Preface

I was born in Tirana, my parents too. I thought that living in Tirana city was my privilege, and that everyone, like me, was born there. One day I was walking in the streets of my city with a friend of mine. She came from Kukes, a city in the north-east of Albania. While we were walking, I noticed that she was greeting numerous people in the streets, but I didn’t recognize any of them. I realized that Tirana was no longer only mine. Tirana nowadays is for all those that have come from north, south, east and west of Albania. They might not have a house in the centre of Tirana, they might live kilometres away, on the periphery – the so-called “informal areas” – but they work in Tirana. From their homes, spread over thousands of hectares, they flow like streams that join a river and then disappear again into the chaos of the city.

Related Subject(s): Human Settlements and Urban Issues