Tirana’s Green City Action Plan
The capital of Albania, Tirana joined urban transformation plans that tackle some of the most pressing concerns of cities - traffic congestion, urban sprawl, air pollution - and are changing how it grows and moves, with co-benefits for air quality and climate

Tirana is no stranger to rapid growth: massive domestic migration post-1990 towards urban areas, especially Tirana, led to unplanned settlements and a host of pressures while it has an official population of 850,000, the city estimates that this figure is actually closer to 1 million, one-third of the country’s population.
The 2016 General Local Plan, TIRANA2030 includes a plan for landscape recovery based on a “polycentric system” that balances urban, agricultural, and natural spheres to support a healthy city. Furthermore, Tirana’s Green City Action Plan, prepared in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, apart from being supplementary to the General Local Plan, provides an outline of the priority areas of the city, which consist of transport, green and blue infrastructure, resource management, water, energy, and resilience.
One of the city’s tenets is reclaiming public spaces for citizens.
In February 2016, the city launched the “MyTirana” mobile app, offering instant access to real-time information about the city’s traffic volume, urban transport networks, touristic attractions, citizen complaint report forms, online parking fee payment service and city-related information.
In 2017, Tirana made its central city square— once a roundabout for cars— into the largest pedestrian area in the region, serving as a venue for community gatherings.
It has also doubled the number of “pocket parks” to 70, altogether a total of 200 square meters (or 8 to 10 percent of the locally-administered area) and 36 new playgrounds scattered throughout the city, including the city’s biggest recreational space, the Grand Lake Park and Playground.
To naturally hinder urban sprawl and reap other co-benefits, the Orbital Forest, a continual ring of two million trees, will surround the metropolis by 2030 and include parks and protected nature reserves expected to support and boost biodiversity. It’s already begun to take shape: from autumn of 2017 to spring of 2018, 122, 000 trees were planted as part of the city’s massive afforestation campaign.
It added 36 kilometres of bike lanes in the last three years, with another 11 kilometres planned by mid-2019; and, in June 2018, became the first city in the Balkans to launch the app-based bike-sharing system, Mobike.
Tirana is on a good path to having better air quality in the city.
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