Tirana 2024: Concrete, concrete and… concrete. What about the children??

By Jonathan Pano

The Municipality's latest report on the implementation of the 2024 budget clearly shows where this city is heading: concrete is booming, while the number of children in kindergartens is decreasing.

Throughout 2024, 14.3 billion lek were collected from the infrastructure impact tax, an absolute record that clearly shows that Tirana is being built in every corner. The realization is 226% above the initial plan. This means a construction boom with a total value of about 1.79 billion euros in new construction.

So, the builders work, pay, and build nonstop. But what happens to the city as a living space?

We find the answer in the statistics that pass silently by: the decline in the number of children in public nurseries and kindergartens.

Revenues from these institutions are significantly lower than planned.

Kindergartens realized only 72% of expected income

The nurseries achieved 93%.

And the Municipality can no longer hide it:

“Decrease in attendance as a result of family emigration.”

In other words, the city is growing in floor space and cubic capacity, but shrinking in life. We are building more than ever, but we are having fewer and fewer children. A clear indication that this is no longer a city where people choose to raise their families.

A city where the square becomes a construction site, the school remains empty, and the voices of children are replaced by the noise of concrete mixers. Instead of taxes from construction turning into investments for life and the future, they simply feed the same cycle: more construction, fewer people.

This is Tirana today. A city that is filled with concrete and emptied of children.