The Guardian: Tirana's plan for a 'kaleidoscope metropolis"

Tirana doesn’t follow the pattern of most European cities. The Guardian dedicated an article to all changes happened in Tirana the latest years, and the plans for the city in 2030. "Tirana is a great, vibrant city which nevertheless has struggled with the transition from being the centre of an isolated regime to the cosmopolitan cultural capital of the Balkans" says the mayor Erion Veliaj, quoted by the Guardian.

Here is a summary of the article:

If you stand in the middle of Tirana’s vast Skanderbeg Square and turn 360 degrees, you will see Italian fascist architecture, buildings in the Russian and Chinese communist style, a mosque, an Orthodox Christian church, the gleaming glass rectangle of the Tirana International Hotel and the bleak carcass of the unfinished Archea tower.

Tirana doesn’t follow the pattern of most European cities. The square is in the middle, but there is no city centre as such, and no major shopping street comparable to Regent Street or the Rue de Rivoli. Nor is there the familiar conjugation of chain stores – no Zara, no Mango, no Nando’s or McDonalds.

Everything about the city feels haphazard. And now one man is charged with bringing it to order.

Tirana’s lively, chaotic urban fabric reflects its extraordinary history. In 1912, Albania won independence from the Ottomans, only to be occupied by Mussolini’s fascists in 1939, then liberated by the communist militias who ushered in a repressive and paranoid regime under the personality cult of Enver Hoxha. For 45 years, it was a Balkans version of North Korea.

Under Hoxha the country was totally isolated, falling out even with the comrades in Moscow and Beijing. Anyone who tried to leave was shot as a traitor. So when the regime finally fell in 1992, opening the door to freedom of movement and free-market capitalism, people – understandably – went a little bit crazy.

Albanians emigrated in huge numbers, mostly to neighbouring Greece and Italy. For those who stayed, the first thing they did with their newfound wealth was to buy a car. In 1992 there were 200 cars in Tirana, all allocated to the Hoxha nomenklatura; today there are 200,000.

The second thing they did was build – houses, shops, shacks, kiosks – anything and anywhere. As there was no private land, it was open season, an unregulated building spree that city authorities have been trying to deal with since the boom went bust and they were faced with a disorderly, car-choked city.

Tirana’s population has quadrupled in 20 years, from around 200,000 in 1992 to 800,000 today – though the unofficial total could be as high as 1 million. The average age is 27; Erion Veliaj, the mayor, is 38. He won the 2015 mayoral election by a landslide as the Socialist party candidate, joining the ranks of Europe’s radical mayors alongside Ada Colau in Barcelona and Virginia Raggi in Rome. The worst anyone seems to say about him is that he’s too slick.
From Edi Rama, the former mayor and now Albanian prime minister, Veliaj inherited Tirana 2030: an ambitious plan intended to sort out the urban chaos. Devised by the Italian architect Stefano Boeri, it speaks of turning Tirana into “a kaleidoscope metropolis” ringed with an orbital forest of 2m trees and green corridors along the city’s three rivers. The plan is to build up rather than out to accommodate the still growing population

See the full article here