An illegal dump by the Vardar, near the village of Rašče in Saraj, should soon grow into a modern park. The space that until recently was neglected and turned into an illegal landfill is now being cleaned up - the start, we hope, of the kind of transformation Skopje has long awaited at many locations.

Illegal dumps are one of those marks of neglect that appear wherever the institutions aren't looking: along rivers, at the edges of cities, in places that are "nobody's." When such a place is finally cleaned up, that's good news - but also a reminder that it should never have come to this in the first place.

The idea of a park where a dump once stood is symbolic: from the ugliest face of neglect to a green space for people. The question is whether the project will be seen through to the end, or whether, like many "green" announcements, it will stop at the clearing stage, after which the place slowly turns back into a dump.

Cleaning up is the easy part. The harder part - and the one the project will be judged by - is maintenance: whether in a few months there will be benches, trees and people strolling, or just a new emptiness waiting for the next round of waste. Saraj deserves a park, not another promise.