Like many other modern innovations, it seems that Smart City is coming to Albania not to solve problems, but simply to make them more contemporary. The European world, of which we want to become a part, solves similar problems with work, while we want to manage them with terminology. This is also happening with Smart City, or in Albanian translation “smart city”, which the Prime Minister of the country is presenting as a vigilant city: always with eyes open, to monitor its citizens.
This is not the first time he has spoken about this. When a murder took place at the airport roundabout, he said that, if bureaucratic procedures had not hindered the installation of Smart City, the murderers would have been caught in record time. While yesterday, it seems that he had overcome bureaucratic obstacles, he came out and explained that the State Police was being equipped with a “magic eye”. He did not talk about laws, standards and institutional reforms, but about real-time surveillance cameras.
Prime Minister Rama's statements about the "Smart City" project are built on a comparison not based on facts, when he brings up Jordan as an example, which he describes as "one of the three safest countries in the world", directly linking this safety to the use of technology. Rama says that, in conversations with the authorities there, "the common word was Smart City, with technology from Abu Dhabi", creating the idea that public safety is an almost exclusive product of intelligent systems and not of a complex combination of institutional, political and social factors.
More problematic than the comparison is the way the system itself, which is expected to be installed in Albania, is described. According to Rama, “this new security system records every legal violation in real time and sends it immediately to the State Police operations room”, while “giving the Police a magic eye to see in real time its entire territory”. Although he insists that “this is not a camera project” and that it is not about classic surveillance, the language used essentially describes a form of continuous and general control, where the police appear as a “chief inspector of the territory who has eyes everywhere”.
This way of speaking shifts the debate from the Smart City in the European sense, which is related to the improvement of services and urban life, towards a vision of security that relies on constant monitoring and real-time response. When the prime minister presents the technology as a “magic eye”, without clarifying the legal boundaries, institutional control and guarantees for privacy, the project is more of a surveillance instrument than a step towards a truly smart city.
In the modern world, that of cities that function without propaganda conferences, where prime ministers do not explain technology, Smart City means coordination and efficient administration for the benefit of the citizen. There, technology is like an old clerk: it speaks little, but knows a lot and works efficiently. There are cameras, but no one considers them as the main organs of state thought. In our country, the camera is presented as the brain, heart and conscience of the system.
Estonia, for example, built the digital state without noise or metaphor. The citizen is not surveilled. Systems talk to each other and every action leaves a trace. The official knows that if he makes a mistake, the mistake will be recorded so that it can be corrected without being compounded. Not by heaven, but by the law.
In Barcelona, ??Smart City means intelligent management of energy, water and traffic. Sensors and algorithms are used to save resources and make urban life easier.
In Amsterdam, technology serves sustainability and long-term planning. In Singapore, urban data is used to predict future needs: housing, transportation, public services. In all of these models, cameras exist, but they are a detail, not a governing philosophy.
In the civilized world, Smart City means that the trash can automatically notify you when it is full and needs to be emptied; that the bus line indicates that it is overloaded and a lane or vehicle is added; that the traffic light understands when there is traffic and does not keep you in line unnecessarily; that the street light only turns on when someone passes by; that water and lights are measured accurately and are not lost in the network; that the parking lot shows you where there is a free space and you do not drive around the city in vain; that a permit, a certificate or a payment can be obtained online, without a counter, without a queue and without a friend.
In short, a Smart City is a city that enables the effective connection of systems, saving time, nerves and money; a Smart City is not a Cyclops' eye that monitors you.
Our Prime Minister, for Tirana, has chosen the eye model. At first, he rented two satellites, which were presented as two space inspectors. They would see every roof and every concrete without permission. The public waited. The satellites saw, or did not see, but in no case did they speak. No map, no report, no balance sheet. They were very educated satellites: they sat and watched without interfering.
Then came the terrestrial phase: smart cameras. Cameras that signal themselves, that complain when they go off, and that bring problems directly to the police's attention. The impression is being created that the state's main problem was a lack of eyes, not a lack of systems, accountability, and trust.
The propaganda is so great that it doesn't let us breathe and see any work. I know that some honest citizens will say: where were we and where are we? The situation has changed. And as the biggest example they bring e-Albania, which has eliminated those terrible and boring queues when people were looking for even a family certificate.
But even e-Albania, much praised for eliminating queues, at the end of the day turns out to be simply an application portal. The citizen applies online, gets a number and then waits. His file passes into the hands of people, with papers, stamps and manual verifications. For a property certificate, you apply online, but the answer depends on the paper moving through the corridors of the cadastre. For a pension, you apply online, but you have to send the documents by mail. We are a long way from the day when the system (part of the so-called Smart City) will operate automatically and solve problems in real time, as digital governance presupposes.
The pinnacle of digital “smartness” is seen in pensioners. In this supposed system, with satellites and cameras that see everything, one category of citizens still remains under suspicion: the elderly. They, every six months, must physically appear at the counter to receive a magnificent document called a “certificate of life”, to prove that they are still alive. To receive their pension, physical presence is required. Visual proof that they are still alive is required. It seems that the Cyclops’ eye cannot work here.
So, in a country that sees everything from satellite, the pensioner must go himself to prove that he is not dead. A small administrative paradox, but very significant.
The Jordanian model that Rama brings is not where Albania should go. Jordan is a monarchy with real power very concentrated in the king. In Jordan there is some formal pluralism, but civil liberties, independent media and the right to protest are limited, especially when it comes to issues of security, the monarchy or foreign policy.
This is essential to understanding Rama's reference: high security in Jordan does not come from democracy, but from a state with strong vertical control, a large role for security services, and low tolerance for deviations.
Rama also emphasized that "friends from the Emirates" have made available to Albania "a technology of a strategic nature that can be used for school security", a term that in itself is vague and alarming, because education is not a field of national security, but a space for formation, upbringing and autonomy of thought.
The claim that the introduction of this system in schools in the United Arab Emirates, according to Edi Rama, has “drastically reduced crimes of every kind”, “absenteeism”, “copying” and even childish behavior in the classroom, is presented as an indisputable success, but without any concrete data, pedagogical study or psychological analysis. In this logic, discipline and improvement of behavior are not achieved through teaching, teacher authority and school culture, but through constant technological surveillance, shifting education from human relationships to the fear that “someone is watching you”.
According to Rama’s explanation of the “smart city,” Albania is not moving towards a city that works better for its citizens, but towards a city that monitors them better. Technology, no doubt, makes surveillance more efficient, but the question remains as simple as it is awkward: is this how a democratic state is governed? The citizen is recognized, scanned, and registered by the system, but to prove that he is still alive, he must appear in person every six months. In this way, while we talk about “smart societies,” in practice we are building a reality where the state opens an ever-larger eye, while the citizen learns to live under the gaze of the Cyclops.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Thoma Gëllçi
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: CNA, 20.12.2025
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