The Italian newspaper Il Foglio writes that the book The Albanian Files, with prologue from Edi Rama, has become a political boomerang for the prime minister. The publication, aimed at promoting Tirana’s urban transformation, has sparked debates on power links, investors and international architects. The book reveals the way Rama has personally contacted architects known for projects in Albania. According to the analysis, these relations do not prove corruption, but show the combination of politics and construction business.
Full Article of ) IL Foglio:
Albania appears on the front pages of newspapers due to violent clashes shaking Tirana. The images resemble the revolt of young people in France or Italy, but it would be wrong to confuse them. Albania is still undergoing its first major capitalist transformation after communism. Protests express anger at corruption and an economic development model, the benefits of which many citizens do not feel.
However, this story contains a lesson that touches us very closely. To understand, we must leave the book The Albanian Files: Freedom and Archaeology, an illustrated publication on architecture, with the foreword of Prime Minister Edi Rama, who relates how Tirana has become a laboratory for some of the most important architects in the world: a humiliating book in his praise, which has become a political boomerang.
Rama was mayor of Tirana from 2000 to 2011 and is prime minister since 2013. He has turned urban transformation into symbol of his government. In the introduction to the book, Rama explains that architecture serves not only to transform spaces but also to transform people’s thinking and their belief in the future. According to him, Albania attracts great architects because it offers a freedom that no longer exists in other countries. A freedom from yojo, from the rules and restrictions that in European countries make it difficult to build.
The problem is that Rama’s opponents have read the book in a very different way: as a catalog of relations between political power, real estate investors and international designers.
Some architects show with an amazing sincerity how they have arrived in Albania. Someone received a message in the Instagram directly from Rama, someone called, while others were introduced through people close to the prime minister.
The Guardian newspaper has reported on the existence of a group in WhatsApp, dubbed Albanian ArchArmey, where renowned international architects share projects and contacts with the Albanian political world.
The paradox is that all of this happens openly, in everybody’s eyes. The prime minister promotes architects, renowned architects show their relations with the government, while the book publishes investors’ projects and names. This does not constitute a judicial test of corruption, but it is transparently presenting a system where policies, urbanistics and business of real estate are closely combined.
Of course, Tirana is an extreme case, having little in common with Italy. It is the capital of a country that is trying to regain decades of isolation and is the dominant centre of national economic and political life, almost a city-state.
Rama exercises an extremely long political influence on time, moving from the capital’s direction to the government’s direction and also taking over urban and construction permits with him.
In essence, though, the economic mechanism is the same as that observed in many European cities, including Italian. Institutions and growth levels differ, but the fundamental question remains the same: Who benefit from the growth and development of cities, and who remain outside this process?
In Albania, the conflict accompanyings the creation of a new market economy. In Italy, it appears at a more advanced stage. Our cities are already rich and real estate markets are consolidated. But increasing property value could be transformed into a powerful exclusion mechanism.
Milan is the most obvious example. Home prices rise much faster than income. Even those with regular jobs and middle – class income have difficulty buying a house or coping with rent. For young people and those who come from a family without inherited wealth, entrance into the middle class becomes difficult.
This is where real estate is related to that of inequality. It is not only important to earn from work but also to own a home or inherit it.
The increase in property value enrichs those who are already owners, while raising costs for those who do not own real estate. A city may become more beautiful, more international, and more attractive to capitals, but at the same time less affordable for people who work and live there.
The lesson to be learned is that transparent rules and instruments that enable society to benefit some of the economic value created by urban transformations are needed.
Otherwise, civic response is inevitable, but here lies a fundamental difference: In Albania, protest arises against a model that promises to create a new middle class. In our country, the danger is that the same model will end up excluding the middle class that already exists.
Source Layer: Insander