Czech Pano
In response to the devastating earthquake of November 2019, when Durrës was still under the dust and the people were still traumatized, a “long-term solution” for the city’s development was solemnly announced. The Albanian-American Development Foundation (AADF) offered a vision, a plan, a model. Big words for a city that was still counting the damage.
While the projects are presented with elegant graphics and international terms, the residents of the historic area face a less aesthetic reality: expropriations, insecurity, homes that risk disappearing, and an institutional silence that rings louder than any promise.
Durrës, we are told, has strategic importance: port, tourism, 3,000 years of history. And for this very reason it needs to be “revitalized.” The irony lies here: the city that has survived empires, invasions, and earthquakes, now needs to be saved from… itself. From its inhabitants. From its old houses.
The TID project is presented as an engine for tourism and economic development. But for many Durrës residents, it looks like the next chapter in the long book of “transformations” that Albania knows all too well: grandiose launches, ambitious declarations, an open construction site, endless patience from citizens.
All of Albania looks like a permanent exhibition of cranes and scaffolding. Every city has an “iconic” project. Every center has a redevelopment. Every square has a vision. But the citizen? He usually only has the relocation notice.
AADF speaks of Integrated Management Plan. Technical term, it sounds serious. But for those who have lived in that area for generations, “integrated management” translates as integrated insecurity. While there is talk of heritage restoration, the very human layers that have kept that heritage alive are at risk of disappearing.
Designers promise a successful TID model. But success for whom?
For the tourist who will stroll through an aesthetically curated center?
For the investor who wants to see value increase?
Or for the family that has to leave the house where they have lived for decades?
We are told that Durrës will be placed on the map of European destinations. As if the city had never existed before. As if the amphitheater had waited for the project to take hold. As if history began with a PowerPoint presentation.
Economic opportunities are the key word. But experience has taught us that in Albania “opportunities” often circulate upwards, while bills flow downwards.
Durrës is not a scenography for seasonal tourism.
It's not a 3D render.
It's not an urban ideas competition.
It is a city with real wounds, with real people, with memories that are not compensated for by property valuation tables.
Revolt is not a fear of development. It is a weariness of development that always comes at a cost to the same people. It is a distrust built by experience.
Because heritage is not a commodity that collapses to make way for another "transformative" construction site.
And the city is not a project.
It's home.
Editorial
