Tirana, the new Barcelona?
5 days to get inspired, to reflect and… to set foot in Tirana before everyone else!
Join our study trip on the urban projects of the Albanian capital.
NEW DATE – The Tirana Seminar is postponed
The Metropolitan Seminar scheduled for November 2025 will now be held in spring 2026 (March/April).
Due to the local political context marked by last week’s announcement of early municipal elections following the vote to dismiss the mayor of Tirana, we have decided to postpone the seminar in order to ensure the active participation of local stakeholders.
This decision was taken on the joint recommendation of the French Embassy and our municipal contacts.
We warmly thank our partners and participants for their understanding and ask you to remain mobilised. Registration remains open > https://avitem.fr
The new date will be announced shortly, in conjunction with the future elected representatives, along with a full programme.
An immersive urban seminar in Spring 2025
European, Balkan, and Mediterranean at once, Tirana has been undergoing an accelerated transformation for the past fifteen years. It combines the new standards of ecological transition with the profitability rates of real estate capitalism, attracting international attention. An urban phenomenon reminiscent of Barcelona in the 1990s.
On April 30, 2025, Le Monde headlined: “Tirana, Albania’s capital, a new construction site for architects from around the world.” The daily highlighted the little-known urban dynamism and attractiveness of one of the last capitals of the Old Continent to reinvent itself — after decades of isolation from 1945 to 1985 — in the wake of EU integration.
Beyond its dynamism and striking contrasts, Tirana deserves to be discovered as a stimulating space of energy and creativity in the face of today’s challenges: climate, social and territorial cohesion, democracy, and governance.
This immersive seminar offers an opportunity to address three key questions:
- Where do political will and civic engagement draw their extraordinary energy?
- How does territorial planning operate between visionary masterplans, strategy, and operational tactics?
- What are the conditions for social and territorial resilience in the face of accelerated change?
The seminar will allow participants to engage directly with local actors and observers on the projects shaping today’s metropolis — projects confronted with its geographical, heritage, and environmental legacies. These are pressing and future questions for Mediterranean city stakeholders: elected officials, technicians, urban planners, architects, ecologists…
AVITEM knows Tirana and its diverse public and private actors well, thanks to years of cooperation: metropolitan seminar in 2018, workshop on brownfield conversion and food strategy in 2020, and two ongoing cooperation programs: WaterAdapt project, agro-food strategy F.E.A.S.T. project.
Program of the 5 days in Tirana
Day 1 – Tirana, a heritage city in search of the future.
Geographical and historical introduction by an architect-historian, followed by the territorial vision “Tirana 2030.” City tour. Tirana’s urban heritage still shows significant interest, even if Byzantine and Ottoman legacies have been partly sacrificed in the name of modernity. The city unfolds between the planned public spaces of the communist period and the informal city.
Day 2 – Tirana, an urban landscape?
Exploration of major urban projects, such as the revitalization of the Lana River banks or the Northern Boulevard, along with recent architectural works.
Day 3 – Tirana goes green.
Faced with rapid urbanization, the municipality is pursuing a nature- and landscape-based strategy. This ecological transition includes metropolitan-scale renaturalization with green corridors, the Lana and Tirana riverbanks, and a 250-hectare orbital forest. This centerpiece anchors a complex eco-environmental system linking parks, lakes, soft mobility networks, secondary urban hubs, energy corridors, metropolitan agriculture, and schools connected to the natural environment.
Day 4 – Tirana and the social challenge.
Urban renewal and social housing production are constant challenges in light of the yearly influx of new residents. A complex dynamic of housing rehabilitation, creation of economic activities, and public facilities is underway, built on reclaiming micro-public spaces in the informal city — spaces that generate both quality design and active mobility.
Day 5 – Tirana, local governance and international cooperation.
Understanding vertical, inter-institutional, horizontal, and civic governance is key to any initiative of collaboration or cooperation with Tirana. How to align with municipal ambitions and civic mobilization, knowing that each project is unique.
Participation conditions
Who can join?
Professionals in urban planning and territorial development: architects, planners, elected officials, representatives of local authorities, academics, etc.
Note: French and/or English proficiency required.
Practical information
5 days seminar (Sunday 5 p.m. – Friday 12 p.m.)
Registration fee: €500
Travel, accommodation, and part of the meals are at your own expense. AVITEM covers one meal per day.
Contact : l.brenier@avitem.org
Training programme
Field visits and meetings with local stakeholders
Peer-to-peer participatory workshops
Lectures and roundtables
End-of-seminar syntheses
Publication in Carnets Métropolitains
The Coordination Team
A specialist in planning at all scales, from territorial strategies to urban projects. She has overseen two major international tenders as contracting authority: Val de Durance and Aix-Marseille Provence Metropolis. She is also the lead author of The Metropolis by Design: Aix-Marseille Provence.
A specialist in large-scale planning and project implementation.His work includes the tourism development plan for Sicily, the first strategic framework for South Lebanon, and the Greater Algiers project, for which he was responsible. An Associate Professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, he is the author of numerous publications.
At the AFD Campus since 2019, her missions include designing training programs for executives and elected officials of local authorities. She also conducts research on citizen participation in informal neighborhoods within urban public policies in Africa.
An expert in Euro-Mediterranean project engineering and decentralized cooperation. A graduate of a Franco-German program in applied political science, in 2023 she co-designed the international conference “Urban Ecology in the Lower Nile Valley” at the Center for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation in Cairo.