Dâmbovița. The River That Once Was—and Will Be

Bucharest still has a river. But for more than a century, the Dâmbovița has been—in turn—dammed, rerouted, concreted over, forgotten, rediscovered, redesigned, and, more often than not, left behind. “The Bucharest That Once Was” is, above all, a Bucharest that no longer faces its river.

This article offers a reinterpretation of this relationship in three phases—what it was, what it is (for 35 years, then for 5 years), and what will be—through three perspectives: that of Bucharest residents, architects, and those working along the riverbank today: engineers, biologists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

The theoretical framework is borrowed from sociologist Călin^Cotoi1: the Dâmbovița as a hydro-social territory fragmented between the “phantom river” (a concrete channel, a legacy of socialism) and the “living river” (neoliberal-green-creative). The historical framework begins with a presentation by Professor Bogdan Andrei^Fezi² (OAR Bucharest) bearing