Urban Pattern Dichotomy in Tirana: Socio-spatial Impact of Liberalism

Abstract

Transition from a centralized to a market economy yielded different responses from the former Eastern Bloc countries with economic performance directly affecting spatial composition of the cities. Post-socialist urban transformations across Central and Eastern Europe exhibit main, common features but always preserve singularities, characteristic of individual states. This paper, by using comparative methods and urban planning analyses, emphasizes differences in the degree of change for inner city areas under same transition conditions. Drawing on empirical evidence from Tirana, the paper stresses the fact that besides the obvious general change in the communism-inherited urban fabric, the degree of this change is predicated on the area's centrality and its pre-transitional urban pattern. It is pointed out that this spatial change follows a mutually interactive, parallel path with the socio-economic composition of the city. The peculiarity of Tirana stands in the fact that post-socialist socio-spatial transformations are better defined by Balkanization (implying individuality and hostility) rather than segregation (which implies clustering).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Jim Berry for comments and editing the final draft. Municipality of Tirana, Archives of the National Planning Institute and Municipal Units 5 and 8 provided valuable information and the condition maps.

Notes

In this part, we give reference on urban pattern effects mainly by a classification made by Stanilov (2007b, p. 9).

This study provides a closer look to performance in the transition period of Albania, FYROM, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland with secondary data from World Bank Development Indicators.

In this gradient, we have omitted the original “other East European” subcategory set by Tosics for the following reasons: (a) they would be represented by Moscow and the sheer scale difference between Moscow and Tirana would be inconvenient and misleading for our study; (b) development trends of these cities, especially Moscow, deviate from the main trajectory of the capitalist/Third World city gradient (Tosics, 2005; Stanilov, 2007b) and (c) the huge differences between the communist legacies of Russia and Albania (Borén & Gentile, 2007).

See also Kiss (2007) for a discourse on brownfield revitalization in Budapest and Kiss (2004) for further notes on brownfield transformations in Hungary.

For a more complete discussion of the urbanization conditions in Albania and Tirana during the communist period as well as discussions on diverted migration, under urbanization and the zero urban growth hypothesis, see Sjöberg (1992, 1994).

The last adjourned (official) condition maps of Tirana—as obtained from Tirana Municipality, Municipality Unit No. 5 and GIS Albania—belong to the year 2005, and therefore most recent developments as spotted by onsite observations (especially development north-west of “Irfan Tomini” block) are not represented.

We do not deal with literacy rate—probably a better determinant—not only because “fighting illiteracy” was a principle of the communist period and illiteracy rate was insignificant, but also because primary education was mandatory at the time, thus rendering our variable a more suitable one for this specific study.

It is clearly seen that the increase in high-rise buildings is some way off the drastic fall in public space. This is mainly because public space in the inner parts of this housing estate is mostly “appropriated” by single families who build low-rise illegal villas or by residents of these estates who build garages for their new cars—the most valuable asset after the house in post-socialist economies. Furthermore, green space has completely lost over (illegal) parking.