Strategic Plan Fier

Fier is a city located in the center of Albania, close to the Adriatic Sea. The coastal area along Fier is facing severe pollution and erosion problems. Recently, the territorial borders of the municipality are expended towards the coast. Felixx developed a strategic plan to connect coastal protection interventions with recreational development. To goal is to reorient the city towards the sea and improve the environmental conditions. Two alternative scenarios are explored, deploying natural processes in different ways in order to achieve these goals. A control scenario in which ongoing natural transformations are restraint to safeguard an optimal permanent situation; and an adaptive scenario in which natural processes are incorporated in an ever changing dynamic environment. The control scenario requires a functional division of the coastal landscape into 4 spatial structures. These structures are defined by difference in environmental challenges and development pressure:  the beach, dunes, harbor and delta planes. The beach fights coastal degradation, integrating breakwaters in the zone with a limited amount of erosion. An artificial island protects the zones with a larger amount of erosion. The dunes are fragmented by excavation and erosion, causing salinization of the agricultural grounds behind the dunes. New sand hills are added, to connect the pieces and create an connected protective topographic landscape. The hills are planted with grass vegetation to stabilize them, and made accessible by a path network. The existing harbor along the canal, and the village at the border between the dunes and agricultural grounds, are intensified towards recreational hubs embedded in the dunes. The two delta areas, at the estuaries of large rivers, get a protective status and are made inaccessible.