Little is known about place attachment in the Balkans. This study aims to start filling this gap. After a contextualization of place attachment studies in the Balkans and its relevance for research and practice, a brief review of theory is offered. Then the methodology of the empirical part of the study is clarified. Over 300 citizens living in seven different neighborhoods of Tirana have been interviewed on place attachment issues such as sense of belonging, familiarity, self-identification and neighborhood experience. The results of the empirical study show that place attachment in Tirana is quite positive. The findings and analysis indicate that place attachment indicators do not vary significantly according to educational level, gender and age, but do correlate with length of residence. It also appeared that place attachment indicators are higher in well-established neighborhoods compared to the new high-rise areas. The study concludes with recommendations for follow-up research, specifically qualitative research on citizens' meanings of place attachment and study on place attachment related to responsible behavior.

Game Theory (GT) offers a critical lens to understand and analyze the capacity of different actors to make rational decisions linked to complex and emergent situations. Even though developed as a theory to tackle economic issues, GT has found a wider range of applications in heterogeneous fields such as architecture, where this new transdisciplinary tool can be used to address topics such as urban planning and public participation. The objectives of these researches aim for avoiding ghettoization, lowering social tension, and conflicts, and for proposing long-term solutions in a reality where the lack of authority has led to the development of closed informal clusters at the outskirts of the city. In this paper, we present the city of Tirana as a case study to develop our speculative research in an operative field that blends GT, computational design, and morphological/behavioral patterns. Non-cooperative and repetitive games are useful tools to identify generative patterns in the Albanian informal settlements, with the certainty that even the most spontaneous ones carry within them positive enzymes that can be taken into account to re-organize the informal settlements either spatially, socially, and economically (Dhamo, 2017, 2021). We propose a set of operative categories, filtered through the lens of GT and playful dynamics and mechanics, to set the debate for a deeper understanding of the reality of informal areas and foster co-design processes, from the perspective that collective interest is a key to let professionals, institutions and citizens work together in a more informed process of city-making.