Global City Mirage: Depoliticising Urban Transformation in Belgrade and Tirana

The article discusses global city aspirations as a mirage which Belgrade and Tirana are continuously trying to attain. Catching this mirage is the guiding rationale of urban transformations in the two cities. Importantly, I argue that peripherality and the aspirations to be more central legitimise certain urban governance strategies, specifically depoliticising urban transformation. The article demonstrates that eventually depoliticisation strategies backfire and, instead, lead to further peripheralisation. Hence, the study explores the relation between peripheralisation and depoliticising urban transformation in Belgrade and Tirana as cities which employ their urban transformation to catch up with global cities. It empirically explores this relation through analysing governance discourses and practices of two megaprojects, the Belgrade Waterfront (BWF) and the New National Theatre in Tirana. The analysis addresses three main questions, the first one is on the nature of depoliticisation and how it is practiced, while the second and the third questions tackle the entangled relation between depoliticisation and peripheralisation. Conceptually, the article draws on the scholarly debates on the concepts of peripheralisation and depoliticisation. The research is mainly based on semi-structured interviews with state officials, experts and activists, observations, project related official and branding documents and official statements. Fieldtrips were organised to Belgrade and Tirana in winter 2018–2019 and summer 2019.