Planning Capital Cities

Abstracts

Hristo Ganchev, Grigor Doytchinov

Sofia before World War II: urban design as a cultural implication

The European urbanization reaches Sofia not until after the liberation in 1878.
The inherited urban shape from the Ottoman period is not the result of a
conscious organization of the settlement, but an adaptation to the existing
topographical, social and economic circumstances. The first changes in the
urban way of life follow the phenomenon of the National Revival, which is
in the European context a delayed transition from the middle to the modern
ages, combining the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment and the bourgeois
revolution in the same time.

The national independence marks the beginning of Sofia’s Europeanizing. The
redesigning after the nomination as capital city has the character of a cultural
implication. The establishing of the urban planning institutions is an important
part of the constitution of the modern administration system and marks the
beginning of the methodological proceeding in the settlement’s regulation. The
lack of academically educated local experts encourages the work of a great
number of foreign ones. The influences of the European urbanism and the
acceptance of the European urban models are an expression of the aspiration
of the intellectual strata to change Sofia’s oriental shape to a modern European
one. Sofia’s initial urban design is a significant example of this period and a
reference point in the countries modernization.

Sofia’s urban reordering happens in phases: the total reordering and the abrupt
change of the city’s image until 1900, and the urban extension between 1900
and 1918. Sofia’s ring-road is an emblematic example of both, the implication
of Western-European models and the reflection on the specific topography.
The ring-road system of Sofia is despite of some differences closely related to
the Vienna’s Ringstrasse. The second ring-road realised at the end of the 19th
century marks the finish of this very important urban development phase. The
extreme population growth after WW I bear new problems and provoke new
planning ideas. Sofia’s plan from 1938 is recognised to be the beginning of the
modernistic urbanism in Buzlgaria.