Learning from the informal transitional phases is a process that focuses on the diversity and multiple forms in which land and building alike are shaped and re-shaped in the territory. Moreover, there might be various reasons as to why this perpetual condition persists in informal areas in the Albanian context. This diversity is analyzed and named according to the impact that it has on the territory, including land fragmentation and densifcation. The purpose of this research is to illustrate transitional phases, of the informal settlements, to identify the cases of the multiform and to open up an irrevocable professional debate on the matter that not all informal settlements are the same in the territory. This starts from the local Albanian practices of building informally to the actual form of territorial transition. All of the practices have one thing in common; they are half-realized utopias. Such is the urbanization process in Albania which has never co-occurred within the settlement and parceling in informal areas. It is up to urban planners and landscapers to identify these conditions even if the public and institutional apparatus do not deal with them. Passing from the informal practices and into their territorial partialities, the methodology gives a tactical description of the territorial impact as a result of the three processes of the urban informal growth in Albania: a) building, b) parceling, and c) putting in infrastructure. These processes are considered as a transitional phase and analyzed in this study. The multiform of their alternations can be described as land tactics, with a high impact on fragmentation and densification. The result illustrates and shows that not all the informal settlements are the same, although the same typology of the housing unit. Architects, landscapers, and social workers can contribute to the methodological solutions, starting from a single inhabitant and practices described and then enlarged to the regional scale of all 55 informal areas.
In the last 20 years, Albania has transferred the ownership and the responsibility of the management of 80% of forest area from central government to local government. The process was part of a wide decentralization reform aiming to tackle the challenges related to illegal logging activities, weak institutions, and capacities, unclear laws and regulations, frequent reforms in forest administration, high sector informality etc. Due to decentralization forest governance involve two levels of government and a range of stakeholders with different interests (local communities, forest owners, private sector, etc.). Although the reforms are under implementation, there is a lack of assessments, to analyze the governance challenges for the sector. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide an assessment of the status of forest governance in Albania, using a comprehensive analytical framework developed by FAO and PROFOR. The framework is based on three columns (i) policy, legal, institutional and regulatory frameworks, (ii) planning and decision-making processes and (iii) implementation enforcement and compliance. A set of 84 indicators, considered to be relevant for Albania, has been chosen out of 130 indicators proposed by PROFOR. The assessment is carried out through a survey, with a cross-section of 30 experts from various forest -related institutions (state and non-state). The results show that forest governance in Albania is far from good forest governance, despite some positive efforts. The reasons for this are no clear set of policy directions, conflicting or confusing laws, complex forest law and bylaws, no secure access to forest resources by local communities, low capacities of government (central and local) and non-government stakeholders, lack of transparency and accountability etc.
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