MAYOR OF
PRISTINA

Aged sixteen, in 1992, Përparim Rama left his native Kosovo for a school exchange in London. But as war broke out in the Balkans, what began as an educational opportunity shifted into a life transition. Rama applied for asylum in the UK and stayed to study architecture and urbanism, later establishing an architecture firm. All the while he kept tabs on what was going on back home, especially as Kosovo emerged from war, declared independence and began the arduous process of recreating a national identity … a transformation that is still a work in progress.

WE BUILD
THIS CITY

Rama, who curated Kosovo’s inaugural national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012, never dreamed he’d be involved in politics. But since October 2021 he has served as the mayor of Pristina, his home town and Kosovo’s capital. So far, he’s led the city toward pragmatic solutions to urban problems, but he also places importance on instilling confidence in locals who have experienced deep ruptures and are still largely isolated from the rest of the European Union. To better understand the nuances of managing a postwar city, nomad’s Kimberly Bradley met Rama in Pristina in summer 2022 at Manifesta, the nomadic European biennial for contemporary art, opened there in late July. 

You’re originally an architect, not a politician. So how did you come to be mayor of Pristina?

 

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I’d been trying to help every Pristina mayor since 2004, advising them on urban policies and planning for a sustainable city. I was providing best-practice proposals which would push processes forward. Unfortunately, not much came out of them. In 2021, I received a call from a friend saying that he had a serious question for me. He asked: How do you feel about running for mayor? I asked: Do you mean mayor of London? No, mayor of Pristina, he said. I was told there was an additional challenge: I would be running on behalf of the opposition party.

 

Since my friend knew I was not interested in politics or being a politician, my first thought was that he must be joking and I told him that I was not interested. I had my life in London—my wife, children, businesses, property—and I wasn’t planning to move anywhere. My friend was persistent and called again, asking me to rethink the proposal. I paused, and got a strong feeling of moral responsibility to contribute to my hometown. I gave it serious thought. I was being given a chance to help transform my city through my work, and this time as its mayor.

 

I met with the party’s leader to explain that I was not interested in politics or joining the party, but I was very much interested in and passionate about transforming the city. I said that if the party supported me under these conditions, I’d go for it. My wife supported my decision and I entered the race. Although the political climate in local governance at the time was against all odds, I won.

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Were you surprised?

 

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I was not surprised. I knew I was going to win because I knew what the city needs, and I was not an unknown figure. I had the programme ready—I just had to dust off the proposals I’d done for other mayors. The city is constantly changing, and growing, and throughout the years I had seen its development and analysed its problems.

 

I had a deeper understanding of the city and its people because of my work as an architect and an urban planner. It was a completely new way of campaigning, persuading voters that despite the chaos in the city, we can improve infrastructure with strategic interventions. I was not focused on political parties, but in engaging citizens through campaigns for building communities’ power.

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What exactly needs to be turned around in Pristina, and how has the city evolved in the years since the war? What are the main issues and opportunities?

 

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There was euphoria after the liberation in 1999. You were free to do as you wanted and people profited from businesses they set up, because there was nothing there. The city needed everything, and people profited with whatever they did as long as they had the courage to engage, create and develop. There was also a huge moral desire among the Kosovan diaspora to come back and rebuild the place where they were born. It was a land of opportunity, but there was also a lack of rules and regulations and a lack of institutional capacity to control growth. In that city in transition, spatial, urban and social violence increased. People started building illegally without applying for permits.

 

Later, as the city was building a new, chaotic urban identity, there were efforts to stop the illegal developments. Some of these projects became legal later, given they were sited on the builder’s own land rather than someone else’s and were in compliance with health and safety regulations. But as I said, much of the construction industry remained uncontrolled. As a result, we had urban sprawl: the private sector boomed, but the public sector was not able to provide roads, transport systems, sewage systems, schools, hospitals and so on. This blossoming growth wasn’t always positive; you could describe it as a kind of cancerous growth that created issues in terms of providing public infrastructure facilities.

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What are the top priorities now?

 

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The whole urban city plan concept needed rethinking. The road network is limited in relation to the city’s development. You have a lot of residential developments on the outskirts, where there are no schools, so people drive their children into the centre, where the schools are. But that creates stress for parents, stress for children and stress in traffic. Existing schools are overloaded, so we’re building primary schools as well as new secondary schools. This will help alleviate congestion.

 

Also, we’re building health centres and providing new roads, because at the moment if you drive from one neighbourhood to another, you have to go via the city centre. It all comes down to how people feel about their city. Do they feel safe and relaxed, or do they feel insecure and stressed out? Is their everyday experience positive or negative? If they feel safe and secure, they can move in the public realm without worrying about cars or potholes, pollution, air pollution, or lack of green space.

 

This is what we’re trying to change, so that every citizen’s everyday life experience is as positive as it can be. By being positive and secure, you build confidence. By building confidence, you have more empathetic people: they’re more empathetic towards one another, and even towards nature. It’s all about the psychology of impacting the subconscious mind in a positive sense, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. It’s super important for cities to strive to be optimistic.