Building more livable cities through public space planning
Public spaces are the places where daily life unfolds. From neighborhood streets and local parks to city squares, they host movements and social interaction. They influence how easily people navigate their cities, how connected neighborhoods are, and how resilient urban areas are to environmental stress.
In Kosovo, these spaces are under pressure due to unplanned development, limited upkeep, and climate change. At the same time, they represent a tangible starting point for improving urban quality through more coordinated and inclusive planning.
In this context, the Public Spaces Masterplans for Prizren, Gjakova, and Gjilan are developed as an ongoing and collaborative process that treats public space as core urban infrastructure. The masterplans map and categorize public spaces at both neighborhood and city levels, define connectivity strategies to improve walkability and spatial continuity, and outline revitalization measures for underperforming public spaces in cooperation with local communities. To support this process, a series of inclusive, multi-stakeholder workshops were held in close cooperation with the partner municipalities of Prizren, Gjakova, and Gjilan. The workshops brought together local communities, neighborhood representatives, municipal departments, civil society organizations, and other relevant stakeholders. Their purpose was not only to present preliminary analyses, but also to validate collected data and anchor the planning process in local knowledge and lived experience.
The sessions provided a platform to jointly reflect on patterns of public space use, existing conditions, and the role of public spaces within each municipality. Discussions focused on accessibility, spatial quality, safety, and everyday use, as well as on how public spaces connect neighborhoods, services, green areas, and mobility networks.
Commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and co-financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), GIZ Kosovo supports municipalities in advancing climate-sensitive and inclusive urban development. Within this framework, the Public Spaces Masterplans are conceived not as standalone planning documents, but as implementation-oriented processes that connect spatial analysis, participatory input, and institutional capacity.
Municipalities contributed critical insights into ongoing planning processes, maintenance challenges, and implementation constraints, while local communities and civil society highlighted everyday needs, informal uses, and spatial inequalities often overlooked by technical analysis. This exchange helped align institutional perspectives with daily urban realities and clarify shared priorities. The outcomes of this participatory phase will directly inform the next stages of the Public Spaces Masterplans, shaping spatial priorities, design principles, and phased, feasible interventions.
Developed as flexible frameworks rather than static plans, the masterplans aim to support coordinated action and incremental improvements over time. As the process moves forward, continued collaboration between municipalities, institutions, and local communities will remain essential to strengthening public spaces as inclusive, climate-responsive, and resilient foundations of urban life in Prizren, Gjakova, and Gjilan.