Coastal territory, intermediate landscape Territorial Visions, guidelines and pilot projects for the Albanian coast in the region of Divjakë

Abstract

Environment and ecology are gaining attention in the vast panorama of spatial planning practices and large scale territorial projects. Sectorial plans addressing the issue of material flows - water, energy, waste – are emerging as new products within large scale spatial visions.
The General National Plan for Albanian territory, recently approved, focuses its discourse on the definition of strategies reframing material flows, challenging current urbanization processes from the perspective of “territorial metabolism”.
However, while the resulting framework aims to manage large scale flows, pointing at the provision of new large-scale infrastructure, a certain distance separates design process addressing small scale transformation.  Where the aims of local administration are to adhere to large scale visions, the challenge is to provide specific design tools focusing on local context transformation. However, while the country is in a process of regrounding planning and design practice and their tools, the region of Divjakë and the requalification of its rural and natural landscape are a relevant case study pushing research to larger findings.