An initial survey of land uses is done for the case study areas. The configurational data is mapped to geo-referenced datasets of Tirana at the building scale, including details of building age and legal status. Conzenian and space syntax approaches provide the methodological basis for morphological research into Tirana’s post-socialist built environment. The paper draws on the Tirana case study to comment on the nature of social change in the Albanian context, and the way in which ‘planned ’and ‘unplanned’ urban environments have contributed to the emergence of distinctive modes of urban life. The variety of post-socialist urban transformation morphologies can tell us much about the particular nature of urban growth in Albania under conditions of unrestrained, loosely regulated, development. It identifies four distinctive patterns of informal growth in contemporary Tirana. This paper begins the process of addressing this deficiency. The impact of this urbanisation on Albanian society has been profound, but currently there are no systematic studies of the morphological processes that have transformed Albanian cities. While rapid urbanization fuelled by mass migration from the countryside to cities is commonly observed in many East European countries Albania’s post-socialist urban form has been strongly influenced by the dramatic upheaval in land ownership that has taken place in the context of an inadequately developed legal system and involved the systematic appropriation of open space by developers.

This research focuses on the urban transformation of Tirana, the capital of Albania, following the end of the communist regime in the early 1990s.

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