Urbanization of Suburban Areas in Tirana City

Abstract

Tirana is a city which keeps growing mostly in a natural way. The unexpected growing rhythm that followed the political changes of the early ‘90es has not yet produced enough administrative and planning awareness and capacity. Planning in a large urban scale in order to predict a regular growth has already become a formality. On the other hand, legalization policies, have transformed informal building activity in a very common mean of negotiation between private actors and public administration. In a way or another, Tirana is a self-made city which has invented its own rules of growing and existing. Although planning is a very potential mean of urban development, the main way Tirana has experienced the recent growth is far from planned and too near to accidental. Informality on one hand and legalization policies on the other have smoothened the border line between urban space and rural ones. The urban space within the city seems to grow as a result of a continuous process of “rural to urban” transformation.