Bifurcations arise from projecting challenges on four themes (Water, Food, Energy and Tourism) in a single map.
The Metabolism of Albania – Activating the potential of the Albanian territory
"This approach replaces questions about urbanization as the development of objects by questions about urbanization as a process."
Of course, the challenges in Albania are immense when looked at from the perspective of having to catch up with the rest of Europe. On the other hand, it is good toconsider that all nations, not only in Europe but also in the rest of the world, now face the same challenge as Albania: how to successfully make the transition to the next economy, to a green and low carbon economy in a resilient post-fossil future.
In the past 25 years, rules and planning regulations have never been able to catch up to the rapid social, economic, and political transformations. They have been artificially transplanted to Albania without relating to the actual context. As a consequence, there has never been time to fully consolidate the professional thought on sustainable development, leading to an informal economy that consumes the territory.
Given these tasks, tourism is considered an important opportunity, or rather a driving force. A new development model for a sustainable tourist economy would hand Albania a powerful means to distinguish itself in the Mediterranean area, where its position has remained rather isolated until now. At the same time, this task clearly involves more than touristic ‘business as usual.’ Albania faces nothing less than the challenge of developing a new, integrated spatial strategy that will harmonize and secure the food, water, and energy production for future generations.
At the same time, it is obvious that tasks ranging from urbanization, food production, and energy economy to the securing of climate-proof living and working environments can no longer be performed from a purely functional, morphological, transport, or economic perspective. Such tasks require a rereading of urbanization as a coherent organism, that is, as an urban metabolism: learning to understand urbanization in terms of vital flows of materials such as energy, food, and water. Starting from that notion – urbanization as an ecosystem – the rethinking of spatial development is no longer about laying out locations, but rather about connecting and disentangling material flows. Urban design in this case means coupling flows and creating parallel routes, closing cycles to reduce wastage and providing alternative infrastructures for spin-off. Working with flows also presupposes the ability to alternate between local, regional, and higher levels, between strategy and spatial design, between material flows and the accompanying infrastructure. This approach replaces questions about urbanization as the development of objects by questions about urbanization as a process. It is a dynamic approach that starts at the regional level and ends at the house in the street.
Left to right, top to bottom:
01 — River system features a regime largely aimed at hydropower energy production; 02 — Creating buffer space for peaks in river dynamics could reduce flood risk, improve agriculture irrigation and offer opportunity of energy storage; 03 — Water quality can be improved by treating waste water regionally (treatment plants), city level (updating sewage and storm water capacity) or locally (septic tanks). 04 — Production is mainly concentrated in the north of the country; 05 — Viosa river has potential to supply future development with hydropower; 06 — Renewable energy in other forms could better suit seasonal demand; 07 — Undammed river serves as the backbone of the ecological Viosa region; 08 — Large-scale agro is best located in productive landscapes with good infra connections; 09 — Agro-tourism is an opportunity for food production in proximity to national parks and other tourist destinations; 10 — Subsistance farming profits from collaborating models for upscaling production and distribution and from crop management; 11 — Airport connectivity in Durres-Tirana and Viosë region; 12 — R8 corridor to Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey; 13 — Coastal access by coastal road (blue corridor) or parallel highway (green); 14 — A sea perspective initiates coastal development from the water’s edge.
