Tbilisi - Politics and Administration

Politics and Administration

See also: List of mayors of Tbilisi

The status of Tbilisi, as the nation's capital, is defined by the Article 10 in the Constitution of Georgia (1995) and the Law on Georgia's Capital – Tbilisi (February 20, 1998).

Tbilisi is governed by the Tbilisi City Assembly (Sakrebulo) and the Tbilisi City Hall (Meria). The City Assembly is elected once every four years. The mayor is elected by the City Assembly. The Mayor of Tbilisi is Giorgi (Gigi) Ugulava and the Chairman of the Tbilisi City Assembly is Zaal Begashvili.

Administratively, the city is divided into raions (districts), which have their own units of central and local government with jurisdiction over a limited scope of affairs. This subdivision was established under Soviet rule in the 1930s, following the general subdivision of the Soviet Union. Since Georgia regained independence, the raion system was modified and reshuffled. According to the latest revision, Tbilisi raions include:

• Old Tbilisi (ძველი თბილისი)
• Vake-Saburtalo (ვაკე-საბურთალო)
• Didube-Chugureti (დიდუბე-ჩუღურეთი)
• Gldani-Nadzaladevi (გლდანი-ნაძალადევი)
• Isani-Samgori (ისანი-სამგორი)
• Didgori (დიდგორი)

Most of the raions are named after respective historical neighbourhoods of the city. The citizens of Tbilisi widely recognise a system of the smaller non-formal historical neighbourhoods. Such neighbourhoods are several, however, constituting a kind of hierarchy, because most of them have lost their distinctive topographic limits. The natural first level of subdivision of the city is into the Right Bank and the Left Bank of the Mt'k'vari. The names of the oldest neighbourhoods go back to the early Middle Ages and sometimes pose a great linguistic interest. The newest whole-built developments bear chiefly residential marketing names.

In pre-Revolution Tiflis, the Georgian quarter was confined to the southeastern part of the city; Baedeker describes the layout succinctly:

In the north part of the town, on the left bank of the Kurá and to the south of the railway station, stretches the clean German Quarter, formerly occupied by German immigrants from Württemberg (1818). To the south is the Gruzinian or Georgian Quarter (Avlabár). On the right bank of the Kurá is the Russian Quarter, the seat of the officials and of the larger business firms. This is adjoined on the south by the Armenian and Persian Bazaars. —Karl Baedeker, Russia: A Handbook for Travelers

Avlabari is considered "the integral component of the so-called 'old Tbilisi'" and is currently the object of planning and cultural heritage preservation.