Tirana 2030 — EBRD Green City Action Plan and the Stalled Orbital Forest Pledge

Post-communist Tirana urbanised rapidly and informally, leaving it with one of the lowest per-capita green-space ratios among European capitals and serious air-quality and water-infrastructure gaps. In 2015 the municipality signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) covering urban transport, roads, water and wastewater, solid waste and energy efficiency.

Tirana formally joined the EBRD's Green Cities Programme in February 2017 and finalised its Green City Action Plan (GCAP) in April 2018. Concrete financing followed: a €15 million EBRD loan to the city's water utility, Ujësjellës Kanalizime Tirana, funded a new pipeline and the expansion of the Bovilla water-treatment plant. In parallel, the City Council approved the "Tirana 2030" general local plan, designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti, whose flagship elements are the "Orbital Forest" — a proposed ring of 2 million trees across roughly 14,000 hectares of parks, farmland and forest encircling the city to curb sprawl — and "Tirana Riverside," a 29-hectare riverside masterplan intended to house around 12,000 people as a mixed-use eco-district.

Independent investigative journalism has since documented a wide gap between ambition and delivery. A 2023 investigation by the Albanian outlet Citizens.al found that, years into the scheme, only around 60 trees had officially been planted toward the 2-million-tree pledge — implying, at that pace, a rollout measured in centuries rather than years. The same investigation raised conflict-of-interest concerns, since Stefano Boeri's firm, which authored the planning regulations for the zones in question, was also awarded construction contracts within areas it had itself zoned; critics have also warned that some Riverside-area clearances risk displacing residents of adjacent informal settlements without adequate safeguards.

The GCAP and Tirana 2030 plan remain legally in force, and discrete infrastructure investments such as the UKT water project have proceeded via EBRD financing, while the flagship green-ring and riverside components remain in early or contested implementation. Tirana illustrates a common pattern: an internationally financed, technically credible regeneration framework whose social and environmental ambitions have considerably outpaced physical delivery.

Read the full analysis: https://www.ebrdgreencities.com/our-cities/cities/tirana