Hristo Ganchev, Grigor Doytchinov
in 1893, the parliament establishes the Ministry for Public Buildings, Streets
and Transportation. Parallel to it the Law for Building the Settlements comes in
effect in 1892. It is indicative for the spirit of the time that in 1895 a building ban
is imposed on settlements not having legal regulation plans at one’s disposal.
In 1909, the new Professional School for Building Engineering and Geodesy is
opened and made two years later to a Polytechnic School. A new governmental
Department of Planning and Development of the Settlements is established as
part of at the Direction of Public Buildings as the first institution specialised in
urbanism.
The short overview shows the speedy implementation of the urbanism
discipline. The role of the foreign experts, predominantly from Central Europe,
is hereby decisive.^21 The striving after Europeanizing achieves a great success,
despite of the turbulent political disturbances,^22 but the speed of instituting of
the urbanism overtakes the process of establishing a civil society.^23 Even if very
thin, the educated elite are dominating in the public life and press towards a
total rebuild of the oriental image of the settlements. The unripe normative
base and the lack of experience lead to a free application of the European
planning practice and to an intuitive proceeding. The rapid change of the urban
shape serves the expectation of the elite, but is strange for the majority of
the population.^24 Consequently, the urbanism starts in Bulgaria as an imported
discipline and as a governmental top-down program.^25 The created urban plans
are, of course, not just the result of a formal application of European design
patterns, but also of a deep transformation of the society. The factors defining
the attempts in urbanism are concerning three points: the application of foreign
models, the persistent life tradition of the majority of the population and a
dynamic socio-cultural and demographic change. These contradictive factors
give rise to some more than one attempt in planning.
The attempt of the total transformation is presented significantly by the plan
of Stara Zagora.^26 The plan is designed without regard to the inherited urban
patterns applying the model of the “American regulation”. It materialises the
spirit of the rationalism and complies with the atmosphere of departure in
Bulgaria. The phenomenon of the total change based on a singular personal
idea is made possible because of the political motivations. Although the plan
presents an isolated example of extreme innovation, it replaces the anonymous
urban organisation of the past and positions the urbanism as an essential part
of the public life.^27 The plan for Plovdiv, on the contrary marks the attempt
of respecting the inherited urban pattern and its continuous extension.^28 The
composition consists of historic and newly added blocks, organised by new
tangential main streets. The plan responds to both the preservation of the pre-
modern urban heritage and the prognosis of a speedy growth. Sofia’s urbanism
marks itself a third way of a planning model: It combines the consideration of
the main street directions from the pre-modern time, the total transformation
of the network of secondary streets, and finally, the continuous extension of
the territory.
Fig. 4
The regulation plan of Amadier
and Roubal, related to the
urban structure of the Ottoman
settlement, 1879.
(Archive Ganchev)