Conference Paper

This paper points to spatial urban voids as a tool for restructuring and reinventing a new operational coherence for cities in transition. The concept of the urban void emerges as a creative strategy that sees the ‘empty’ space as spatial quality which could bring economic and social benefit to the community. Consequently, the scope and focus of this chapter is on the relationship between the formative narration of the city as represented through planning regulations and the market economy in a socio‐spatial system of the cities in transition (Skopje) and the existing informal but spatially highly creative potential of urban voids as a dialectical amalgam that bridges public and private interests. The method applied follows a comparative approach that defines the limits and potentials of local realities and international experiences which are already engaging urban voids as a creative strategy. Three cases of spatial development in Skopje are compared with three spatial strategies of urban voids already carried out in a European metropolitan context in the city of Pula in Croatia, and Horde‐Dortmund and Berlin, both in Germany.