No abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the issue of whether city governments could or should be engaged in (social) urban identity formation. From a functional angle, social urban identity formation can help to gain loyalty and pro-social and environmental behaviour. Earlier and current research on urban identity and urban development in three quite different cities, Rotterdam, Szczecin, and Tirana, informs our reflection. The city cases are described in terms of urban development and social urban identity. The paper concludes that social urban identity formation can be helpful in cities, but there is a risk of political control over urban symbols and narratives. Topics for future research are identified.

The first high-rise building ever in Tirana and Albania was built during the 70-s. This was Hotel Tirana or “15-kateshi” as it was nicknamed. At that time, Tirana was building not more than six floors high due to limitations in finances, technology, as well as seismic regulations. Hotel Tirana was an exception for ideological and symbolic reasons of the regime. After the ‘change’ of the early 90-s and the return of the market economy, several private construction companies came up by developing ‘tower’ typology buildings of 7-9 floors. In the second decade of transformations, the municipality developed several international architectural competitions, including a masterplan for the city centre (2003) and other specific construction sites, mainly for strategic high-rise building purposes. During these years, Tirana was densified by tripling its population thanks to a typology of towers of 9-11 floors. There has been a lot of criticism of the respective municipal decision-making procedures, allegedly related to the politicization and corruption of the verticalization and densification process via control of the building permissions system

All political parties recognized the need for the territorial and administrative reform that was drafted between 2013 and 2015, and there have generally been no reservations about it. In order to provide Albania, the chance to perform to its full potential in this aspect, such atmosphere galvanized high expectations from the public opinion and garnered a signifcant lot of support from donors. The opposition at the time decided to withdraw for recognized reasons and did not participate in the process. In these circumstances, territorial consolidation and the number of municipalities dominated the public and political discourse, while the governance structure and the division of powers at the central-local level received little attention. These reforms proceed through iterative cycles until a social and political balance is achieved, as evidenced by experiences from other nations/countries. The current outcome of this reform in Albania after six years of implementation enables us to evaluate what has been accomplished thus far. What action is necessary now? In my opinion, the Reform is not "black and white." Of course, there have been some successes; any changes should not seek to undo or start over, but rather to rectify and improve in accordance with the needs of the nation, economy, and communities. Without getting into specifcities of data...