The Urban Dimension of the Albanian Cities of Transition Was Damaged as a Result of the ‘Big Government’ and Not Its Absence: An Assessment in Relation to the Construction Permit!

Abstract

The main Albanian cities and inhabited centers have suffered great damage of urban and environmental dimension in the years of transition. These implications of rapid and intensive development have produced cities that offer a very low quality of urban life to their citizens. What requires immediate political and legal intervention is to create the preconditions for Albanian cities to change by improving their potential in relation to the quality of urban life they offer to their citizens. One of the basic aspects, where this political goal can be achieved, is the function of controlling the construction development in these cities, in other words the function of building permits. Formal construction, or construction that has been subject to political-administrative decision-making, has faced increased pressure from the government to obtain a building permit. The performance of the government, regarding the function of construction permitting, is presented as very bureaucratic and corrupt. The technical, administrative and legal rules through which the administration exercises in the construction permit process have been very difficult for private entrepreneurs to implement. This has produced, firstly, the phenomenon of informal construction, and secondly, the change in the focus of entrepreneurs in the formal construction sector. In great administrative difficulties and obstacles, private entrepreneurs have shifted their focus from the aim of offering high quality products and low price in the market, to the goal of obtaining a building permit while ignoring the quality of the buildings they have developed. In this sense, what is required is the facilitation of technical, administrative and legal procedures and rules for obtaining a construction permit, which would ensure the reduction of the informal sector and refocus of the formal sector on quality and competitive price in a free market. This is a basic precondition for the situation of cities not to deteriorate further, and that paves the way for the improvement of their situation in the future.Keyword: big government, small government, classical liberalism, modern liberals, the left, the right, development control, construction permitting.