Streets as Fragmented Sensitive Public Spaces - Toward an Evaluation Methodology (Case Study of Tirana)

Streets are the most representative and democratic public spaces for the city sheltering collective activities, interaction and exchange. As physical places, they are in high demand for their use from different actors (pedestrians, bicycles, and cars), or for different functions (open bars, parking, meeting points, pedestrian lanes etc). This makes them very sensitive places and subject of changing and modification process according to very short-term goals, and fragmented especially regarding the local situation. Recent literature is focusing on defining criteria to qualify or evaluate the performance of public spaces and critiques reveals a range of public spaces types and means of classification. This dynamic character of the street as public space raises an important issue regarding how streets perform as public spaces. Based on analytical review of the literature and empirical work, the article focuses on some main streets in the city of Tirana, examined by using some basic criteria to assess their performance. The article concludes that street could be considered as a chain of fragments of public space performing differently, although they might be close or next to each other, or being part of the same street. It also focuses on some factors that have a direct influence in reducing or increasing the positive performance of streets as public spaces. At the end, it gives some highlight on the idea that streets are very sensitive and perform as compound and dynamic public spaces.