Making Tirana the most walkable city

Walk21 is very pleased to be working with GIZ for the next two years to support the development of Tirana into a Walkable city in partnership with the Municipality.

Tirana is the capital of Albania and is already a much-walked city but it’s walkability is under threat, with one forecast predicting that the amount people walk could reduce by as much as 50% in the next decade without proactive action.

In our first meeting, we were delighted to walk with Anuela Ristani, Deputy Mayor for Sustainable Development and International Relations at City of Tirana, and see the actions already underway to transform public spaces. A workshop was organised by Christian Mettke and Martin Shaefer from GIZ engaging representatives from several departments as well as local campaigners QM and Professor Egin Zeka from Epoka University.

Walk21 proposed 4 quick actions to support the ambition to be a more walkable city which include: setting up a multi-disciplinary Walking Task Force; improving safety at road crossings; enhancing the quality of the 65 minutes that most people walk every-day with a network of more trees, seats and space to walk; and designating school streets as part of the city’s commitment to being the European Youth Capital next year.

The Walk21 proposals borrow from other cities successful approaches when faced with similar issues and are judged to be appetising to citizens, scalable to local vision and budget and deliverable within 2 years.

The local team, which includes Ariela Hajdarmataj and Gledisa Golikja (who recently studied Tirana’s Walkability as part of her Masters in Architecture) are collating existing data and soon hope to collect the opinions of citizens, using Walk21’s new Walkability.App.

We are grateful to The Mayor, Municipality staff, the citizens of Tirana and GIZ for the opportunity to walk the city and explore the potential to make it more walkable. We look forward to supporting the programme delivery in the coming months.