Contemporary hazard and health discourse in urban renewal: a critical examination of smart, sustainable, earthquake and pandemic-proof imaginaries driving dispossession in Tirana, Albania

Abstract

Amidst a global surge in urban development foregrounding smart, sustainable, and now pandemic-proof design, new forms of longstanding hazard and health discourse are being deployed to justify dispossession, particularly in self-built districts. Looking at a case in Tirana, Albania, we examine how this discourse is being contemporized and paired with diverse digital media as it overlaps within a single project – the Tirana Riverside Project. As expressions of authoritative knowledge, architectural visualizations, social media posts, state-backed news broadcasts, and international design blogs work to validate this underlying ideology driving demolition. Such imagery and discourse, we contend, thus need to be read as artifacts of power that entrench government authority while substantiating mass dispossession. We argue that these processes are not only about the real estate profits demolition-based urban renewal generates but also – in Albania’s flawed democratic context – their ability to support the ruling elite. Using content analysis, we identify four hazard and health imaginaries overlapping within the project: 1) pandemic-proof design; 2) design for seismic emergencies; 3) zero-emission sustainable design; and 4) smart city technologies. We show how these imaginaries join longer traditions of normative discourse around hazard and health in urban renewal yet scrutinize their distinct contemporized and localized expressions.