Albania’s urban and territorial dimension was a product of the savage communist past and the difficult transition of the country

Abstract

Albania of the fourth decade of transition presents a series of problems related to the urban and territorial development. This paper analyzes the initial causes of urban and territorial problems, which are correlated to the savage communist past and beginnings of the political and economic transition of the country. At the end of the communist regime, Albania was one of the countries of the socialist camp with the highest level of implementation of the ideology, principles and practices of Stalinist socialism, which made the Albanian political transition very difficult. Lack of democratic heritage, high level of indoctrination of society and especially the ruling elite of the transition, were the main reasons for this delay. The economic transition of the country also presented a strong challenge. The central planning economy, in the last years of its implementation, would fail in many respects. This would bring, not only an extreme poverty of Albanian families in the moments of transition, but also a real lack of economic activities, which in a private management could bring more employment to the population in the future. This general context of the transition would reflect the same difficulties in the transition of territorial governance, as an integral part of the transition as a whole. The liberal and democratization reforms pursued in the early years would include land ownership, buildings, housing, urban planning and development processes. As a consequent, the country has experienced a high decline in the resident population, as a result of foreign emigration. But what influenced the strong changes of the urban, territorial and spatial dimension of the country, was internal migration. This massive internal migration would reshape the territorial model of population distribution across national territory, the spatial structure of the inhabited centers and the urban quality of life in Albanian cities. There are four most important preconditions that would produce this massive internal migration, which originate from the savage communist past and the political and economic transition reforms: the inability of the territorial government to understand its new role in urban and territorial issues; the decline of basic public services (education, health) as a result of the departure of ‘nominees’ from the party-state in cities different from those of their origin; loss of employment of citizens in state-owned, bankrupt, closed or in-the-process–of-privatization enterprises; free movement of citizens and freedom to choose residence. Two would be the main financiers of this construction development that shaped the urban and territorial model of the country, which originate from the political and economic transition reforms: income provided by interaction in the free market of real estate from citizens who had privatized state-owned housing in their use; remittances provided in emigration, after allowing the free movement of citizens outside the national territory.