Yesterday, Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj appeared on Ilva Tare’s show Tonight. Unlike other instances, the interview did not take place in the Tonight studio, but rather on the Tirana municipality building’s terrace, that has been advertized to citizens for some time as a “green terrace.”
During the interview, while Veliaj speaks of Tirana as a “green city” and talks about planting trees, the camera focuses on the potted decorative plants and the grass under his feet, of which is hard to discern whether it is natural or synthetic.
The purpose of this terrace interview is obvious. After planting “hundreds of thousands” of trees – accompanied by the obligatory cameras for every single one of them – Veliaj is now making even the terraces of buildings green, leading Tirana towards a green future.
This whole charade seems to be a mockery directed at the citizens of Tirana, who are seeing their parks and what public spaces are left, transformed into construction sites that will soon bloom into fully formed concrete and steel towers. As always, Veliaj purposefully fails to address those municipal decisions, in favor of the “green terraces” carpeted with synthetic grass, that will transform the entire city into a “giant park.”
What are Veliaj’s “green roofs” in reality
In real life, in order for the municipality building to have a true “green terrace” certain construction and isolation conditions must be met.
At the very least, a green terrace/roof must have the following elements/layers:
- Special waterproofing at the base of the terrace/roof
- A water resistant layer/membrane
- A drainage layer to redirect water into drain pipes
- A filtration/ventilation layer
- A soil substrate where the vegetation will be planted
- The actual vegetation
Green terraces were invented in Germany in the 1960s, and they are used in many countries, mainly as water management, as they partially absorb and hold precipitation – a green roof may hold up to 40% of winter precipitation and up to 70% of summer precipitation.
Green terraces are complicated and very expensive, and very unlikely to be successfully applied in Albania in the near future.
The construction of a green terrace would cost from $300 per square meter up to $3000 per square meter.
Furthermore, a green terrace cannot be installed in any kind of building, and requires certain construction and insulation conditions that an old building like that of the Tirana municipality most likely does not meet.
