Rama calls for creating a metropolis while caring for the environment

TIRANA, Sep. 18 – Tirana Mayor Edi Rama, also leader of the main opposition Socialist Party, said Tuesday that the rule of law, the government’s role and respecting an urban planning of the capital, Tirana, were the main ways to turn Tirana into a metropolitan center. The mayor urged the central government (which is in charge of the territorial integrity as a country) to immediately act to stop the ecological pollution coming from the capital’s hills that serve as Tirana’s lungs.
“The destruction of the eco-system has reached those levels Š(that) it is destroying one of the fundamental resources that guarantees the capital’s public health: Tirana Hills,” he said in an article published by the Gazeta Shqiptare Tuesday.
The mayor said the government should stop the informal development of the capital’s suburbs, where everyone feels free to build what and how he likes it.
The suburbs are being redone with new buildings that totally lack the infrastructure such as systems for water and power supplies, canalization, no green areas, no public squares, no schools and the like.
Rama mentioned as typical examples the Dajti commune and the Zoo park areas and asked Prime Minister Sali Berisha to prevent the same destruction in the Farka commune. He warned that the government should not change the character of some 4,000 hectares in Farka from agricultural land into an urban area with unlimited constructions.
The mayor also said the joint work of all political forces that come to power, when they are in power at the central government or the local authorities, is to stimulate the Tirana Metropolitan Plan which aims at creating a “mother’ city with surrounding “daughter’ towns that create the required space for any activity.
The capital’s mayor also proposed the creation of a national board for Tirana that would periodically sit down and discuss the development of the metropolis and of the whole country.
The meeting organized by President Bamir Topi last week brought together Rama and Berisha who seemed to totally agree with each other’s ideas on creating a metropolitan capital based on a planned urbanization.