Local/Regional Economic Development in South ... - Value Chains

5.5 Urban Development and Green Area Management in Albania’s Capital City Tirana
Sokol Celo, Martina Craemer-Möller, Lucie Gumbrecht
Introduction
Tirana is one of Europe’s fastest growing cities. It is therefore
not surprising that the living conditions for the population
are continually worsening: high traffic volume with
long traffic jams, emission of pollutants and noise pollution,
an overloaded sewage system whenever there is heavy
precipitation, burning of household wastes, uncontrolled
building in many open spaces, deterioration and disappearance
of threatened inner-city green areas – the city is
in danger of sinking into chaos.
The turnaround came with the election of the present
mayor: From the beginning, he demonstrated the political
will to put an end to this development. Obvious examples
include the removal of many small stands of street
vendors, kiosks, and wildly proliferating restaurants, more
barracks than building; the rehabilitation of the river,
which was still an open sewer two years ago, and of the
neighboring city area. At present, the mayor is energetically
implementing the planning concept for the city center,
with the support of the German side. As part of this,
he is concerned to preserve the existing green areas, which,
in part because of illegal land grabs and lack of maintenance,
constitute a special city development problem; he
wants to turn them into local recreational areas for the
population and to renovate them in order to improve the
cityscape and the urban climate.
Project implementation
In 2003, the city of Tirana, with the support of GTZ,
which offered advisory services on urban development in
Tirana on behalf of the German Government, held an
international competition for preparing an urban development
plan of the city center. With the help of expertise
from the urban planning office of Frankfurt, which
has experience in the organization of urban development
competitions, the city of Tirana was able to professionally
prepare and implement the competition. Organizational
and technical advice was offered to the urban planners
by a GTZ-commissioned architect, who helped draw up
the terms of reference and ensured that internationally
accepted procedures and rules for such competitions were
applied.
The competition attracted a great deal of national and
international attention. As a follow-up measure, the city
administration of Tirana, in conjunction with the international
Berlage Institute for Architecture and Urban
Planning and Albanian students, and with the support of
GTZ, held a summer school in 2004. The tasks set were
derived from the urban development plan and contained,
at the expressed wish of the city administration of Tirana,
the development of a concept for the two most important
parks and local recreational areas of Tirana.
The summer school achieved good results and attracted a
great deal of public attention, so that the lord mayor and
the city administration decided to institutionalize it as an
annual event. They intended to thereby facilitate regular
international exchange of expertise between the city administration,
Albanian and foreign students, and international
experts, at the same time, guiding and pushing
urban planning, implementation, and development in the
right direction. Every May, the results are made available
to the public in a richly illustrated document.
Several of the Albanian students who participated in the
first summer school in 2004 are now employed in the city
administration. With their active support in a working
group, a five-week summer school was again implemented
in 2005.
The concept for the Tirana Central Park, prepared in
2004, has already been implemented. With the participation
of the Berlage Institute and with GTZ support,
a planning concept for Tirana’s largest local recreational
area, the Great Lake Park, was to be developed and the details
for implementation worked out in the 2005 summer
school. In the framework of pilot measures, several areas of
the park have already been replanted. With the introduction
of a “green tax” (1 Euro per person per year), the city
committed itself to continue to care for and maintain the
parks. Corresponding guidelines for park management are
now being worked out by the project.
Measures to raise environmental awareness among the
population or ecological education must then be instituted
in further steps (brochures, sponsorships, planting
initiatives on certain days such as Children’s Day, incorporation
of the private sector, garden shows, etc.).
Objective and impact
With implementation of the results of the international
urban development competition in Tirana, new – transparent
and legal – standards were set for urban development
planning and binding decisions were made for Tirana.
Both are important for the image of the capital city,
also with respect to the sought accession to the EU.
The results of the subsequent summer schools – focused
on the area of inner-city parks – are set out in a Park Regulatory
Plan (legal definition of boundaries/potential land
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