Urbanism
Learn about the Regulatory Plan
Tirana's Diary
Plans for Tirana1 million inhabitants have decided to stay in Tirana. Everything, administration, commerce, citizenship, makes necessary the development of a big metropolis. Thus, the city has to change, to subdue the presence of a population that enlarges day by day with the joys, harshness and the inexhaustable capacities to survive.
From two years, a group of architects and city planners of the Department of Urban Planning of the Municipality of Tirana are working to compile the regulatory Plan of Tirana. It is thought that this will be a work that could last 3-5 years, where human nature will design maps for the displacement and development toward suburbs, mainly toward north. “It is only a stain as they express– a stain that each day demands to swallow up informations, written studies, classifications, analyses, zoning etc. For the specialists that work for the Regulatory Plan of Tirana (after four such ones, that exist meantime) it seems that to give life to this “Monster“, you should think in an artistic manner and in the same time try not to lose relations with reality.
The aim of this process is to define a system of regulation of planning, which for the moment is based on the Law of City Planning (1998) and the Regulatory Plan of Tirana, compiled in 1989 and which it is still in power.
The new Regulation Plan aims to change Tirana from a city dispersed with inhabitated areas that have been created in a casual manner toward a compact city. Thus, it is thought that the metropolis should be such in the next 20 years, after the compilation of the Regulatory Plan. By then, even the noise and the breathless dust of Tirana should have disappeared.
The stimulation of businesses is the new centres. The suburbs are those points, where "heat" will take important stimulating traits. In this context it is thought that the boulevard "Dëshmorët e Kombit“ should be prolonged once more up to the river of Tirana. Meanwhile, in this area it will be stressed on the constructions of business` buildings.
New Parks, Two big parks will be added to the capital, the Park of Paskuqan and the Park of Farka. On the other side, a green strip will accompany all the river of Tirana, which (in similarity with Lana`s rehabilitated profile) will be prolonged up to the Elbasani street and be attacted to the city`s big ring (still inbuilt). Interesting will be the construction along Lana’s river, which according to the predictions will create green islands and water superfices in its road trip from Lana`s source (In Lanabregas) up to Berxullë, where it derives. According to city planners, Lana will be linked up with the highway to Rinas.
New transport lines. The regulatory plan includes the creation of two important transport lines that are thought to pass the boulevard "Dëshmorët e Kombit" from the university and to the river of Tirana, where a big poly-functional centre will be constructed. The other line will pass in the whole Lana`s length in the two sides. According to the Regulatory Plan, for the first time these lines will use the transport of subways, which beside the fact that it is a necessity, will take off the boredom of the elders that seat on the doorsteps of the nearby areas working wool. But to judge its weird effects, the new regulatory plan of Tirana would be nothing, but a kind of racional and necessary "reportage" and all includings of what it is thought to change in Tirana.
History of regulatory plans so far
According to the Central Technical Construction Archive, the first designing documentation is a plan of Tirana that dates to 1917. In this plan, the city occupies a superficies of 305 hectares, where the inhabitation area occupies 98.2 per cent of the city’s superficies.
In this period, the population is 15000 inhabitants. The town develops historically around the cell that is the Bazaar. Inhabitation areas are in the north and east.
In 1918, there is the existing condition of the roads of Tirana. One of the important factors that gave a relatively fast burst to this inhabitated center were the carvanes that came from various terminals of the country and played a special role in the internal structure of the town and created the first skeleton of the road network. The inhabitation and economic area were linked to a series of roads and backstreets that composed the most characteristic phenomenon of the town. From this range of roads and backstreets, inter regional streets such as that of Durrës, Kavaja, Elbasani that crossed the centre came to the eye. (Bazaar).
The first regulatory plan is that of 1923 realized by the Austrians. This is not a geniune plan, but demands to direct the streets and the distorted backstreets of the town. The centre of the city is again the bazaar. The second regulatory plan is that of 1926, where for the first time the centre of the city and the N-S axis of the boulevard is controlled. This is more a revision of the Regulatory Plan of 1923 in direction of the road system.
The governement of King Zog gave a great importance to the city’s progress according to the urban regulatory plans. In this period we have some variants of the regulatory plans as well as their application.
The first plan of the period of King Zog is that of 1928. In this regulatory plan, the frame system of the road network especially in the area of “Tirana e re”(New Tirana) is clear. Here, it is framed the Boulevard axis with the administrative centre from the Bazaar up to the bank of the hills in the south at the Royal Palace. This regulatory plan of the period of King Zog belongs to 1929. Here, it is framed the whole boulevard axis from the stadium in the north up to south at the Royal Palace. Because of the dashing economic development and as an administrative center with a decree of king Zog there are defined the new limits of the city. The new limit composed a circle with its center Sulejman Pasha‘s square and a ray of 2.2 km. The regulatory plan of 1934, which does not detail only Tirana e Re, completely supports the Regulatory Plan of Tirana e Re of 1940 and has great changes from that of 1934, because the area of the co-central circles are demolished and there passes a part of the ring of the city. The most complete and well-studied plan was that of 1942. The works for this regulatory plan started in 1939 and finished in 1941. This regulatory plan is divided in some stages:
The existing condition;
The future of the city’s development;
The roads’ system;
The urban conditiones;
Range;
Traffic;
The city’s center; etc.
The regulatory plan of 1957 was compiled on the basis of the existing condition of the road system and of adding of its improvement. In 1957 there were 14.1 km of roads. This plan gave to the city an extention to the borders of today’s ring, while it foreseed the realization of 73.5 km of roads; the road system is radial-circle with two rings, an external ring and internal one.
The main arterias remained those of the plan of 1957. This plan intended to utilize the existing road system and suit it to the needs of the perspective growth of the city. In 1957 the city was thought to be raised in the borders of today’s ring, while in 1990 the predicted superficies was surpassed three times, but the road system remained behind and only the radial roads were elongated.
World experience, compiling flexible plans
The experts of the Municipality express that: “The regulatory plan in power is out of time and it is clear that this plan does not contain the great changes occurred for what regards the new developments in constructions and changes in the destination of using land in the city of Tirana”. On the other side, compilation of the Regulatory plan is a job that requires involvement and engaging of specialists, politicians and other actors and experience has shown that it lasts a long time period. In the case of Tirana, such a thing would have little value, because of the fast progress and the pressure of intensive urbanization that would make this plan useless. For this aim, world experience offers to compile flexible and quick action plans that take over to study the particular problems parallely with the process of planning and application.
The Municipality’s city planners express that the work began in 2001 with the collection of information, studies of other experiences, partial precursory studies etc. Other valuable materials make up the setting on which are based those who belonged to the last decennary, that is PADCO (The strategic plan in the frame of the projects for management of Urban land from World Bank.) the austrian plan 1995-1996 inside the yellow line; The existing scheme of the road system, the Italian study for water supply etc.
Defining emergency plans
According to specialists some of the emergency action plans that will form also the base of the regulatory plan are: keeping and promoting the internal part of the city, the extention of the center of the city beyond the train station to the hills, the definitions of the strategy for the improvement and systeming of water superficies and urban spaces around the rivers including greening and free public spaces; Improvement of infrastructure in the suburbs etc.
Aiming the realization of a more transparent and open process, as well as to make possible the involvement of all the interested and especially of public, the Municipality of Tirana is working for the realization of a web.site in Internet with the aim to create the possibility of presenting works continually.
