How to Design and Manage a Construction Hellscape
In August 2023, I joined a group of artists in walking along the perimeter of the municipality of Tirana, through the so-called “Orbital Forest.” The Orbital Forest, claimed to be “a natural border to urban growth,” was one of the main propagandistic selling points of the Tirana General Local Plan “TR030,” drafted by the Italian architect and former mayoral candidate for Milan Stefano Boeri in 2016. But as we walked for several days through the hills of Kodra e Diellit and Linza and the fields of Kashar, along the Tirana river and the Farka lake, we found little evidence of this alleged green zone. What we did see from the various vantage points around the city: a thick layer of smog, car exhaust, and construction dust suffocating its inhabitants in the oppressive summer heat. How could it be that a city planned to be “sustainable,” “accessible,” “creative,” “smart,” and “biodiverse” had turned into giant construction site suffering from a semi-permanent traffic infarct?
“Almost a century later, Italians design Tirana again.” – Stefano Boeri in e-flux Architecture
In order to answer this question, we need to return to the aftermath of the local elections in 2015, when the first government of Prime Minister Edi Rama sought to implement the so-called “Territorial Reform.” This reform included the drafting of a series of masterplans, called “general local plans,” for all municipalities in the country. For each of these, international tender procedures were opened, including for Tirana, where Erion Veliaj had just become mayor. Even though in theory competitive, the winners of these tenders were mostly predetermined, as confirmed to me when I met Boeri in Hotel Rogner the morning before he was going to present his plan to the government. He simply told me: “I was asked personally by Edi Rama to participate. We had an understanding that my studio would win.”
Boeri successfully presented his vision for Tirana, which had been codrafted with architecture studios UNLAB and IND, and after a series of botched public consultations in violation of several laws, it was adopted in late 2016 by the Municipal Council of Tirana. Implementation started immediately in 2017.
The TR030 plan encompasses a set of thirteen strategic projects that “in 2030 will turn Tirana into a European model for non-anthropocentric cohabitation between people, animals, and nature.” It would require too much space to discuss each strategic project in depth, but we may distinguish two broad categories. The first category comprises those projects aimed at increasing the green spaces in and around the city: the Orbital Forest; a green second and fourth ring; a “World Park”; and three river corridors. The second category includes projects whose main component is construction: five additional “transformation zones” (including the “natural oasis” of Farka) and a network of schools developed through public–private partnerships.
Today, we find ourselves living out the third and last mandate of Mayor Veliaj, over halfway through TR030’s implementation timeline from 2017 to 2030. Measured against the targets set out in the plan, the first category of strategic projects has ended in failure, while the second has flourished beyond belief.
The Orbital Forest has not materialized. Despite the annual photo op of Mayor Veliaj putting a spade in the ground, the promised two million trees have not been planted, and last year the Albanian Supreme Audit Institution (KLSh) concluded that a lack of budgettary means, land, and property issues had led to a “low level of implementation.” The green second and fourth ring, which would accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, and a tram, have not been realized, and the same holds for the World Park planned along the northern extension of the Zogu I Boulevard. Also the natural corridors along Tirana’s three rivers, the Tirana, Lana, and Erzen, have not been created in any meaningful way. Rather, the KLSh concludes:
The environment is degrading rapidly, a fact that is reflected in problems such as soil instability, worsening water quality, air pollution, noise, and problems with waste management, etc.
The cause of this environmental calamity is the “uncontrolled urban development.” In October 2023 alone, twelve new skyscrapers were approved for the Tirana city center. This brings us to the second category of strategic projects proposed in the TR030 plan. Both the five new “transformation zones” (comprising 573 ha in total) and the network of new public schools operate on the same set of principles: the expropriation of existing private property and privatization of public property followed by their redevelopment through public–private partnerships, also known as concessions.
Public–private partnerships are a costly and inefficient way of managing public investments, since they basically subsidize a private company to take out loans at higher interest rate levels than the state would have to pay. The upside for the state is that this “investment” keeps its debt levels artificially low, while the upside for the private company is that the state carries all the risks. The new development areas designated by the TR030 plan, combined with the reclassification of ten other “dynamic epicenters” such as the Blloku area as transformation zones, have become a flywheel for the massive construction boom in the city.
The intensified urbanization of Tirana has also been incredibly profitable for its designer. Following the approval of the TR030 plan, Boeri immediately went on a publicity campaign to extol its virtues, claiming that “almost a century later, Italians design Tirana again.” Subsequently, the Municipality of Tirana commissioned the redevelopment plan of the Tirana riverside area and also asked him to design three schools for a public–private partnership of the Municipality of Tirana and construction company Agikons. Also construction companies chipped in: Invest Society commissioned two buildings, the Cube and West Residence, both in the coveted Blloku area of Tirana, and Gener 2 commissioned a Vertical Forest next to the Air Albania Stadium.
This then brings us back to our initial question: how can it be that a plan designed to turn Tirana into a “Balkanic garden” has turned it into a noise-ridden, pavement-blocked highrise nightmare? The answer is found in the straightforward economic incentives of those in charge of its implementation. Unlike the transformation zones, none of the green components of TR030 has a profit model behind it. No money can be made from forests, parks, or green belts; highrise construction, on the other hand, ticks all the boxes.
First of all, the Municipality of Tirana makes money from the building permits it issues, levying a 8% tax on the total value of investment. These have formed a major component of the municipal budget at least since Edi Rama was mayor of Tirana in the 2000s. In 2022, Tirana set a new record with building permits for 1.8 million sq.m. in new constructions. Without these projects Tirana would go bankrupt, while for investors they provide a convenient way of laundering money. A 2020 report from the Global Initiative against Transnational Crime estimates that from 2017–2019 about €1.6 billion was laundered through the Albanian real estate sector. Both municipality and construction companies thus have a strong incentive to keep the machine going.
Second, the complex concession and tender structures of many of the public redevelopment projects for the new transformation zones and public schools offer ample opportunity for corruption and self-dealing, as evidenced by the recent scandals around concessions managed by the Municipality of Tirana. For example, the company 5D, owned by directors from the municipality, was granted a redevelopment tender in the transformation zone of Kinostudio. Again, both those governing the municipality and construction company owners (sometimes the same people) profit.
And third, redevelopment projects generate massive amounts of construction waste, which are deposited at the Sharra landfill. Although this may not immediately be an obvious incentive, this issue has come up recently in an interview with former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Arben Ahmetaj concerning the Sharra landfill concession, where he posed the following, somewhat cryptic question:
I have a question for SPAK [Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime]: where did the 60 million go? […] Where are the 60 million euro, who is behind it, who has given the guarantee, who has bought it […]?
What is the “€60 million” that Ahmetaj is referring to here? This money refers to the total amount that private construction companies are thought to have paid over the years for depositing their construction waste at the Sharra landfill, the accumulated debris resulting from the hundreds of building permits issued by the municipality.
Before the landfill concession contract with granted to Integrated Energy BV SPV in August 2017, construction waste was managed and taxed by the municipality. But even though outside the parameters set for the initial tender, the municipality decided to extralegally grant Integrated Energy BV SPV the management of construction waste as well. This allowed payments by construction companies to flow directly into its bank accounts, beyond any form of public oversight or auditing.
When the assets of Integrated Energy BV SPV were seized last year by SPAK, this €60 million, money that arguably belonged to the Albanian taxpayer, was nowhere to be found. Where did it go? And was it indeed only €60 million, or even more? How to measure the construction waste that had actually been dumped at Sharra?
The opposition has voiced a rather plausible suggestion as to where these earnings of Integrated Energy BV SPV went. They were kicked back to those at the helm of the Municipality of Tirana and used to buy votes through the extensive patronazhist system established by the Socialist Party, which included the illegal deployment of municipal officials as electoral coordinators for the party, thus enabling an overwhelming victory in 27 of the 27 units comprising the Municipality of Tirana during the 2023 local elections. The kickbacks from the construction waste management were also supposedly used buy off the media, ensuring wall-to-wall positive coverage on all major media outlets of the municipality’s urban renewal projects and policies, precisely as we have been seeing throughout Mayor Veliaj’s tenure.
Thus the constant, interminable cycle of demolition and construction, of permits, concessions, and waste dumps is not a cancer of the city slowly killing its inhabitants that urgently needs to be counteracted with green spaces and restrictive zoning laws; the money flows it generates at every step of its process are an essential component of maintaining control and power over the city and its citizens. The pollution is not a bug, it is a feature.
The Albanian Mechanism is part of Manifesto GREAT WAVE.