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Informality of sprawl? Morphogenetic evolution in post-socialist Tirana

Dino, B; Griffiths, S; Karimi, K; (2015) Informality of sprawl? Morphogenetic evolution in post-socialist Tirana. In: City as Organism. New Visions for Urban Life-ISUF Rome 2015-Conference Proceedings. (pp. pp. 667-679). Urbanform and design: Roma, Italy. Green open access

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Abstract

This research focuses on the urban transformation of Tirana, the capital of Albania, following the end of the communist regime in the early 1990s. While rapid urbanization fuelled by mass migration from the countryside to cities is commonly observed in many East European countries Albania’s post-socialist urban form has been strongly influenced by the dramatic upheaval in land ownership that has taken place in the context of an inadequately developed legal system and involved the systematic appropriation of open space by developers. The impact of this urbanisation on Albanian society has been profound, but currently there are no systematic studies of the morphological processes that have transformed Albanian cities. This paper begins the process of addressing this deficiency. It identifies four distinctive patterns of informal growth in contemporary Tirana. The variety of post-socialist urban transformation morphologies can tell us much about the particular nature of urban growth in Albania under conditions of unrestrained, loosely regulated, development. The paper draws on the Tirana case study to comment on the nature of social change in the Albanian context, and the way in which ‘planned ’and ‘unplanned’ urban environments have contributed to the emergence of distinctive modes of urban life. Conzenian and space syntax approaches provide the methodological basis for morphological research into Tirana’s post-socialist built environment. The configurational data is mapped to geo-referenced datasets of Tirana at the building scale, including details of building age and legal status. An initial survey of land uses is done for the case study areas. This integrated methodology is intended to help elucidate both the morphological dynamics of post-socialist Tirana and the broader implications of this urban transformation for Albanian society.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Informality of sprawl? Morphogenetic evolution in post-socialist Tirana
Event: ISUF 2015 city as organism |new visions for urban life
Location: La Sapienza Rome
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: https://www.urbanform.it/books/
Language: English
Additional information: This an Open Access article published under a Creative Commons licence CC-BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10052769
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