The PUP activity tests mechanisms that increase citizen participation in decision making around the local urban planning process design and implementation in Albania. The desired outcome of the participatory urban planning method is to provide citizens with an opportunity to participate in the urban planning decision-making process of local government and test mechanisms that foster this participation.

The whole Project was implemented within 6 months, starting from September 1st, 2006, until February 28th, 2007. The Project implementation went through four phases as below:

Ø      The first phase relates to the Stakeholders’ Mobilization and Commitment.

Ø      The second one talks mainly about the collecting information, ideas, interests, suggestions, needs and issues from the groups of interests

Ø      The third phase deals with analyzing the collected information and data and preparing a draft of the city’s urban plan.

Ø      The last one is more related to the finalization of the draft, establishing some monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, lessons learned and the final reporting.

Based on criteria such as (a) political willingness of the LG to participate; (b) existence of organized community groups engaged with the LG activities; (c) LG willingness to provide citizens with various information and respond to their enquires; (d) LG willingness to provide citizens with space for public meetings on the urban planning process; (e) LG pro-active in including communities in council meetings, hearings and budgeting processes; and, (f) localities where there is a complementary presence of other donor activity that can create opportunities for synergy and scale up, municipality of Kavaja was selected. Memorandums of understandings were signed between the partners and Kavaja municipality to ensure that the objectives and implementation arrangements are agreed upon.

The role that URI is playing in this project is technical assistance. URI’s experts in cooperation with the Kavaja experts/specialists established a steering committee with the participation of the municipality, City Council, Urban Development Department at the municipality, Civil Society and other potential stakeholders.

An important component for the implementation of the project was the information campaign.The activities organized under this component, were more related to attracting the intention of citizens and increasing their interest in participation in the open meetings giving their contribution into the urban Planning processes. Different activities were organized during this phase, such as: -          Public announcement through local 2A TV channel about the necessity to participate in the open meetings which will be organized with representatives of 6 Kavaja neighborhoods. -          Informing citizens through visits house-to-house about the importance to participate in such open meetings. -          Publishing in the newspaper of the Citizen Forum “Community & Governance” of the activities organized till that time. -          Publishing in this newspaper of the articles written by the different citizens about the urban Planning activities, impressions, suggestions and recommendations.

The first meeting was organized with project stakeholders and community representatives. Forty (40) participants attended that meeting. More than 15 participants were women. Different government and non-government institutions, civil society organizations, representatives of several groups of interests and local personalities took part. The meeting was designed in three parts:

-         The first part was a presentation on the project, its philosophy, approach and methodology, technical concepts, etc.

-         The second one was a free space for participants to express their thoughts, questions, ideas, suggestions and recommendations;

-         The third one was a specific session, where the participants were encouraged to elect members of the steering committee. There were identified eight such groups as below:

o        Group of Services;

o        Group of Environment;

o        Group of legal experts;

o        Group of urban and construction experts;

o        Group of businessmen;

o        Group of social and cultural experts;

o        Group of civil society;

o        Group of road traffic;

This meeting was followed by the neighborhood meetings (6 neighborhoods) with an average of 50 habitants in each of the meetings. During these meetings URI’s experts represented the project, its philosophy, methodology, process and expected outcomes and impact. The main purpose of that meeting was to get citizens’ ideas, thoughts, suggestions, recommendations and concerns related to the future development of their city. Some questions were pre-prepared by the URI’s experts.