“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” — C. P. Scott, 1921.
More Towers, Fewer People: Who Is Albania Building For?
Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 23 September 2025
Construction and a shrinking population
Albania is experiencing one of Europe’s deepest demographic crises. From about 3.07 million residents counted in the 2001 census, the population has fallen to an estimated 2.36 million on 1 January 2025. The figures are clear, but urban development policies seem to ignore them.
Despite demographic decline and mass emigration, the construction industry has continued to expand, driven not by citizens’ actual needs but by another logic: the circulation of money in an opaque economy.
Over the past five years, Albania has issued more than 6,000 permits covering 9.6 million m2 of construction, with 75% issued for housing. This development has taken place as Albania was emptying out. Tirana County alone has absorbed more than two-thirds of this area, around 6.8 million m2, which translates into roughly more than €2.4 billion in turnover for this sector of the economy.
The logic of this turnover lies behind the euro’s depreciation in the Albanian market. Since 2021, the euro’s exchange rate has fallen from 123 lek to 96 lek. According to economic experts, this unprecedented depreciation is linked not to genuine competition, increased production or exports, but to growing flows of informal money, suspected of being channelled mainly into construction.
More is being built, and taller, while there are fewer people to live there.
Tower decisions and transparency
This construction wave stops neither at public spaces, nor at schools, nor at historic monuments. It is fed by an increasingly centralised decision-making process without accountability.
According to an analysis by Citizens.al, at least 140 towers have been considered or approved in Tirana over the past decade. Yet published decisions exist for only 65 of them. The others are hidden in the agendas of the National Council of Territory and Water (KKTU), without transparency or public consultation.
The Territorial Development Agency (AZHT) claims that every decision is accessible online, but that is not the reality. Public scrutiny is difficult, often leaving room for suspicions of favouritism, clientelism and money laundering.
The KKTU’s powers have grown while accountability has weakened. Five legislative amendments and at least ten government decisions have stripped local authorities of their powers, concentrating every decision on buildings above six storeys in a single pair of hands: the prime minister’s.
And so the towers rise ever higher, while the light of transparency sinks ever deeper. Is this really urban development? And if so, whom does it serve, as the population falls and the cost of living rises every day?
* Editorial clarification, 9 October 2026: The demographic comparison has been made more precise: the 2001 census counted 3,069,275 residents, while INSTAT’s estimate for 1 January 2025 was 2,363,314. Both figures concern the resident population; the first is a census count and the second an annual estimate published on 12 June 2025. The previous wording gave around 3.2 million in the early 2000s and 2.3 million “today”.