A Slow City is a thesis "research by design" project that critically aims to open important discussions about the pragmatic issues in cities in the Western Balkans and especially in post-war Kosovo, which by promoting fast urbanism, are experiencing rapid transformations. A familiar paradigm, that brings the same urban questions of peripheries or city edges, large infrastructures, abandoned landscapes, brownfields, sprawl and so on. Hypothetically, it further tries to apply the "slow food movement" in city planning and persistently seeks to propose possible resilient scenarios that promote environmental justice, soft mobility, sustainable design, circular economy, heritage and social integration. Coming from multi-scalar research that is based on multiple drivers of socio-economic and socio-political factors, a generic design framework is developed for a singular layered strategy that will follow the initial conceptual ambitions.

Transformation of Ferizaj holds a remarkable economic value at one side and a terrible environmental justice on the other. Fast urban growth is having tons of consequences in multiple degradation levels in heritage; water management; illegal high-rise architecture; deforestation; climate change; infrastructural chaos; lack of public spaces; abandoned landscapes; and loss of agricultural fields. The project states three main questions or scenarios of “what if’s”, that shape the concept of Ferizaj as a slow city:

1. “What if water defines growth?” meaning what happens if we let nature grow into the city, or perhaps barrier the city from growing and degrading nature?
2. Ferizaj is a city created because of a rail. A rail significant to the city’s identity. A rail that now is being taken from people. “What if tram revives the city?” Introduces a new tramway system as a way to sustainable mobility and public transport.
3. And “What if the edges gain a new identity?” Meaning what happens if we oppose speed growth by bringing rural into urban and adapting new ways for circular economy and social integration to landscape?

Three chosen zoom-in areas will test the strategy in different scales of mapping and designing in infrastructure, landscape and architecture. While the City Centre and Green-Edge, adapt slow urbanism and slow landscapes philosophies in design, the Agri-Edge aims to be more ambitious in terms of imagining a new way of perceiving city peripheries and rural-urban relations that are usually considered the ugly side of cities. In the Agri-Edge scenario, the city peripheries are seen as urban villages that promote sustainable living through social integration, agriculture and circular economy.

Advisor: Matteo Motti