Tirana, Albania has gained international recognition for putting kids first on the road — especially its award-winning "School Streets," where cars are either banned or significantly limited near learning centers and play spaces for kids are built instead. As the Balkan city grows its bike network, though, its mayor says it's still reckoning with a post-Communist culture that values cars as an aspirational symbol of success. And he has some fascinating thoughts about what it takes to shift that paradigm before it takes root any further.
Today on The Brake, we finish up our dispatches from Bloomberg Citylab with Mayor Erion Veliaj. And along the way, we dig into some fasciating questions about America's "soft power" over European countries, why kids deserve a bigger say in how our cities are built, and why building places where grandmas want to sit and knit is better for public safety than any smart-city gadget.
The following excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.
Streetsblog: You're from Albania, but you studied abroad in Michigan; how did the U.S. transportation culture contrast with where you're from?
Veliaj: Well, when communism collapsed in Albania, that [system] was a psychopathic dictatorship which denied private property and denied religion — so this was the godless society, where by law, God was forbidden, but also by law, owning stuff was forbidden. So I grew up in a city with 17 cars just for the members of the Politburo and the generals of the Army.
And then we became a hero of a city, with 170,000 cars and a million people — a complete shift from where I grew up. And of course, [when I was a child], we were not walking, taking the bus, or biking because of emancipation, but because of poverty and isolation.
So to many people, the move to capitalism was the freedom to now own a car. ... And for people to show to their neighbors that they made it in the rough world of capitalism, [they would] bring a car back home. [They'd] bring a beat-up Fiat from Italy, or a Mercedes from Germany, and show their neighbors that they made it. The bakery was still 100 meters away, and the pharmacy was still 50 meters away, and the coffee house was still downstairs — but now, you could go with the automobile. You don't walk anymore, because you want to show your status.
So we realized that in a city of that size, people took 100,000 [trips] a day, out of which half were less than one kilometer. And therefore the biggest infrastructure we had to fight to fix was the 10 centimeters between our ears. That's the mentality, the status symbol that the car brought.
So taking [the car] away was a sacrilege. [People would say], "What? Are we going back to Communism? Now you're taking the cars away!"
And therefore for us, it was critical to not communicate it the traditional way where you have a policy, you have a hearing, you have City Hall debates, and then you vote on the council. We said, "No, we will never win this, because 90 perce"nt of the people in our polls say they would never support this." And we said, "Well, look; who are we polling, really?"
In politics, we're only polling people who pay taxes and who vote, who are 18 and above — as if they are the only shareholders of the city, which is not true. Everybody under 18 is just as much as shareholder. They may be maybe 30 percent, of the population, but they're 100 percent of the future. ... So let's see how kids like a car-free downtown, or a big park, or streets [where we] can create super blocks, and you can allow space for neighborhood life to develop. What if we were to build one playground every month of our tenure?
So it has been an amazing journey to realize that sometimes, children are the best advocates, and the best PR firm, and the best guerrilla fighter in every household — rather than the big political debates and the big opinion-making strategies with PR firms and whatnot. So we decided to scrap all that, and decided, [let's let] kids enjoy some of these projects and then tell parents and convert the parents. [That] was a much better way.
Streetsblog: That's beautifully said, and it flows into my next question about your school streets program, which we've featured on Streetsblog before, and I know as New York City looks to expand its school streets program, they're looking to you as a model. What's the status of that program today? And what changes when we shift the conversation about sustainable mobility to be specifically about youth?
Veilaj: I think people make decisions when they are faced with a choice. No one wakes up and says, "I'm just going to be an emancipated citizen today." ... [And] The ultimate choice a parent has to make is, "do you want your kid to be safe, or your car to be safe?"
A car doesn't have feelings; he doesn't have a heart. He will not be upset at you. He can be parked one block away, and will not hold a grudge. But a kid might, or mother, or grandmother, or grandparent who has a difficult time. [Car dependency] makes sending and taking kids to school like an episode of The Hunger Games. [Your kids] will mind and growing up in this jungle.
So creating this belt [of car-free spaces] around the schools comes with a choice. When people are forced to make a choice, they know what's best for them. And when the choices are between their car or their child, they will always choose a child — but they need to be informed of these choices.
So for example, we would ask people, "Well, what is the most important thing in your life?" And it's a no brainer: The answer would be, "My kid." And we'd say, "Are you sure? Because if it's your kid, that means you spend most of your salary on raising your child. Is that correct?" And they'd says, "Absolutely, of course; I spare nothing for my child."
So we said, "Well, can we have a little calculation? [Because] at the end, we'd find out that an average person was spending 15 to 17 percent [of their income] raising a kid, and about 27 to 32 percent raising a car, [between] the installments and insurance and the mechanic and the gas and the parking. It was costing the average family more than a kid!
And then people were shocked, because someone had changed their values without their permission. Their spoken values were [about family], but their out-of-pocket values were something else. So I think the role of the mayor of the city is not to rush through with this agenda, but to figure out a way that, if one communication strategy fails, figure out another way how to communicate something. [This is] common sense to people like you and me who do this every day, but not to the average person who says, "Oh, look; I finally got a car, and I feel like a middle class person, not a poor communist anymore — and now [the mayor] wants to take it away."
They need to be informed, and once informed, people make good choices.
