Planning Capital Cities

Designing Sofia’s city core in the context of the changing ideological paradigm 1945-1989

emerges for the first time in a lot of the contributions. As a result of the

competition a new general development plan (the “Tonev-plan”) for the capital

is elaborated.^7 In its initial stage the plan aims at establishing some order

in the planning chaos that arises after the war. Complemented to meet the

requirements of the new social and economic formulations concerning the

further development of the country and its capital, it is once more confirmed

in 1949 and remains in effect till 1961.^8 The plan is the first to propose the

polycentric structure with district centres and a strict functional zoning of the

basic town forming systems.

The detailed master plan for the reconstruction of the city centre,

accompanying the land use plan, is of special interest: The plan is dominated

by the concept of a parallel densification of the territory with mighty bulks to

shelter the new political power. Monarchy is abolished and the King’s Palace

is replaced by an enormous high-rise building. A new monumental space is

planned to replace the former ensemble consisting of the three elements: the

palace, the Town Garden and the palace court fence in between. The palace

court fence is abolished by the prolonged boulevard “Car Osvoboditel”. The

heavy intervention can be seen as an answer to the pre-war Mussman plan,

criticised to deal predominantly with the urban periphery and failing to offer

monumental places in the urban core. The intervention is partly realised:

The prolongation of the boulevard destroys the palace court and interrupts

Fig. 2
The master plan, 1945,
respects the pre-war pattern
of the urban core and foresees
the reorganisation and
monumentalizing of the King’s
Palace area and the Cathedral
Place. (Doytchinov/Petev)