Tirana stands for Resilience

In the last 72 hours Tirana went from the strongest earth shaking earthquake of the last three decades to flooding caused through 115 mm of rain overnight. People were scared, confused and often even manipulated into fake news and opportunistic and unethical public communications. Some lost their homes, others were injured, others traumatised and yet all this happens randomly and evermore frequently throughout the globe.

A few weeks ago I was invited at a conference on resilient cities which are becoming at least as frequent or even more than the smart city ones. While preparing for my speech it struck me that in Albania we have perhaps the best translation for the word Resilience, Kalitje. The definition of Kalitje is to become stronger physically and morally through practice in hardship situations. Resilience in the city context ultimately means becoming stronger, but the last few days taught us what stronger really means and it is has nothing to do with power or force, and not even money.

I have never seen more strength than mothers holding their little ones and the neighbour’s little ones while getting out of the buildings in calm and orderly fashion. There is nothing stronger than the teenager helping the lonely grandpa from the second floor get out of his apartment. There is strength in the social worker who leaves her own kids at home and spends the night in the shelter assisting the evacuees. There is strength in each of us when we’re humble and kinder to each other. Perhaps it takes a force majeure to realise it, but now that we have let’s just hold on to it. Because if resilience is strength and strength is empathy than let’s practice empathy for a resilient city that withstands all harm!