It has been amazing to see the changes in Durrës over the past two years. When we mention to residents that things are changing quickly, they don’t believe us and so we start listing the changes we have seen. This of course just leads to the conversation of whether the changes are good or bad and there is no answer to that dilemma.

In trying to develop a measure of change, we think we may have found a very tangible and objective way to measure how much change has occurred. (We leave it to philosophers and politicians to decide if it is good or bad.) From our very narrow view of Durrës – our balcony, we have noticed many changes. The first picture is from the fall of 2006 when we first moved into our apartment and the second is in the spring of 2008. (Click on image for more detailed view.)

Fall 2006

Spring 2008

One of the obvious changes is the new sports betting bar (see sign in lower right corner 2008 picture). Not only is a coffee only a few steps away, we can monitor the soccer games from the privacy of our home without turning on the TV. The noise level and tone of the clients tells us who is winning and losing and playing badly. We also have new windows into the shop at the corner of the parking area below our balcony. Thankfully, our corner dyqan has not changed.

But these changes are hard to measure. What is measurable is the amount of cable that now crisscrosses our little street. Internet, cable TV and phone lines just appear nightly. Even though it is illegal to pull new cable above ground and all above ground cable is to be cut down, it seems that law has just changed the work schedule from day to night. The real value of having cable above ground is that with just a little bit of work, we hope to assign an economic value to meter of cable – as represented by monthly service fees – and this could very easily be a measurement of economic change. This measurement would capture spendable income, estimate the total economic growth, including the black/grey market and possibly eliminate the economic department of the United Nation’s Development Program.

PS – Since writing this blog and taking the pictures (last week) the store in front of the dyqan has been torn down. We have asked, but still don’t understand why.