests and a city that just cuts ribbons is in the upkeep. If "Dame Gruev" is still tidy, clean and full of people a few years from now, this will be a small success worth praising. If not, it'll be one more reminder that here, building is the easy part - keeping things running is the hard one.