Albania’s ‘Building Boom’: How Neoliberal Urbanism and Clientelism Erase Local Needs for Global Architectural Spectacle
Original framing: “‘Starchitects go home’: what’s the truth behind Albania’s astonishing building boom?” — The Guardian - Environment
The protests mentioned in the article are likely led by marginalized groups—Roma communities, informal workers, and rural migrants—who stand to lose the most from these developments. Their voices are rarely amplified in mainstream narratives, which focus on the starchitects’ ‘genius’ or the government’s ‘vision.’ For example, the displacement of families in Tirana’s *Sheshi i Martirëve* area to make way for luxury apartments mirrors global trends where the poor are priced out of cities they helped build. Without centering these voices, the discourse remains a dialogue of the powerful about the powerless.
Albania’s building boom is not an architectural revolution but a symptom of a deeper crisis: the global neoliberal urbanism that treats cities as extractive zones for elite spectacle rather than spaces for collective life.
The starchitects, far from being the primary villains, are enablers of a system where local elites like Edi Rama leverage global prestige to consolidate power, while marginalized communities bear the costs of displacement and environmental harm. Historical parallels—from post-communist Albania to colonial Lagos—reveal this as a recurring pattern where ‘development’ is a tool of control, not progress. The absence of indigenous knowledge, scientific scrutiny, and marginalized voices in the discourse underscores how the current framing serves to obscure systemic power imbalances. Solutions must therefore dismantle these structures: by centering community-led design, integrating climate-resilient and culturally grounded planning, and enforcing transparency to expose the trickster-like machinations of those in power. Without this, Albania risks becoming a cautionary tale of how global capital and local patronage collude to reshape cities in their own image—leaving the rest to live in the ruins.