Place attachment as a tool in examining place identity: A multilayered evaluation through housing in Tirana

This study inquires the issue of city identity of Albania's capital, Tirana, in post- -socialist period. The research aims to study the identity of the city by using as a tool the attachment to housing typologies and by not only measuring it as a predominant building stock, but also by referring to their environmental and cognitive settings. This research is based on theories of place identity, place attachment and urban identity theories. The identity of a place is part of self identity and consequently, in this research the identity of a city is strongly related to the society's collective identity. Thus, the study aimed to understand the relation between dwelling, dweller, city and identity. Being so interwoven the concepts of "place identity", and "place attachment" both play a key role in this research. Place attachment is basically explained as a notion that considers the relation of people to a certain place and consists of three substantial elements: place-physical environment, people-emotion and attachment-social connection, which is later defined as a tripartite model. The concept of place identity at city level is determined as "urban identity" and is defined as identification with the city. Scholars have agreed that cities should develop a strong and distinctive image, in order that people can develop a strong identification and attachment to them. Furthermore, the strength of the image of the city could be measured by analyzing not only its constituting elements like public spaces and neighborhoods but also the explicit set of functions of the latter. This research problem started to be developed after the effects that a project called "Rebirth of the City" initiated by the Mayor of Tirana had on the city image. It aimed to cleanse the city from illegal constructions in order to minimize the unaesthetic effect of the semi-informal aspects of the buildings by painting them with colorful artwork This project was implemented by international and local artists who applied different independent styles and neglected the architectural composition of the buildings, thus giving the city a colorful character far from its identity. Two first inputs were conducted to understand the city development in the framework of attachment and identity: a historical review of Tirana from the architectural point of view and a morphological analysis including the zone defined as "middle ring". The history of Tirana from the architectural development point of view is divided into three periods: pre-socialist, socialist and post-socialist. Established in 1614 by local feudal lord Sulejman Pashe Bargjini, it was characterized by Ottoman town features until it was proclaimed capital of Albania in 1920. This decision provided a new start for the development of the city, which included the construction of the governmental buildings on both sides of a newly built boulevard and its expansion to the south beyond the natural border of Lana creek. Italian architects during King Zog period and the Italian invasion planned thenew capital of Albania and also constructed a considerable number of governmental buildings. Furthermore, King Zog allocated land plots for the villa type dwellings of the new administration members, which were designed by first generation Albanian architects, who were educated in Europe. The socialist period architectural developments included construction of housing for the working class based on the principles of equality and collectivism. Architectural design was strictly controlled by Politburo and architects were forbidden to design buildings under western influence. The urban plans developed in this period tended to adjust the city center, providing the basis for important socialist landmarks at the expense of Old Bazaar, St Prokop church and traditional neighborhood, which were demolished. The provision of dwelling during this period was implemented as part of political system agenda including Soviet Union models, housing constructed with voluntary work and prefabrication as a technology which was cheap and fast to implement. The post-socialist period was characterized by dramatic urban development. The transition from a centralized to a free-market economy caused the loss of competitiveness of many public companies resulting in unemployment and migration from eastern to western Albania. Due to the above-mentioned reasons and bad management at local and national level, urban informality became present in Tirana in the form of semi-formal additions to legal buildings and invasion of public space by illegal constructions. This manner of urban development ended when the then Tirana Mayor, Edi Rama started the cleansing operation. Later he initiated the "Rebirth of the City" project, which aimed to minimize the unaesthetic effects of semi-formal aspects of residential buildings and was realized by international and later also by local artists using colorful artwork. The artists used various independent design themes, totally neglecting the architectural composition of the apartment blocks. Moreover, in this period high rise buildings started to be constructed which in the case of residential functions were legally based on partial urban plans, while those built in the city center were provided permission through international competitions. The construction of high rise buildings in many cases caused irreparable damage in the traditional residential neighborhood pattern annihilating this historical layer of the city very fast. Another important input in researching the identity of the city was a morphological analysis done within the area defined as middle ring. This zone, which maintained the scope of the study, served as the border of the city during the socialist period and it was eventually considered to be the best representative sample seen from both building stuff and typical inhabitant profile. The analysis revealed that the most dominant function in the city was housing. As a matter of fact, the influence of housing as a physical buildings stock was found to be of primary importance for city identity. Based on the historical urban development of the city as well, housing was defined into three periods. Furthermore, nine housing typologies were identified based on the architectural features they carried. Pre-socialist period included Ottoman reminiscent traditional house and Italian influenced urban dwelling. Socialist period included Russian influenced neo-classicist dwelling, silicate brick dwelling, prefabricated dwelling, low quality dwelling and high quality dwelling. Post-socialist period included high rise dwelling and detached houses. The methodology used in the research includes both qualitative and quantitative methods and techniques. Qualitative methods include observation, literature review, archival research, in-depth interviews conducted with notable scholars in Albania, mapping and also an urban palimpsest analysis. The quantitative instrument was a questionnaire conducted with housing typology dwellers. The processing of questionnaire data was conducted by statistical method using the SPSS software. In the context of this research, place attachment to city was examined by understanding the relation between dweller and housing typology and its output is used to understand and examine the city urban identity issue. Furthermore, the attachment to city through housing aimed to measure the level of attachment and interrogated the level of importance that each typology has for city identity based on the dwellers' lived experiences. Thus the research tends to reveal not only the importance of housing typologies as a physical entity within the city identity, but also the relation to it including cognitive and environmental meanings that the dwellers had experienced through their house and how they can contribute to city identity. In order to provide the relation to the identity of the city in a holistic approach, after having revealed the city's urban development including its major constituting elements and examination of its urban layers through morphological analysis displaying its housing typologies according to historical periods, a questionnaire is conducted. It revealed the image of the city such as housing typology, their comfort level, city landmarks before and after the 90s, neighborhood landmarks, gathering and socialization locations, and keywords related to environmental, social and cognitive relations, which were important for identification to the city like: attachment to city through dwelling, lifestyle before and after the 90s, importance of dwelling for city identity, housing features such as identification modes and inter-influence between lifestyle and city identity. In the end, the research demonstrated that dwellers of different housing typologies had different attachment to city through their dwellings. This attachment was strongly related to predictor of prosperity (living comfort) of the dwelling firstly, while duration and age were also significant predictors. While the dwellers of all typologies expressed attachment to the city, those of socialist period low quality and post-socialist period high rise dwellings were not-attached to the city through their houses. Furthermore, these typologies were also considered not important for city identity. This result confirmed the theory that the stronger the image of the houses as part of the city, the stronger the attachment to them and as a result the stronger was the importance to city identity. In the case of socialist period low quality housing, since the physical image from aesthetical and living comfort was weak, there was no identification and eventually no attachment. The study also confirmed that high identification was related to positive evaluation of the quality of the town. In the case of the post-socialist period high rise dwelling was featured by a sense of alienation and low level of socialization, due to the context that they were constructed at the expense of public space after the 90s and the lifestyle of this period, which was associated by no sense of community and individualism. Thus it can be said that as the identity of the city is related to the strength of its physical image, elements like housing typologies, landmarks, gathering locations or main streets and their positive evaluation provided identification and attachment. The change in the political system in the post-socialist period influenced the lifestyle, socialization, and its other social, environmental and cognitive settings. Moreover, in this period new city image elements were generated, which based on the positive or negative relation they effectuated with the dwellers, produced a built environment that created the problem of city identity.