Tirana Adaptive City. “Creativity and Spontaneity” in Active-Streets and Living Super-Blocks

The street, in itself, is nothing more than a technical infrastructure, but it takes further meanings and values mainly when it becomes “urban” and it becomes related to all the usual daily living activities and the open spaces directly connected with and through it. It acts as an element (or strip) of connection between the buildings’ inside activities and the outside ones and, in the meantime, it defines those blocks and super-blocks inside which the real life is living. This study aims to highlight the social and economic role that this urban material can have as a linker and carrier of those urban rights that inhabitants must benefit from; together with its mixed roles in defining those sub-settlements within the city called blocks or – such as in the case – super-blocks as source of inspirations and spring of spontaneous creative innovations. The selected case study is Tirana, Capital City of Albania, in a comparison with those super-blocks as defined in Barcelona Municipality latest development strategy. From the point of view of urban planning and design, the general larger goal is to try in drafting an update to the current Tirana city’ development strategies by adding the concept of a bottom-up urban regeneration into the inner-part of those “adapted” super-blocks and the consequent eligible tactics as tools for a set of micro actions.