ARGUMENT Urban Romania: from dream to nightmare

"WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

In the spirit of supposedly encouraging investors, a new amendment to the urban planning law is being sought, increasing the possibility of derogations. The result is a return to the chaos of post-decembrist Romanian cities due, as the Romanian Order of Architects has repeatedly warned, to the "irresponsible application of derogatory urban planning". As if we were deprived of history, the proposals ignore part of our country's tradition. In 1902, for example, the town hall refused a one-meter urban deviation for a Greek church, on the grounds that "if the request of the Hellenic Legation were to be accepted today, why would it be refused tomorrow?". Through discipline, seriousness and tenacity, Romania's cities at that time, out of the mixture of contrasts at the beginning of the 19th century, came to be considered true world peaks.

With the right to free trade granted by the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, Romanian port cities were among the first to benefit from the lifting of the Turkish monopoly: Giurgiu in 1830 and Braila in 1867. For its part, according to the French diplomat Bois le Comte in 1834, "Bucharest, desolated by wars, civil disturbances and fires, is rapidly recovering: a mixture of beautiful palaces and poor hamlets, sometimes with the appearance of a large village, sometimes that of a European city, this city has the appearance and the way of being of a capital. The luxury, which is still considerable, has been stripped of its Asiatic forms and is closer to our mores...".

At the end of the 19th century, important changes linked to Romania's economic progress took place. Mechanized power tripled between 1901 and 1915, surpassing the peak of American economic growth in the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the capital went beyond the phase of assimilation of European models and entered the phase of synchronization. While Bucharest's first "Haussmannian" breakthrough dates back to 1865, Brussels began in 1867, Rome in 1871, Prague after 1893 and Madrid would have to wait until the 20th century. The capital's maturity at that time was reflected in the competition for the realization of a general urban planning project for Bucharest in 1906, ahead of the great European metropolises: Berlin - 1908, Paris - 1919 and Milan - 1927. The experience of restructuring and urban expansion of Bucharest led, from 1919 onwards, to the creation of a specialized education, in sync with the Western world. Romanian publications are read worldwide.

Already known worldwide, Romania is appreciated at the highest level. In 1934, the report of the German vice-president K. Jeserich, presented at the Preliminary Conference of the International Union of Cities and Local Authorities in Lyon, states: "Next to France, Romania must be mentioned as the only European country which is trying to establish an individual communal science". The capital's building work was rewarded in 1939 at the International Water Exhibition in Liège, when the Bucharest municipal works were awarded the Gold Medal for hydraulic works and also the Grand Prize for building and town planning works.

Emblematic for the tradition of the inter-war years is the ideal expressed in the 1936 Bucharest Moon Album: "Bucharest is not only called upon to play a leading role in the economic life of our nation, it has a much greater mission to fulfill, a calling that goes beyond the frontiers of the countryside, namely to become in this part of Europe the first Western centre, a first Western metropolis, with the equipment, the framework, the atmosphere and the creative civilizing energy that the truly European spirit includes. As a foreign observer who visited our country a few years ago said, with much understanding and with much justice, "Bucharest is the first capital of the Peninsula to be modeled in Europe". It is the most beautiful homage and at the same time the most encouraging prognosis that can be made on the future of the city of Bucur".

Interwar Bucharest was recognized worldwide and dreamed of its civilizing role. Today's capital, subject to urban planning derogations, still stands at the gates of Europe, denying its own traditions. Romania as a whole has to choose between dreaming of better cities or preparing the nightmare of urban chaos.