Bucharest is stifled by own growth

Lacking a long-term urban development plan for the last few decades, Romanian cities have developed haphazardly, around industrial or commercial centres, with whole neighbourhoods being replicated, and streets devised to accommodate one car per every twenty inhabitants. Bucharest is the “best” example of a lack of strategy, according to experts in urban development. Responsible for almost one third of Romania’s gross domestic product, the Capital is stifled by its own growth. New residential areas appear in areas where the basic infrastructure is not yet in place, which is the case in Pipera, where villas are delivered with septic tanks and a drilled well, but without sewage and running water, while the large intersections in Bucharest are only traffic-free at night. “We never really had a concrete long term plan of urban development in Romania, in Bucharest or in the provinces and the problem is we still don’t,” Sandu Alexandru, dean of the Faculty of Urbanism within the Ion Mincu Architecture University, and president of the Romanian Urban Planners Register, told ZF. Several projects end up languishing on the table of the administrative authorities, which seldom hold an open and constructive dialogue with representatives of the civil society, or the projects take very long time to develop.