1The issue of heritage is of central importance in Albania, for at least two reasons. First, as the country moved towards a form of isolation, it drifted to the sidelines of European history over the second half of the twentieth century, including within the so-called Eastern bloc. Second, Albania has been through a phase of profound, rapid upheaval over the past thirty years (Pojani, 2011), a time when heritage promotion policies have developed in the global North and then the South. These have not only affected the urbanisation of its capital, Tirana, but also reconfigured the national territory more generally (Jarne, 2018), along with the social and cultural norms in a rural country that is urbanising at great pace.
2With the opening of EU membership talks in 2020, the ideas and values of sustainability and transmission came to the fore, but Albania’s Ottoman, Italian, and Socialist legacies have a long history behind them, and have known fates ranging from preservation to demolition.
3Recent urban and heritage policies are currently engaging with these movements unfolding over lengthy timeframes. The district of Stacioni i Trenit provides a way of examining not some already constituted heritage object, but rather the interplay of determinants and dynamics involving processes of identification, recognition, memory, and heritage transmission. While it is in no way certain that these dynamics will one day lead to the heritagisation of Stacioni i Trenit, analysing them can tell us about the components of heritagisation, while no doubt exceeding this process. By examining the place of heritage in today’s cities, we can shed light on the reasons behind the production of spaces and of social life more generally.
4The definitions of memory, legacy, and heritage are open to discussion. As a precursor to the following arguments, let us note that, here, the term “legacy” will be used to refer to facts (objects, usages, practices) stemming from the past, “heritage” to designate the (in)complete process by which they are collectively recognised and institutionalised, and “memory” to mean the ways in which these forms are brought to mind and made present in individuals’ and social groups’ representations, discourse, and actions. Thus “memory” of agriculture and the railway here refers to collective memories across the city as a whole. In our survey we collected first- and second-hand testimony from people who used or knew these facilities prior to their disappearance, as well as from others who have used these places and remaining traces only since the early 1990s.
5Stacioni i Trenit is the name both of a district adjacent to central Tirana, and that of a 25-hectare wasteland. Tirana central station stood here from the Socialist period until it was destroyed in 2013, with the land on either side of the tracks being used for farming: market gardening on one side, and a livestock market on the other. Some of this land makes up the present wasteland, given over to informal use, and characterised, first, by unresolved ownership issues (with this land being reprivatised after the collectivisation of the Socialist period), and second, by the Tirana 2030 project, under which this space is to become a green park surrounded by upmarket blocks of flats.
6Stacioni i Trenit raises issues relating to land usage, informality, and conflicting meanings and usages. It is less a marginal space than one in which urban and social processes are plastic and elastic, in and via which a certain number of spontaneous endogenous—but not isolated—controls may operate. Two “legacies” provide a way of exploring the place heritage issues hold in these dynamics: agricultural uses and the railway, both sometimes associated with a particular form of nostalgia for the Socialist period. This case study may be used to shed light on the place of rurality and agricultural heritage in a process of social and urban transformation. These legacies are ambivalent and controversial, attracting more opposition than consensus. They come across as fragmentary objects—just as the vast Stacioni i Trenit wasteland seems fragmented—, leading us to examine the fragmentation of society, which they perhaps reveal, and the fragmentation of time, which may have produced them.
- 1 Although building works started on blocks of flats in Stacioni i Trenit in 2022, this did not affec (...)
7The data presented in this article comes from a multidisciplinary project combining urban planning, architecture, sociology, and anthropology, and was gathered during three phases of field enquiry between 2018 and 2020, to be continued through to 2025.1 These combine surveys, participant observations, interviews with institutions, inhabitants, and users, and immersion workshops by postgraduate students.
- 2 In French, the word for heritage, patrimoine, has even sparked debate, for example with the return (...)
8Exploring the place of heritage in the city raises the question of what exactly we are talking about when discussing urban heritage. This includes natural sites (rivers, for example) and built places, hence material elements, as well as components defined as intangible—in contrast to the still predominant reference to the built environment—, such as habitual actions, cultures, practices, and memories transmitted either orally or in writing. This diversity raises the question of who puts forward these definitions: spontaneous social practice, (public or private) institutional activity, or scientific research. It also raises the question of how. UNESCO’s world heritage lists, national heritage laws, and decentralised approaches inherited from local eco-museums in 1970s France, for example (Nichifor, 2020), show that there is an institutional gradient which may mirror actions (of recognition or opposition) stemming from inhabitants or users and evolving towards structured forms (Melé, 2004). There are thus many objects and ways of defining them.2 Via these many objects, heritage represents “a socially recognised, material and intangible legacy to be transmitted to future generations” (Veschambre, 2007), whose definition is connected to usages, practices, representations, instituted schemes, and social relations.
9In the humanities and social sciences, the term “heritage” has therefore given way to that of “heritagisation” (Gigot, 2012). Heritage is no longer thought of as a natural essence or imminent reality in the world, shared by all. Instead, it is perceived as a socially produced construct, whose stages need analysing (Bourdin, 1984). In this investigation, heritage is bound up with other social determinants. Agents’ purposes—whether they are convergent, diverging, or quite simply separate—are many and varied, and may target results at some remove from the initial heritage phenomenon: examples include land speculation in historic centres, political contests involving territorial and identity struggles (Bosredon, Grégoris, & Bergery, 2019), or historical and memory narratives (Girard, 2015). Viewing heritage phenomena as a process provides a way of exploring, at the level of protagonists, the connections and contradictions between the reasons driving conservation, economic development, and tourist activity (Gravari-Barbas & Jacquot, 2014). As we shall see, in Tirana the legacies of one district undergoing transformation link up with dimensions and fields of action extending beyond local memories and objects.
10Lastly, this paper will follow a five-stage analytical approach based on work conducted in France, Turkey, Brazil, and currently Albania. The first stratum designates heritage as natural and evident, as something which is accepted and rarely discussed. The second relates back to the above analysis in terms of heritagisation processes. Heritage objects and phenomena proceed from situated social constructs. The third and heuristic stratum, based on this observation, inverts the line of reasoning: heritage provides a way of revealing and tackling other specific rationales (for example, making it easier to address them when a heritage issue is more patent, or because protagonists overemphasise heritage to downplay other issues). The two final strata explore heritage extension and inflation from two distinct angles. Following a circular process, scientific output about heritage is taken up by institutional stakeholders and users, thereby adding to knowledge, instruments, and methods, and helping expand the field and the number of heritagised objects and phenomena. The fifth stratum is ontological and anthropological, looking for the reasons for this extension in temporal processes, which may be shared by distant social and cultural contexts. Under this hypothesis, the increase in heritagisation accompanies a changing relationship to being, time, and finitude, following a process of disenchantment/re-enchantment with the world (in Max Weber’s sense), or of displacement. With the weakening of traditional responses to the problem of finitude (religion and philosophy), other responses are created, some of which are more fragile and may lead to lesser acceptance that things end, die, and disappear. We may thus observe a greater striving for conservation, including of elements inherited not from the past but from the present, in other words, legacies of the present, a present which ought to last forever. To a certain extent, the theme of—economic, social, and environmental—sustainability could be explored from this angle.
11The approach taken to our case study of Tirana primarily addresses the second and third strata. A reminder of Albania’s general context will help situate it in space and time.
12An illustration of the tortuous path taken by heritage issues in Albania may be provided by the statues of Enver Hoxha, Lenin, Stalin, and various anonymous heroes of Socialism held in a courtyard behind the National Arts Gallery. Over the course of the years, these were made, erected, and then taken down (including during the Socialist period), and whether damaged or in good state of repair, they have been placed in storage rather than destroyed, and set aside without being completely hidden. This may be seen as a failing, an act of resignation, or else as a form of prudence and restraint stemming from a bumpy history made up of stark choices, or else as the expression of divergences that might stir up conflict which people wish to avoid, or are unsure how to manage, even how to bring about.
Fig. 1: statues in storage behind the National Arts Gallery (source: authors 2018)
13Albanian territory became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late fourteenth century, before leaving it on independence in 1912. Albania then passed under Italian influence in the 1930s, before becoming a Socialist republic after the Second World War and through to 1990. The change in political regime and transition to a market economy saw two years of instability and deregulation. A major crisis threatened to lead to civil war in 1997, then the country experienced the wars in Kosovo in the late 1990s. In 2009 Albania applied to join the EU, and talks began in 2020. Over the course of this history of construction, destruction, and national and cultural narratives, what productions may be or have been considered as heritage, and how have they been addressed and handled over successive periods?
14Although Albania, deemed peripheral, was not home to any of the great constructions typical of the Ottoman golden age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the imprint on ways of living and built forms have nonetheless been real (Kiel, 2015). 97% of these buildings were destroyed during the 1940s. In the 1930s the country passed under the influence of Fascist Italy. Italian urban planners applied a model of colonial urban intervention, but unlike in Africa they promoted nationalism, especially through monumental buildings and squares. They focussed their attention on the North-South thoroughfare, still the main axis in the current urban layout. Its juxtaposition with the low buildings of the old Ottoman centre in a still compact city has given rise to condescending comments about this “boulevard without a town” (Aliaj, Lulo, & Myftiu 2003, p. 38). Albania was occupied by Italian forces in 1939, then the Germans in 1943, before being liberated by Communist partisans in 1944.
- 3 The People's Republic of Albania was declared on 10 January 1946.
15Between 1946 and 1990,3 Albania adopted several positions. Emancipation from all past oppressions was declared, many Ottoman buildings were destroyed, while Italian buildings were reused out of economic and practical necessity. In post-war Tirana these provided the only basis for modern planning (Mëhilli, 2017). Urbanisation plans were not drawn up until 1957, and then again in the 1970s. At this period, urbanisation consisted not only in destroying or constructing sites, but also in dividing populations into urban and rural zones, with the forced displacement of families, captured in the expression “touched by urbanisation”—"Të prekur nga urbanizimi”. The other major operation affected land ownership. The unequal distribution of land in Ottoman days was initially replaced by partial collectivisation with an egalitarian society of small farmers, profoundly modifying this mainly rural country, followed by total collectivisation and the abolition of private property in 1976. In towns, the built environment was nationalised. In housing, owner occupiers were allowed to remain in place, though in certain cases accommodation was re-affected, with the progressive densification of occupancy (several households per flat). Individuals displaced to towns were housed in newly constructed blocks of flats. There is an entire body of images, still partly available, portraying these vast housing projects in a positive light. In Tirana, the capital, large buildings were constructed in the Soviet architectural style: the Palace of Culture (1963), the National History Museum (1981), the International Hotel (1979), and government buildings, especially along the central thoroughfare. But these new buildings were not wholly ideologically oppressive (Pojani, 2015). As in other Eastern European countries at the time, they left room for local expression and accorded a place to the architectural vernacular of these peripheral lands. Skanderbeg Square, the stage and centrepiece of these constructions, is still considered as a place where these different historical strands draw together: the Socialist and Italian buildings around the vast central area make room for the Ottoman clock tower and the Ethem Bey Mosque, joined after the change in political regime by a great Orthodox Christian church, the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ (2012), behind the Ministry of Agriculture building. As we shall see later, there is no such consensus about the major industrial buildings of the Socialist period (kombinat), which at the time lay on the outskirts.
Fig. 2: Changes in Skanderbeg Square, in the 1930s (anonymous), 1980s (Gegprifit, 1990), 2010s (Only Tradition, https://flickriver.com/photos/44425842@N00/4581033562/), and 2019 (source: authors 2019).
Pedestrian use predominated throughout the monarchic then Socialist period, then in the 1990s the square became a traffic hub, before shared usage led to the square being pedestrianised once again in the second half of the 2010s.
16In the new period, opening in 1990, the issue of legacies and heritage protection became connected to several others: rapid urban expansion (with the population doubling in twenty years), the explosion in informal building for housing, shops, and businesses (Lubonja, 2015), the reprivatisation of land, and the way memory engaged with the days of socialism (Lelaj, 2017) as this emerged in eastern bloc countries at this time (Coudroy de Lille, 2009). After two chaotic years, political power stabilised, and planning actions were undertaken as the country opened to unregulated capitalism, then, more recently, with the launch of a local tourist industry. We may distinguish between actions whose scope was international, national, or pertaining solely to the city.
17Four historic and natural sites were added to the UNESCO world heritage list: 1) Butrint archaeological site, 2) the historic centres of Berat and Girokaster, 3) the primaeval beech forests of the regions of Kukës and Elbasan, and 4) the Lake Ohrid region (shared with North Macedonia). The state’s obligation to protect national heritage is enshrined in the constitution of 21 October 1998. Law 9048 of 7 April 2003 extended the definition of intangible heritage, further expanded by law 9490 of 13 March 2006, and then by two amendments to law 9048. The Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth, and Sports oversees the application of these laws relating to elements of folklore and traditional music (Bedalli, 2013).
- 4 Ministria e Kulturës, Sekretari i Pergjithshëm, 2017, decree no. 325 of 24.04.2017 https://www.publ (...)
- 5 ResPublica, 2018, Ndryshon Zona Historike e Tiranës. Qeveria zgjeron hapësirën ku lejohet ndërtimi,(...)
18In the late 1990s, a first “green and clean” programme was launched by Tirana’s mayor, Edi Rama. This consisted in painting the outside of buildings and injecting colour into the city to revert to its Albanian identity. As of 2000, protection of the city centre became more organised. Cabinet decree no. 180 of 13 April 2000 ordered that illegal constructions were to be demolished in its perimeter, and that the components of what is called the Ensemble of Cultural Monuments were to be preserved and restored. In addition to demolishing buildings which were not part of this ensemble, the government also put an end to any new building in this perimeter. This decree was replaced by decree 325 of 24 April 2017, “Proclaiming the historic centre of Tirana to be protected and applying specific regulations for managing this perimeter and its surroundings”.4 This decree divided the zone around the city’s central thoroughfare into two new areas, and allowed new building there. This zone included the land where the National Theatre and other cultural buildings had once stood.5
19Heritage action is often backed up or guided by projects for sites or else to resolve particular issues such as when informal constructs are erected in public spaces or around large buildings—for instance clearing the kiosks which had overrun several squares, including Skanderbeg Square (Pojani, 2015). The former public spaces of the Socialist town went through a process of being occupied, saturated, and reduced (Ter Minassian, 2009). Whereas in Erevan, for example, it was private investors who drove this recuperation of public space, in Tirana it was initially working-class buildings (housing and kiosks), before legal cafés and shops moved in, finally followed by big developments such as malls and blocks of flats.
20In the 2000s competitions were held to develop and preserve the centre of Tirana, whose officially recognised heritage consisted almost solely of big Italian and Socialist buildings. To appease tensions, external and foreign tenders were invited so as to provide a fresh and neutral look at different elements of the past, some of which were still painful. The central square was cleared, but disagreements persisted. The question of which past or pasts to select was systematically difficult, as were the traces of the war and of NATO bombardments in Belgrade, for instance. And it was a broader problem. At this period many projects were afoot for large-scale amenities (a stadium to the south, a boulevard to the north) and private property developers had started works on high-rise towers. Finally political conflict slowed work on public planning and programmes, sometimes to the benefit of private initiatives which were given free rein—for example, transforming Bloku (the former nomenklatura district) into a neighbourhood of bars and restaurants (Pojani, 2015). The Tirana 2030 project, which we shall return to later, followed the international model of public-private partnerships.
- 6 Exit News, 2020, Tirana Municipality Gets Permit to Reconstruct Pyramid, placed online 16 June 2020 (...)
- 7 Bejko J, 2017, The Condomisation of Memory, Illyria, placed online 16 March 2017, http://illyriapre (...)
21When EU membership talks started in 2020, the municipality of Tirana wished its action to be guided by the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability (Les Ateliers, 2021). In a country marked by strong emigration, a feeling of communality had to be built up with which people could positively identify. Several controversies illustrate current difficulties: what to do with the pyramid (a museum erected to honour Enver Hoxha after his death, which then became an exhibition hall),6 protests about demolishing the city’s National Theatre, dating from the Italian period, and the kombinats, vast industrial sites (textile, meat, and motors) to the south-west of the city (Çunga & Zari, 2018). Nor was the built environment the only topic of debate, which also extended to films produced by the Socialist film industry,7 and the traditional practices of rural and mountainous regions (vendettas and sworn virgins).
22The question of land is an important aspect of the heritage issue, and also applies to Stacioni i Trenit. It became especially acute when the regime changed and there was a flurry of informal construction (Triantis & Vatavali, 2016). This was due, first, to the shift from a planned economy to a phase of deregulation which tended to concentrate and agglomerate populations around urban centres. It was also due to the commonly shared wish among the urban and rural population (Civici & Jouve, 2009) to own their own home at any price, and to (once again) become property owners against the backdrop of renewed economic insecurity (Pojani, 2011). The problem shifted in the 2000s towards the issue of regularising informal buildings, then, in Stacioni i Trenit, to that of what was to become of their owners, practices, and local memories with the announced transformation of the district.
23The district of Stacioni i Trenit lies just north of the centre of Tirana. Its history has alternated between long periods of stability in use and in its built environment, and brief periods of upheaval. We shall examine the wasteland, which after the political change of 1990 assumed the name of the district surrounding it.
24Until 1945 the sector lay outside the city. During the Socialist period, the rail network was expanded. A railway line and Tirana station were inaugurated in 1949 on the edge of the city centre. The farmland on either side of the tracks became public amenities while retaining their agricultural function: on the east lay market gardens organised as collective greenhouses, and on the west the market for livestock brought in from the countryside.
25The 1990 change in political regime ushered in two years of upheaval. Until then, Socialist planning had sought to balance rural and urban development to counter the hegemony of towns, dampening the capital’s development (Jarne, 2018). But the regime change initiated a period of strong economic growth partly spurred by rural exodus, and given the relatively weak institutional oversight there was little to hinder informal construction (Lubonja, 2015). This ran counter to the policy to re-privatise land which had been collectivised during the Socialist period. Settling this issue went through various stages in step with changes in government. As of the 2000s, the state decided to take back control over town building, significantly reducing the informal construction of small buildings via a policy to regularise buildings erected before 1997, backed up by strict measures to prevent further informal projects. An official body was set up to manage the legalisation process (ALUIZNI), together with a building police to intervene in the event of expropriation or else to expel occupants without proof of ownership.
Fig. 3: General maps and detailed maps of Stacioni i Trenit during the Socialist period and in 2020.
Source: the authors.
- 8 The population of the district has increased, but our surveys at the municipality indicate that the (...)
26Farming activities on Stacioni i Trenit were initially abandoned, then the station was demolished and the tracks dismantled in 2013. The vegetable greenhouses disappeared, and today the zone is completely built up. But the western part is still a wasteland strewn with stones and rubble, covering an area of 25 hectares. In 1991 a strip of informal buildings were erected in the middle of the zone, dividing it in two. Subsequently the pre-1945 owners and their descendants defended their land from new buildings, which is one of the reasons why the sector is in its current state.8 In certain cases, the owners of the land delegated a form of guardianship to the informal users and inhabitants of the strip of housing: the owners tolerated their presence if they prevented or warded off any new buildings deemed more threatening (Muçi & Dorso, 2021).
27This zone is currently home to several activities: an informal morning market (an open-air spillover from the nearby covered market), pasturage (especially for sheep, a few goats, and cows), waste salvaging (by Rom families residing in a district further north), domestic uses (households, dog sheds, chicken runs, small gardens), and use trails leading to the new boulevard and adjacent streets, as well as for walks and playing, by families and by elderly people who gather stones to make tables for playing cards or dominoes, and all forms of socialising between people irrespective of age and gender.
28After the brief period of upheavals in 1991-1992, a new period of stability took hold in this sector. Two events then introduced change, one already underway, the other getting started, both as part of the Tirana 2030 project conducted by the national government and the municipality against the backdrop of a reaffirmed policy of urban transformation in the capital (Aliaj, 2009). Tirana 2030 is a public-private partnership, whose master plan has been drawn up by Grimshaw, a British architectural practice, with projects to be awarded to developers project by project. Works on Bulevardi i Ri commenced with the demolition of the central station in 2013. This new boulevard will extend the central thoroughfare of the city inherited from the Italian layout, and will join the city centre to the river and the recent urbanised districts to the north. Constructing it involves demolishing parts of the informal districts. The new boulevard currently runs alongside the wasteland on its entire eastern edge. One of the next stages directly concerns the Stacioni wasteland, which is to become a green central park surrounded by blocks of flats which will be more upmarket than the housing in the surrounding districts.
29Land ownership is a point of tension. Whereas restitution and regularisation procedures are in place elsewhere, virtually nothing has been done here. This situation leaves greater scope to decision-makers in determining how to effect pre-emptive property purchases and properly compensate in the light of prevailing conditions and land values. We observed individual initiatives by small owners and informal occupiers, sometimes going as far as legal proceedings, but there was no structured collective movement.
30This general context allows us to situate the issue of legacies. The two projects for the boulevard and central park bring the current legacy uses of the site into question, giving rise to actions and discourse about these legacies.
31Dismantling the agricultural facilities from the Socialist period has not put an end to the place being used for farming and smallholding. Pasturage and to a lesser extent gardening and small animal rearing still exist as practices, and were a topic of explanation and justification during interviews. Other protagonists are involved in this endogenous or bottom-up-up legacy, found alongside the railway legacy fashioning the urban shape (the boulevard layout) and recently taken up by memory actions. Surveys identified the expression of nostalgia for the days of Socialism, in the form of regret or anger.
32Let us leave to one side the issue of family ownership of land. It raises questions about legacy and transmission by individuals and families rather than that of collective or national heritage, but it plays just as large a role in producing the form of the city and social relations there. The unsettled question of land restitution plays a large part in the processes transforming the site. It impacts on forthcoming pre-emption and compensation procedures, as well as exerting a longer-term influence on mechanisms to reappropriate assets and hand then down within a family. The owner of a plot of land at Stacioni i Trenit summed up a situation affecting several families: “I know all about the history of this wasteland. My parents own land there. We are still waiting for the title deeds, the procedures have been dragging on for twenty years [...]. The government is drawing out the legalisation procedures for there are interests at work. In the meantime, people come to tacit agreements. Even though there has been no shortage of disputes over the years. My brothers had to defend our land by force. Others prefer to rent out their plot to shepherds who use it to pasture sheep or goats, while keeping an eye on any outside occupants”.
- 9 Fragmentation as a social phenomenon is linked to divides between social groups, meanings, and prac (...)
33Agriculture, the train, and to a certain extent how people relate to the Socialist past raised—respectively and sometimes concomitantly—the issues of identifying a heritage, maintaining it, transmitting it, and interpreting the past in the light of the present. They show how these elements are caught up in the relations and interactions accompanying the transformation of a space. The site and memory components seem fragmented,9 as does the process to evoke and use them, which is disorganised and very ambivalent depending on who one talks to. We shall now look at what the mobilisation of these legacies in words and deeds can tell us about the heritage process itself, then, by extension, what it reveals of the broader process of urban transformation.
34This exploration will start by examining the persistence of farming activities on the central part of Stacioni i Trenit, before looking at the traces of railway memories linked to the site and how they are apprehended.
35Although the greenhouses have completely disappeared, visible traces remain of the former livestock market. But their foundations, hidden by long grass, only take up a tiny part of the 25 hectares of wasteland. There are few trees on this vast stony meadows, which is covered in low vegetation of varying height depending on the season, providing favourable conditions for pasturage. This is the main daily practice perpetuating the agricultural use of the site, transpiring in less structured form and shifting over the course of the day and week, as part of a shared practice (alongside other informal uses).
36Flocks of sheep graze on the entire wasteland. As during the Socialist period, the shepherds hail from the north (particularly the district of Shkodër), but rather than coming down from the plateaus most of them live in the city’s outskirts. They know the place well. They are often about fifty years old and knew the earlier period. They praise the fact that the site has been maintained and preserved as it is: “we live further off, in the districts on the other side of the river. We come here because there is nowhere else with so big a prairie. It’s good for the sheep, the grass is high and it’s a large space”.
37A few cows graze in the northern part of the wasteland. There are always a few animals in the large walled enclosure to the north-east. There are goats among the flocks and herds. There are also poultry yards, chicken runs, and dog kennels in two places: around the central strip of houses, acting as extensions to them, and around the houses dotted across the northernmost part.
Fig. 4: pasturage and small livestock rearing on Stacioni i Trenit
(source: authors 2018, 2019, and 2020)
- 10 As things stand, the possibility of the sector being gentrified is only a hypothesis. The documents (...)
38This perpetuation of agricultural practice contrasts with the aspect of the surrounding town. The building of the new boulevard with its pared back lines throws this perpetuation of practice into sharp relief, making it look like a difference or a singularity. This is one of the elements bringing it into view, raising the issue of legacy. This is bolstered by the fact that the transformation is not only of a neighbourhood but of the site itself, which is to become a central park surrounded by upmarket blocks of flats.10
39There is thus a tension both in terms of practice (with the threat of disappearance) and representation (the respective images of two different worlds conveyed by stakeholders and social relations). Locally, farming may be experienced and described as a positive legacy, as stated by a woman running a grocery kiosk in the centre of the wasteland: “Before 1990 there were no houses here. Originally [before 1945], there were private fields, then the state took everything to build fruit and vegetable greenhouses. There was also a large livestock market which was easy for villagers to get to since the railway station was just next to it”. Like her, the shepherds feel the threat now weighing on them: “this is our living, if there’s no wasteland we don’t know what will become of us”. The wasteland inhabitants and users we interviewed stated that they wanted to carry on with their activities. Pasturage and animal rearing are well accepted. During the phase of upheaval in 1991-1992, the arrival of shepherds from the North was viewed as a perpetuation, not an invasion. This is still visible today in the fact that they are viewed positively and tend to their animals alongside other practices, as explained by a mother living on the central strip: “children have been playing here for years. It’s very good for us, we sit down nearby and watch through our windows. It’s reassuring [...]. the land belongs to our neighbour, it’s a private plot. When the grass grows, he puts his cows here. Then the children have to find a new playground”. Agreements reached with owners awaiting regularisation have helped stabilise this positive recognition of the presence of farming and smallholding culture in the city centre. There is similar recognition for the sale of vegetables which is still tolerated in nearby streets, alongside food shops.
40Farming and smallholding culture may be identified as a legacy engendering divergent interpretations. In the early 1990s the rural population stood at 70%. But this has changed after thirty years of rapid change interspersed with crises, and representations have likewise changed. The proportion of young adults who migrate is now a major national problem. Some of the population aspires to German, British, Swiss, or American standards. A 2020 study by the Institute of Economic and Social Studies published in the magazine Monitor in 2021 found that 79% of Albanian students wished to leave the country and emigrate to Western Europe, up from 65% in a comparable 2018 study. One of the main reasons was deteriorating economic conditions, with the preferred destinations being Germany (31.1%), the United States (13.8%), Italy (11.4%), Great Britain (10.4%), France (7.7%), Switzerland (3.7%), Turkey (2.9%), and Greece (2.7%).11 These aspirations were clearly present in our field surveys: “I studied here because I didn’t have the money to study abroad, but I hope to go work abroad. Perhaps in the US where I have relations. A lot of people leave”. This discourse is based on positive reasons (what people are looking for), as well as negative reasons (what they want to leave behind) based on a harsh diagnosis of the local situation and an (informed or fantasised) image of European culture as opposed to the supposed backwardness of Albanian culture. Wastelands and pasturage are identified as a legacy, but a burdensome one to be shaken off. On occasions it is a matter of siding with a targeted social group said to possess the right codes: “it’s not the pasturage which is a problem, although the animals may be perceived as dirty by people living in the capital,” according to a woman living in one of the blocks of flats on the northern edge of Stacioni i Trenit, who makes a distinction between the real inhabitants of the capital and outsiders, following a line of reasoning frequently used in many contexts. This negative vision is, for that matter, well perceived by those favourable to the agricultural legacy. This may be illustrated by a scene, partly carried out in body language, during an interview with a woman selling things in a kiosk: “‘I’ve got a bit of curd, do you want half?’ ‘No, leave, now!’ ‘Shall I give you some?’ ‘Yes, fine, but not now.’” The woman running the kiosk looked at us with embarrassment, and signalled to her friend that we should not be witnessing this discussion, which was part of the informal economic circuits found on the wasteland. This sort of mutual support between poor people based on bartering agricultural produce, though still very much present, is associated with a negative and backward image, in comparison to the more individualistic conception of social life and the image of a supposedly Western city. There is an opposition between the practice and the representation of the practice, and people are aware of this mismatch. The agricultural legacy is clearly identified, but it separates groups.12
41Institutions approach the issue from a different angle. A major concern in the preparatory documents for Tirana 2030 we have been able to examine is maintaining green zones in the city, linked to environmental preoccupations at a time when Albania is adopting international standards. More recently, the ideas of inclusion and transmission acknowledge the rural and smallholding tradition, examining how this may tie in with the modern city (Les Ateliers, 2021), but without really drawing on existing practices. As we observed in urban planning workshops conducted by students at the Polytechnic University of Tirana, issues tend to focus on the geographical connection between an urban centre and agricultural hinterland, or on developing an agricultural hub in the future Tirana-Durrës conurbation. These focuses often lend themselves well to an approach based on (participative) top-down planning and programming, rather than starting from what exists and what people do, which in several places is under threat from operations in progress.
42The question of the railway also has a particular place in the capital’s urban transformation process: it is present in the recent past and in the way people handle memories of his past, but also in urban projects which are already underway or under discussion, and, lastly, in the representations of inhabitants confronted with or involved in these changes.
43After independence in 1912, segments of railway were built for industrial or military purposes. The initial network was built by the Austrian Empire in 1916-1917. The main line connected Shkodër in the north to Tirana via Lezhe and Vorë. Another line linked Vorë, on the edge of Tirana, to Durrës, then Kavaje, Rrogozhine, and Elbasan. This initial network was 400 kilometres long in all, but after the withdrawal of Austrian troops it was dismantled and the shipped to Austria via the port at Durrës. In the 1930s, an Italian mining company rebuilt part of the network, but it was not until the end of the Second World War that the Socialist government set about creating a proper network, linking up the existing segments and building new lines for freight and passengers, using a wider, standard gauge. Work started on this long-term project in 1947, intermittently mobilising contingents of workers and students, and finally reaching a bit over 400 kilometres by the end of the century. At the fall of the Communist regime, certain portions were in a very bad state of repair. In the 2000s, shortly before it was demolished, there were five sets of tracks in Tirana station and ten trains per day.
- 13 Xhajanka E., 2018, Eksporti i naftës, rehabilitohet linja hekurudhore Fier-Vlorë Agjencia Telegrafi (...)
44The little station built in the 1930s on the edge of the city centre only had one platform. The central station resulting from the works launched in 1947 was inaugurated two years later, in 1949, and subsequently extended on several occasions (Sivignon, 1975). As of 1991, the new regime decided to prioritise road over rail, and several lines were closed. The national rail company, Hekurudha Shqiptare, which had been in operation since 1950, survived the regime change of 1991, remaining a publicly owned company, but in 2005 it was decided to open rail to competition, and segments started to be renovated under public-private partnerships.13 Initial steps towards expanding rail transport in the light of environmental concerns, against the backdrop of EU membership talks, has recently resulted in the idea of rebuilding Tirana Central Station, which could lie at the northern end of the new boulevard.
45Yet this renewed interest in rail is recent, and limited. In 2013 the central station was demolished and by the end of the year work started on the new boulevard, following the course of the old railway tracks. This gave rise to the demolition of informal houses. We witnessed several clashes in April 2019 during works near the river: police units intervened to enable works engines to access the site and prevent families from returning to the piles of rubble.
46In the second half of the twentieth century, the station represented something important in the city, with rail transport amounting to progress for the country as a whole. There are few sources, but films, images, and texts which have recently come to light show traces of these various stages in the past: initially lines for freight (transporting ore), which were progressively opened to passenger transport, before the network expanded to Elbasan and Fier in the centre (1974), Prenjas and Guri i Kuq to the east (1979), and the Laç-Shkodër line to the north (1982). This railway past is now an object of remembrance.
Fig. 5: the platforms at the central station in the 1970s (Gegprifti, 1990), the station in 2013, and pasturage alongside the tracks in 2012 (Borova, 2019)
47In 2018, the Hemingway Fan Club Albania started to renovate an old locomotive decommissioned in 1986, in order to install it on the site of the former station demolished five years earlier (Çunga & Zari, 2018). The association, run by three brothers and based at the Hemingway Bar near Skanderbeg Square in the centre, one kilometre south of Stacioni i Trenit, submitted the project to the municipal authorities, who gave their assent. The mayor issued a permit allowing the locomotive to be sited there, and the association funded the operation: “we launched the project, followed the administrative process and the restoration work from A to Z… and we financed all of it”. The locomotive is now state property, and in tandem with the Ministry of Transport the municipality is in charge of its upkeep and looks after the organisation and authorisations for various activities, such as school visits or jazz concerts staged by the Hemingway bar. The municipal authorities agreed to the project, but people interviewed recently at City Hall stated that they their role went no further than administering the operation. The installation has attracted praise for the three brothers’ work. But in a town undergoing rapid change, it has also triggered nostalgic reactions about a recent past known to many. The locomotive lies at the point of intersection between a drive to create places and symbols in a town seeking to become more international, and issues relating to collective ties and memory.
Fig. 6: locomotive installed on the new boulevard on the site of the former railway station
(source: authors 2019)
48Several controversies marked 2018: the project to demolish the National Theatre, the demolition of the Natural Science Museum, and questions over what to do with the pyramid and the tractor kombinat. The case of Stacioni i Trenit offers a way of exploring interwoven rationales: railway heritage, how memory engages with the Socialist period, and the broader recognition of shared legacies among the population of the city and country as a whole.
- 14 Gjika, Alqi, 2009, Hekurudha Shqiptare, Si u ndertua ne menyre vullnetare, https://web.archive.org/ (...)
- 15 Zari, Eda, 2020, “S’ka mo qofte… ke treni!” Peizazhe Të Fjalës, online magazine, placed online 13 F (...)
49Promoting the rail legacy of Stacioni i Trenit was part of a larger remembering of family and collective memories which had been trampled underfoot by transformations to the city. The plaque placed on the locomotive by the Hemingway association summons up this memory: “It is here to remind us of the stations, which are stations of life, with their histories and emotions forming the essence of the Albanian soul, of the love keeping families alive, and of the distances covered by this locomotive” (Çunga & Zari, 2018, p.2). Nevertheless, the most common argument put forward is recognition for the work accomplished by those who built this equipment, who maintained it, and who worked there: “another more personal reason is that our grandfather worked on building the first Albanian rail network in the years 1945-1950”. Works carried out during the period running from 1947 to 1989 have been identified, backed up by films and photos from the archives.14 These actions and testimonies by stakeholders and civil society pertain less to the Socialist regime than to recognising work accomplished and acknowledging a collective experience: “it was quickly forgotten that 29,000 people (men and women) worked night and day to build this station. The value of this station resides in respecting and remembering their work”.15 The association’s plaque closes on a similar sentiment, “this final voyage illustrates the infinite sacrifices of people who spilt their sweat to make these locomotives move, who built these roads uniting people, and who managed to fire the imagination of each and every child. This locomotive brought a wind of freedom and change across Albania. Because of all it symbolises, it is not the locomotive of the past but the Locomotive of the Future. With the gratitude of us all” (Çunga & Zari, 2018, p.2).
50This remembrance takes place against a backdrop of controversies surrounding projects to transform the city which threaten several edifices inherited from earlier times, and especially from the Socialist period, just like the station. Three groups of stakeholders may be identified: institutions running development projects (the government, municipality, and property developers), inhabitants and users (in this instance, of Stacioni i Trenit and the surrounding districts), and associations and civil society (the media and the association involved in installing the locomotive).
51The House of Leaves, the former headquarters of the Sigurimi (the intelligence services), and the Bunker Museum of Victims of Totalitarianisms exemplify actions by national and municipal institutions relating to the Socialist past, focusing on criticising the dictatorship. But at the same time, over the course of the 2000s, competitions to develop and conserve major edifices targeted foreign companies in order to provide a more distanced view on this past. Successive governments over the past thirty years (the centre-left Socialist Party and the right-wing Democratic Party) have oscillated between easing tensions, rampant speculation, and political conflict. But memories of the past shape post-Socialist political discourse (Lelaj, 2017): several figures from both parties are former members of the Socialist government, and denounce their past involvement at the drop of a hat. Calling in foreign companies can be used to screen decision-makers from public debate. It may further be hypothesised that heritagisation actions privilege objects triggering less discussion (UNESCO natural and archaeological sites, and the intangible heritage of musical traditions).
- 16 Instituti për Demokraci, Media dhe Kulturë, Institute for Democracy, Media, and Culture.
52The representations and values inhabitants may attach to the Socialist past and its material traces are equally complex. In our field surveys, we detected traces of nostalgia for the Socialist period, expressed by attachment to the social conditions and works of the still fairly recent past, since directly experienced by much of the population. In the case of Albania, and in the light of the data collected, this nostalgia is not channelled towards the forms of fetishisation or merchandisation characteristic of ostalgia, for example, as studied in the former GDR (Offenstadt, 2018). The three stalls in the renovated covered market selling objects, clothing, insignia, and documents bearing the insignia of the Communist Party of the People’s Army (Pazar i Ri) are incidental. While few studies have hitherto examined perceptions of the Socialist past, a 2016 OSCE survey found that half of those interviewed had a positive opinion of it. (Godole & Idrizi, 2019). The study put forward two hypotheses to explain this—incomplete “de-communisation”, and discontent stemming from economic and social conditions—, and in response the IDMC held a conference in 2017.16
53On Stacioni i Trenit, once we had made contact, daily users told us how they viewed the past, its traces, and change. Those involved in farming or informal trade had often seen their social and economic conditions deteriorate after 1990: “For poor people, it was better under Enver Hoxha”. Some of the elderly people who used stones as makeshift dominoes tables could react harshly: “tell me, do you really think that if we had any choice we would be sitting here on the ground, like dogs? If we had money to sit in the cafés, do you think we would be here?”. Change and the future are viewed as a form of impoverishment: “Go and take a photo of our dear Prime Minister plonking his arse in chairs worth millions of euros, who is continuing to plunge the country into poverty”. Inhabitants from the surrounding areas are sometimes even more bitter, though their criticisms relate as much to regret for the past as to condemnation of the present: “many buildings don’t have permits, 50%. The problem is the big buildings, corruption. The powerful pay to have the right to build without authorisation. But small buildings end up being razed to the ground”. Places of the past, public spaces, and social stratification sometimes intersect: “there are sharks everywhere, and they have taken the public spaces. Over there they used to be the Natural Science Museum, a marvellous public space where I went, where we all went. They took it away, they turned it into a twenty-four-storey block of flats […]. What’s inside? Anything and everything, flats, offices, especially shops, shopping centres. But who buys stuff? Who can buy all that? Nobody. We are a small country and not wealthy. In Albania there are 20% of people who are rich, and 80% who are middling or poor. We can’t buy all that. But the rich do it for themselves”. Interviewees displayed limited confidence in the opening which followed the change in regime, including regarding freedom of speech. During these interviews people asked us to relay their messages: “we cannot fight directly, but you, you can study, observe, and speak. [In English] Watch and talk!”. In another interview, conducted on a rooftop, about the demolition of informal housing: “you ought to publish that, this study, what you are going to find out. Nobody will accept to be interviewed, to talk. People will keep their mouths shut […]. I am not saying to denounce that for me, because I don’t have a house, I rent”.
- 17 Zari, Eda, 2020, “S’ka mo qofte… ke treni!” Peizazhe Të Fjalës, online magazine, placed online 13 F (...)
54A third group of stakeholders may be identified among those conducting actions relating to memories of the railway at Stactioni i Trenit (the Hemingway association), or who cover this in the media (the Peizazhe Të Fjalës magazine, and journalists translated in Le Courrier des Balkans compiled by Alqi Gjika). This discourse relates less to political interpretation of the past than to recognition for a broader memory of ways of living, accomplishments, and work—something which the current context, firmly focused on the business city, is said to destroy, ignore, and gloss over. In a context of rapid and permanent change, discourse and actions seek to maintain a presence on the social and political scene to which these protagonists—some of whom have considerable cultural capital—aspire. The argument then relates to expressing and sharing a collective experience: “monuments are testimony to the history of people. They help us understand how people lived their daily lives at different times and under different systems—how they lived, worked, and organised themselves. Whether it is a modest coalmine, provincial stations, a farm estate, a house with a garden and lemon grass, boulevards built under the dictatorship, or livestock markets, these places transmit history from generation to generation”.17 Discourse about the past is less oppositional than the discourse of those using the wasteland, as are actions carried out by the Hemingway association: “The purpose of our association […] is to promote the Western artistic and cultural legacies which are disappearing in Albania … Bearing in mind that the locomotive is part of this legacy, and that we organise a 1920s-30s jazz festival every year in the form of a train ride from the city of Tirana to Shkodër”. The association focuses on the cultural aspect, organising music evenings and poetry readings. Their discourse is also less focused on the past of the Stacioni i Trenit district itself, encompassing a broader dimension: “we think the locomotive represents a precious legacy not only for the history of the Albanian rail network, but for the cultural legacy and history of Albania in general. This is the last existing steam engine in Albania. […] The locomotive is now part of the Tirana tourist circuit, along with other parts of the New Boulevard”.
55In the introduction, we raised the question of what can be learnt about transformations to Tirana from the way memories and legacies are handled—in other words, what focusing on heritage may reveal about a larger socio-spatial process. At the end of our exploration, we can perhaps flip the question and ask under what conditions the diverse modes of action and representations could result in people sharing, apprehending, and collectively re-engaging with these memories and legacies, paving the way to a heritagisation process.
56The way memories of farming and the railway are mobilised in Stactioni i Trenit displays a heterogeneity in the definition of objects, modes of expression (daily practice, discourse, urban development), and, lastly, in the subjacent reasons for action (the relation to social change, economic difficulties, family memories, projections into the future, resentment, and controversies relating to politics and urban planning). Heritage and memory holders’ different forms of engagement are linked to differences in their resources and position in Albanian society, raising the question of the relations between stakeholders (institutions, wasteland users, and members of the locomotive association).
57The shepherds maintaining the pastures, who have seen their economic and social conditions steadily deteriorate, do not act like the members of the association who installed the locomotive and who are at ease with media communication codes. In interviews, users of the wasteland did not mention the locomotive, which seems to already belong to another world, that of the new boulevard on which it has been placed. When members of the association were asked whether they wished to build up ties with the inhabitants and daily users of the wasteland, and about their involvement in musical events, they answered: “no, not really, it was our habitual public who were involved in these events, Hemingway regulars and other people who are part of the association’s network. We haven’t really tried to build up ties with the district. But we think that will come progressively”. Another difference relates to the different and even opposite ways or relating to institutions, particularly City Hall. Whereas inhabitants and users are distrusting and critical, members of the Hemingway association state they have always enjoyed good relations with City Hall, whose various departments have been helpful and responsive, and whom they have ‘nothing to say against”. Even more contrasting is the relation to the district’s future and ongoing transformations: “we don’t have an opinion on that. Personally, I don’t know the project, and I don’t feel in any way concerned. It’s not our business. What interests us are our activities with Hemingway. I’m sorry but I haven’t anything more to say about that”. These two categories of stakeholders on the ground are thus not in contact today, and there is no way of saying whether relations between them might evolve towards agreement or opposition.
58Should this relative degree of social fragmentation be seen as one of the causes for the weakness and absence of local movements to protest against ongoing transformations affecting living conditions and how these places are used, despite this engendering so much critical and oppositional discourse? It may be hypothesised that the wish to acknowledge and exhibit a recent past stems from a way of relating to the writing of history. This is marked both by the Socialist past and by the rapid changes of the following period—which continue today—pertaining to the process of forgetting, hierarchisation, and effacement. It would be interesting to further explore this generational divide between young people and those who knew the Socialist past and its sites which are now viewed as heritage, looking at their knowledge, projections, and whether or not they are transmitted within groups and families, especially in a context characterised by geographical and professional mobility, including abroad. The capacity to mobilise and to structure protest may also be examined in the light of the (still recent) history of the final years of the Socialist period, when the people and the opposition were under close surveillance, and of the impact of this legacy, both on generations which lived through this period and on younger people born after 1990. Many officials in the former regime continued in their posts or else entered politics, nurturing mistrust and fear among a population who has not always been able to acquire the classical methods of political protest, other forms of action being privileged in defending or building daily life, based on informality and individual transactions by mutual agreement. The current dearth of mediation between users and institutions and intermediate bodies needs to be examined in the light of this observation.
59Exploring Stacioni i Trenit thus shows the different forms and initial stages of heritagisation (bottom-up, as a form of reaction or opposition, or even, for the locomotive, contractual), and the ways stakeholders use these to live, to survive, or to obtain a seat at negotiations about developing the city. Above and beyond fragments, the heritage debate in Tirana illustrates the divides between social groups and the increasing gaps in resources, positions, and capacity to project into the future. Analysing the heritage process here shows its full heuristic value by opening out onto other issues and scales.
60Leaving to one side the issue of these potential heritagisations, our exploration leads to two prospects for future enquiry.
- 18 Based on an action-research-training program combining three dimensions and currently being drawn u (...)
61The first links heritagisation issues to the lack of structured protest, in parallel to considering the action and circularity of research.18 The idea emerged in postgraduate workshops conducted over recent years to get users and inhabitants to help produce a booklet telling the history of Stacioni i Trenit based on their documents, testimony, and lessons they drew from these. This could be used to safeguard local, family, and collective memories of this multifaceted and complex space, to re-endow it with dignity, and to exploit it as a resource in interacting with institutions throughout the transformations to the site. Examining the social and cultural causes—over both the shorter and the longer term—of the lack of collective mobilisation opens onto exploring the circumstances in which such mobilisation might arise, and the moments and lived experiences in which the balance of material and symbolic power may be inverted. Heritage may be considered as a path, a medium for working on the capacity for political mobilisation by those who so wish. This project, which has been pushed back due to the pandemic, also raises reflexive issues about research and action, and especially on the endogenous or exogenous nature of the original research impulse and initiative.
62The second line of further enquiry would continue exploring heritagisation in the light of fragmentation, linking up social and temporal fragmentation, both to explain the ambivalence of current heritagisation processes and to explore the conditions in which shared action might arise.
63Stacioni i Trenit is characterised by an often abrupt succession between lengthy and short timeframes with no transition between the two. The long timeframe over which the land was used for agriculture and for the railway, and the short timeframe of regime change in 1990-1991 and the rapid pace of informal construction; the long timeframe of the still incomplete settling of land ownership, and the brief timeframe in which rapid and at times brutal demolitions were carried out. Along this bumpy trajectory, two figures stand out. First, a period which is missing, that of conflict. Earlier on, we mentioned potential causes of conflict (evictions) and why such conflict has not occurred (the lack of any collective mobilisation). The other figure is that of waiting, which is not the same thing as latency (often associated with urban wastelands). Waiting (for regularisation, a project, a change that does not occur, thereby becoming a permanent potentiality) both freezes and rechannels actions, stakeholder relations, and social relations more broadly—in the same way as permanent change may be used by management to preserve power relations and positions within an organisation (Metzger, 2012). For as long as they are still hoping—despite the lack of regular or formalised relations with institutions—for a perpetually deferred favourable outcome to complex situations, especially concerning informal occupancy of Stacioni i Trenit, stakeholders do not engage in frontal opposition. Testimony gathered in April 2019 amidst expulsions and the demolition of houses during works on the northern section of the new boulevard expressed this attitude of worried waiting: “we paid a lawyer, we started proceedings, we waited, for a long time, but we haven’t had any response”. This line of enquiry could examine heritage fragmentation in the light of this temporal fragmentation, pointing perhaps towards collective action in the future. A shared and deliberate heritagisation process would require not just time, but also a minimum level of stability to build up reserves of confidence and self-assurance enabling various stakeholders to engage with the future—and to act.
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