Planning Capital Cities

Bucharest’s urban planning instruments during the communist regime:

systematization sketches, plans, projects and interventions

In 1921 the first proper urban systematization plan for Bucharest was issued

by royal decree. It represented a complex work, strategically imagined for the

next 50 years. The plan proposed urban zoning, a unified and hierarchical view

of the street network, building and parceling regulations, provisions regarding

monuments, etc.

It is important to note that the complexity of a systematization plan was very

well understood and established by the 1938 Instructions and provisions for

the elaboration of systematization plans, which imposes three stages of such a

project: the sketch (containing the principles), the directive plan (more detailed,

it offers solutions) and the alignment systematization plans (very detailed, with

alignments for buildings and streets). The project also comprised of written

regulations and an administrative implementation project.^5

One of the principles that would have an impact

on future developments is the determination of a

minimum and a maximum height for the buildings

on boulevards and housing areas. Bucharest started

out as a very spread and low city and it was believed

that its urban aspect (and in the end it economic

and functional aspects, as well) depended on higher

buildings, at least on the main boulevards. So the

height was established at minimum 8m, with a

maximum dictated by the width of the adjacent

street (resulting around 18m) and with possibilities

for higher buildings with recessed upper floors. A

certain flexibility of the regulation led to heterogenic

developments regarding height.

In 1935 a new Plan Director de Sistematizare

al Municipiului Bucureşti (Directive Urban

Development Plan for Bucharest) was drafted and

its adjacent regulations were approved by 1939.

The plan stipulates the paramount importance of

housing areas for the future development of the

city and, by an import from the German legislation,

it proposes building classes. These were defined

by: “the minimum surface, minimum façade length

and depth of the plot, building density, building

grouping, overall dimension, direct perspectives”^6.

The admitted height for buildings grew again, to

24 m. The hierarchical structure of circulation was

a continuous preoccupation, especially when it

comes to the representative urban spaces of the

boulevards.

Fig. 1
The 1935 Directive Urban Development Plan. Published in
Urbanismul, 4/2010.