Friday, January 19, 2007

wild urbanization&pollution

As soon as you arrive in Tirana, you can notice the common problems every city in the world is facing: traffic jams, air pollution, noise, waste disposal, fast urbanization.
I think in Tirana all these are very hot issues.
In addition, the whole Albania is dramatically experiencing electric power cuts for several hours per day. In the city centre it can be 4 hours, but in the periphery or in other towns and villages the situation is even worse (12 hours or more!). I should also mention that most of the heating system is electric, as well as the cookers, so you can imagine which sorts of problems there can be in winter...
Around 90% of electricity comes from hydropower and this year was not raining a lot, so now the Government declared will import electricity from Italy or Greece. We will see...

For whom is interested and can read Italian, there is a very good article at this link about the connection between politics and house builders (palazzinari) and the air pollution. In fact, Tirana was declared one of the most polluted city in Europe and even in the world.
I hope it's not true, but when I see all the works in progress for the construction of new buildings and the moltitude of old cars circulating in the streets, I have to take it seriously...

http://www.osservatoriobalcani.org/article/articleview/5876/1/41/

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