Newsletter No.1: Revival of City Squares in Balkan Cities

The project “Revival of City Squares in Balkan Cities” began in January 2011. The project aims to contribute to the revival of city squares as viable public places that foster cultural identity and promote diversity through enforcement of public policies and active community participation.

The lead partner of the project is Co-PLAN, Institute for Habitat Development from Tirana, Albania | while other partners are: the Coalition for Sustainable Development (CSD) from Skoplje, Macedonia; EXPEDITIO from Kotor, Montenegro and Polis University (International School of Architecture and Urban Development Policies from Tirana, Albania.

The project will last for two years, until December 2012.

The project is funded by the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans (CSP) under the Regional Cooperation Projects programme line.

City Squares in Balkan Cities - Background

City squares, as places for democratic and cultural expression in contemporary cities and focal points for civil and social relations, are a vital stimulus to entrepreneurship and development of the cities.

However, over the last two decades, the urban transformations of Balkan cities under the duress of neo-liberal rebuilding projects and globalization desires in continuation demonstrate a remarkable neglect of the public functions of city squares as public spaces. This neglect takes different forms. A common one is the physical neglect and neglect of the soft infrastructure: the role that different communities play in the city, the space where exchange takes place, the grounds where people express their identity through culture and arts. Another is: politicians using city squares for (personal) political experiments and a rehearsal for populist politics (best example of such behavior of politicians is the latest decision about the City Square in Skopje (Skopje 2014 project) that provoked citizens to react or the ongoing debate between local and central government for the main square in Tirana). The issue of city squares has to be understood in a much broader fashion. City squares (and here we think not only of the main square, but of all open public places /city squares) embody the energies of people and therefore we have to understand what city squares mean for the social and cultural expression of citizens and what is needed to bring life back to the city squares.

With this in mind, the project “Revival of City Squares in Balkan Cities” seeks to meaningfully add a share towards creating solid bridges between various actors and facilitate a community-based process that engages a full range of local stakeholders (citizens, professionals, policy makers), and brings people with diverse ideas into dialogue in an inclusive process that produces workable recommendations with significant impacts. As its overall goal, our project aims to contribute to revival of city squares as viable public places that foster cultural identity and promote diversity through enforcement of public policies and active community participation. The action intends to achieve two major specific objectives: to promote national and regional policy discourse on how city squares can be transformed into pulsating community places (indeed, knowledge dissemination is the first step towards introducing new ideas and approaches) and develop a platform for transforming open public spaces into vibrant places that serve community needs.

The aim of the project

As its overall goal, the project “Revival of City Squares in Balkan Cities” aims to contribute to the revival of city squares as viable public places that foster cultural identity and promote diversity through enforcement of public policies and active community participation. The action intends to achieve two major specific objectives: to promote national and regional policy discourse on how city squares can be transformed into pulsating community places and develop a platform for transforming open public spaces into vibrant places that serve community needs.

As the final result, the project should provide policy makers and local officials with tools on how to carry out city square transformation process collaborating with the community.

Project activities

The main activities envisaged with the project are designed to create an overall framework that encompasses elements of systematic approach:

• Examination and analyses of the current use of city squares in 4 cities: Tirana, Durres, Kotor and Skopje and an assessment of potentials for their transformation, through a Survey and a Comparative analysis
• Three Regional workshops for students and young professionals, including architects, spatial planners, artists, etc., one in each of the partners’ counties.
• Consultative process on validation and support of guidelines with the key stakeholders (including public officials, segments of civil society and citizens) through meetings and round tables
• Elaboration of a set of viable guidelines on city square transformation
• Development of local policy documents on city square transformation
• Mapping and networking with organizations/actors that operate nationally or/and in the Balkan region
• Dissemination of practices and knowledge gained in pushing actions forward for the transformation of city squares, through

                -Local websites on revival of city squares
                -Project/event pages on interactive social platforms
                -Project E-newsletters
                -Articles in the Forum A+P
                -Publication “Roadmap for Liveable Cities”
                -Regional Closing Conference

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 Kick off meeting of the project in Tirana

The project started with a kick off meeting organized at Polis University in Tirana, on 17^th and 18^th of February 2011, where the representatives of all the involved organizations took part. During the two days of the meeting the partners agreed on the details and de

fined a plan for the project activities implementation.

Project visual identity

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