"Good expression is not an excuse to occupy the oppressed"/ Rama: We are taking back the spaces

2025-10-07 14:12:00, Politikë CNA

"Good expression is not an excuse to occupy the oppressed"/ Rama: We

Prime Minister Edi Rama participated in the 25th edition of the international conference "Walk 21".

Rama made a comparison of the city of Tirana in two times, during the communist period and after the '90s.

The Prime Minister addressed the issue of public spaces and said that after the fall of the dictatorship, thousands of square meters of greenery were taken over by illegal construction and that every public space was seen as a space to be occupied.

Rama said that walking was the best way to connect with others.

" Today, meanwhile, we have a big challenge because what we got as a result of more or less 50 years of living in that vast space where walking was the first and most reliable way to connect with others, where bicycles were the second best way to connect with others, where public transportation was the third and last way.

After the fall of that system, people saw public space as space to be occupied, space to be privatized. Throughout that period, repressed individual desires flourished and surfaced, occupying all public spaces, building illegally wherever possible, and eliminating virtually every green space that you see today.

That's exactly how it is, except for the lake that was, that continued to be, and except for most of the trees that were there, what we see today was no more. Every square meter of greenery was covered and buried under thousands and thousands of illegal buildings. The river that runs through the city was no longer visible because both sides of the river were occupied by such long lines of buildings and 90% literally not metaphorically, 90% of the trees that you see today on the streets of the city were not.

"When I became mayor in 2000, we had to take back our city, demolishing more than 10,000 buildings. We removed 132,000 tons of concrete from the river alone, which was rubble from the collapses. During those years, we planted 55,000 trees, which are now ubiquitous ," the prime minister declared.

Rama said that now they are taking back public spaces. He jokingly said that Albania indeed has the best espresso, but this is no justification for occupying the sidewalks.

"However, even though we did a lot to bring people back spaces where they could enjoy walking, walking around the city became more and more difficult. I think that 5.09 every minute we can take to slow down, every meter that we can gain for pedestrians is a success to celebrate because it is a way to help our people, but as long as we are still aware of the challenges and what we need to do, then we have to fight. That is why we have recently opened a chapter to fight this. We no longer have the problem of illegal constructions related to concrete or floors or public spaces in the city, but we have to fight day by day even while we talk about removing the so-called temporary structures that have actually occupied the sidewalks, the public spaces to put endless tables, chairs, to offer espresso after espresso. I know we have the best espresso outside of Rome, but it is not a completely good excuse to continue and to occupy and occupy public spaces simply to offer express.

"So every day we are taking back the spaces and we want to add even more trees and greenery to the city, for which we already have a new regulation that everyone who receives a building permit must contribute to the green fund with a certain number of trees through a formula that calculates it based on the square meters that he or she will build ," said Rama./ CNA