2.6 Challenges for Sustainable Urban Development

The main findings from the previous analysis, from the conducted experts’ interviews and from site observations are further summarized. The establishment of a sustainable urban development future is related with the following four key topics:

// Climate Resilience Due to the fact that Tirana is dealing more often with extreme heat and cloudburst events (Municipality of Tirana, 2015), there is an urgent need for redesigning the public spaces that can deal with abundant rainfall events by providing more retention areas for stormwater, and at the same time balance the microclimate in the city. The existing sewerage network of the city, built in the early years of communism, has shown to be underperforming during such extreme events. The existing situation calls for the implementation of sustainable sewerage infrastructure that would work well along the existing one (Dervishaj, 2021). While there are some green areas in the city, there is a lack of sufficient green coverage that would have an impact on mitigating climate change effects, and especially that of air pollution - since Tirana is still ranked among the most polluted capitals of Europe (Co-PLAN, 2020; Taylor, 2019). On an institutional level, the municipality is not implementing enough strategies to mitigate climate change effects (Sinojmeri, 2021). The current use of construction materials and the lack of permeable surfaces is not sustainable and if it is not addressed soon, will produce long-term issues for the city.

Figure 20 | Skanderbeg Square, Tirana Source: Dujardin, 2019

Figure 21 | Dëshmoret e Kombit Boulevard from Mother Teresa Square Source: Author, 2021

// The Built Environment The construction wave that took place in Tirana after the ‘90s, was uncontrolled and manifested the lack of law enforcement during those years. The results are shown in neighbourhoods built with no consideration to urban laws, with poor design standards, lack of maintenance and with many issues related to the water infrastructure (Pojani, 2010; Emiri, n.d.). Finding a solution to this matter has been a challenge and an unresolved issue for many governments. On the other hand, the predominant construction trend of nowadays, is of another nature. Undoubtedly unprecedented for the urban pattern of Tirana is the construction of high-rise buildings with 20 to 30 floors and up to 80 meters high (Doka & Göler, 2020). Ten of these towers are in construction or in the process of being constructed within the city center area (Doka & Göler, 2020). In terms of scale, this kind of ‘vertical urbanism’ represents a completely new phenomenon for a compact, low rise city as Tirana - therefore their development has conceived unattractive public areas that lack the human scale and the proper sunlight.

// Public Life Even though citizens of Tirana enjoy spending time outside, and the city itself has a vibrant public life, the quality of public areas doesn’t always seem to cater to the people’s desired activities. For instance, the few parks of the city are mostly visited by seniors and children, as the younger generation prefers to spend time in the vast outdoor areas offered by cafés and bars (Pojani, 2010). While a rich public life does exist, there is a general need for reclaiming, maintaining and upgrading the existing network of public areas. On this matter a good start would be on purposely planning parks, equipped with cross-generation activities, which aim to make people spend more time in nature - while actually enjoying it. // Mobility Network Although the mobility network of Tirana is getting more diverse, it remains on a large scale dominated by cars, encouraged by the poor quality of public transport. Tirana is a walkable city and on a decent level the pedestrian routes are safe and indeed many people choose to walk on their way to work, school, shop, or other daily destinations (Pojani, 2011a; Anciaes, n.d.). However, from the site observations, it was noted that there are parts of the focus area where the pedestrian paths are narrow and mixed with the car lane, making it an uninviting and not safe route for pedestrians. On a more positive note, there is growing interest for cycling, but not on a level of having a significant impact, since the biking infrastructure is lacking coherence (SUTi, 2021). To make people abandon their private cars, the public transport must provide a better service, the routes should be revised and should be considered the implementation of another public transport service as it is a tram. On the other hand, safer bike lanes, and the expansion of the bike infrastructure in a larger scale of the city would have an impact on making the existing mobility network of the city far more sustainable.

The proposed implementation of WSUD tools in this master thesis, aims to address primarily the topic of climate resilience in general and urban flooding in particular, in the study-area described further. On a second level will be tackled the identified issues related with the topic of Built Environment, Public Life and Mobility Network. The selection of the WSUD tools will be in consideration with the identified challenges on all these three themes / categories.