Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at a certificate of appreciation distribution ceremony for those who contributed to the renovation of Tirana’s landmark Skanderbeg square, which claimed the European Prize for the Best Urban Public Space built in 2017 awarded by Barcelona’s Centre of Contemporary Culture few days ago:
I believe it is legitimate to celebrate today this important and very special trophy for Tirana and Albania together with the representatives of all those who provided their contribution to succeed in addressing this extremely difficult challenge; together with the team of architects, ordinary construction workers of the great Skanderbeg Square site and of course together with all of those who strongly believed and contributed to this project since the project was first conceived and its implementation kicked off in the Municipality of Tirana towards realization of a transformational vision for Tirana, but also for whole Albania.
Therefore, the first word is a big thank you to all of those who believed and worked, each doing their share in this wide front to make possible what for a certain moment seemed ultimately impossible, because this square for many decades of its history has been a political battlefield, it had become the arena of a major political clash that all remember quite well, let alone the financial cost to cover the square with a large grass field during a dramatic phase for Tirana, which fortunately now belongs to the past.
A whole book can be written on the project and the project’s story and I really want to write a book on it. However, other people can also write the book on the history of Skanderbeg Square’s reconstruction, a history of genuine urban rebirth of the landmark square. One of the phrases that would definitely make its way to the book is a continually repeated phrase by the sworn opponents of this transformational undertaking and facelift, according to whom it was a criminal project based on huge profit fevers since the square would be nothing but an area of economic activities by certain individuals who would reap the benefits from their positions of power. Thousands of fake news was spread, making Albania the cradle of “Fake news” well ahead it became a global epidemic.
It has been completely fake news just like the today’s news stories suggesting that a huge refugee camp to shelter all refugees from all over the world was to be built here in Albania, or other fake news we listen being spread on daily basis. The battle against fake news is tough, but it is said that with time, everything settles down and it was time to prove right the vision, idea and entire Skanderbeg Square project, which honours our capital city, but also whole Albania in the eyes of those who hailed and assessed the project based on their indisputable professional competence and who awarded this unique European Prize for the Best Urban Public Space built in Europe in 2017.
Many years ago when I served as Mayor of Tirana, I recall a meeting with an Italian journalist, a very good friend of Albania who said she had been visiting Albania many times with the goodwill to write a positive story, but she couldn’t find a place to take even a single photo in Tirana, or in any other city across Albania, which would justify the positive description she was seeking to write in order to attract visitors to Albania. Your postcards – she said – I have already collected at Tirana hotel’s lobby, just right here we stand today, feature beautiful mountains, sea and landscapes, as well as some old houses in Gjirokastra or Berat, but they show not a single image of the country’s cities. This because you couldn’t find a right spot to take a photo in Albania and Tirana back then without fearing that an ugly and gloomy image would appear.
Many people think this is a facade. Many think that beauty is an unnecessary luxury when a society or community faces many other problems. None of those who tend to think so have not been taught that there are many beautiful but yet poor countries, but there are no ugly and yet rich countries on the planet. There are a lot of beautiful countries all over the world, but where you can still find people living in extreme poverty, people who face harsh realities of the everyday life, but there is not ugly country where you can’t find all these together holding sway over the emptiness and lack of hope.
Today we face the facts proving that the Urban Renaissance Program, the transformation designed to highlight and reveal the beauty and placing the beauty at the very centre of the program, is not a matter of embellishment but is a genuine economic and social development. The Urban Renaissance Program is an economic and social development program. Taking a look at figures would suffice to understand how much it has changed and how much the economic and social situation can change from the point of view of social breathing all over the country, where we have made a whole chain of interventions under the Urban Renaissance Program that has given Albania a new face.
This is not the end. This is just the first chapter of a book we will keep on writing, trying to extend and expand this chain of transformation beyond the cities’ centres and neighbourhoods to rural areas, where we have recently launched projects and gradual implementation of some of them under the second major program that is the National Rural Renaissance Program.
Albania’s problem is not the beauty and hunger.
Albania’s problem in many of its parts are many other aspects of the citizens’ everyday life, which desperately need to be transformed and which have to do primary with children and the elderly and the opportunities to be given access to the individual and family prosperity and development. But it is true that this whole project that addresses beauty as a lifeboat to emerge once and for all from the overwhelming tide without being able to reach the shore is a winning program, not merely because Skanderbeg Square, the greatest jewel in the crown of this program won such a great acclaim, or simply because the Himara Waterfront and Vlora Seafront Promenade also made it to the final shortlisted city projects finalists of the Barcelona award, but because the figures speak for themselves. And it is not only the figures on the small businesses and self-employment and new jobs that are created and keep creating thanks to these transformations, but also the business turnover figures.
I visited Vlora, a city which is home to many aspiring poets and artists, who for thousands of reasons have picked different path in their life. One of these artists I met told me I was to be “blamed”, because when they returned home they were used to find their children and wives waiting for them at home, while now they ask to meet them at the waterfront promenade. It is of course a humorous way for saying something which in its essence is quite true, because I use to regularly visit the city of Vlora for many years and I know quite well how much Vlora has changed and developed. Whenever you visit Vlora, you would see people, countless families, man, women, children, boys and girls who socialize with each other thanks to the opportunity it has been given them in a whole new urban space. This certainly brings many good things, but it also brings economic development.
If Albania is today a country about which a lot is being talked in investment forums, where investment opportunities in tourism in Europe and the Mediterranean are explored and made, this is directly linked to the attractive power and influence these images have on those who wish and explore the investment opportunities in Albania.
Few days ago, together with the Minister of Tourism, we organized a meeting with an impressive group of foreign investors who are already considering the investment opportunities in building 5- star hotels. It was an extraordinary dinner where I had the opportunity to talk with each and everyone and they all said Tirana deserves all the superlatives and spoke with great enthusiasm about the Albanian coast, not merely as a beauty of nature, but also as a possible development area, with many of its attractions which are already showing their radiant and attractive glow. If we were to thing about building the new Vlora airport four years ago, we would definitely fail in convincing anyone to invest in that airport.
The construction of an airport in the city of Vlora has been repeatedly pledged over years, since electoral campaigns started in Albania. But where was to be found an investor who would be willing to throw money into this pit where everything is missing. The most important coastal city in the country’s south was a city without road entrance. A city you had to enter secretly after taking a turn behind a gas station and crossing a series of potholes in order to access the city. Let alone the city’s coastal part, which was a dark area dotted with illegal buildings in the midst of sewage.
I can cite countless similar examples, but I’m not going to name them one by one, but I just want to highlight the great truth that a space like Skanderbeg Square is a powerful magnet not only to bring people together, who did not have the opportunity to come together in a public space not long time ago. Until yesterday, Tirana had the so-called Blloku neighbourhood, where the youngest people used to come together, or only those who possessed the right financial means could afford, but the area was not the place where the elderly could meet, or where they could go for a walk, let alone for the kids to run.
The Skanderbeg Square not only provides these opportunities, but it is also a powerful magnet for all of those wishing to visit Tirana and Albania.
It is no longer a question of what I can do in this country. The question now is how to do what I want to do. The projects we have already implemented present the best arguments. Of course implementation of these projects has created more expectations and has made many people, who want to live where they live far from the main centres, much more eager to create the atmosphere, the fragrance and the energizing power these spaces create. This is understandable.
Along with the recent major infrastructure developments, we will keep on extending this chain of daily life transformation of the communities across the country by moving to another stage and by starting to chart a completely unexplored territory; that of the agritourism, which will include a significant number of villages with great transformation potential. These villages will soon provide the models for the others to see how what a seemingly impossible thing can lead to a brighter future.
Thank you very much to everyone who believed, who insisted and worked, starting with those who designed the project and who are not here today because of their other commitments, to the worker who planted the very last flower in this wonderful space of the Skanderbeg Square.
I am also pleased that the square belongs to all, including those who have cursed and keep on rejecting it. The square is open to everyone and everyone actually make use of it, just like someone who used to be the protagonist of the fight against the playgrounds project at Tirana Lake Park, a renowned public figure.
The Skanderbeg Square was renovated not only for those who liked it, it was not renovated to disappoint those who opposed the project, but the central square was given a facelift for the children to enjoy, including the children of those who rejected and did whatever it took to destroy it. But Tirana has today a completely renovated central square which makes proud every Albanian of the next generation.
It’s not fun at all, but it’s a dream, a passion which comes at a hefty cost worth every penny to pay for all the kids in this country, and it’s worth double for the kids of those who would have never loved this place to develop in the way it did and those who were incompetent to develop it in any form other than the form of daily ugliness. If history and time were to stop with them, they would have deserved what they built only, a huge pit where they would squash during their whole lifetime, but their children deserve something else and we are here for their children too.
Thank you very much I would be very much pleased to share the prize in parts to appreciate and honour all those people who contributed to the project. We can’t certainly divide it in 2000 parts, although I am convinced everyone would have wished for the smallest part of it to preserve it as a small token of appreciation and memory for a historical contribution they have given to Tirana’s urban transformation and transformation of Albania’s image.
