towards the regional planning by approaching the city in a system with the
surrounding towns. Secondly, the PGS established the general approach when
drafting an urban plan: the need for a plan - the focus on certain urban parts or
activities - regulations and details to implement the urban plan.
Preparation for a new urban plan, the 1920sThe next urban plan of Bucharest is deeply rooted in the aftermath of the
WW I and the administrative efforts for the unification of Great Romania: the
new Constitution and a burst of laws to unify and uniform the fundamental
system of the newly created state. In that context, a new set of laws^10 officially
marked the urbanism as an essential discipline and an administrative tool
instrument. The laws synthetized all the previous urban planning experiences
and stirred new subjects for debate, research and theoretical reflections. They
officially inaugurated the first call to all Romanian towns to elaborate urban
plans for development according to a set of technical prescriptions, officially
approved and enacted as “general urban plan”. Obviously, that triggered a
general exuberance in search for a clear and comprehensive framework for
an urban plan, seen exclusively as a public administration responsibility. The
actual outcome of that turmoil was the launch of the second urban plan for
Bucharest^11.
“The scientific method for plan making”The intellectual debate raised around three ground-breaking lectures presented
at the Urban Planning Conferences of the Romanian Mayors in June 1927: I.
Davidescu’s “Planning the cities”, D. Marcu’s “Aesthetics and beautification of
cities” and C. Sfințescu’s “Planning the cities in the actual structure: A practical
guide for plan making” named by Sfintescu as “the scientific method for plan
making”^12 was the starting point in establishing the basic phases of the planning
process.
Scheme of the methods proposed by Al. Davidescu, T. Rădulescu^13 ,
D. Marcu^14 and C. SfințescuThe scheme of the methods proposed followed the three aspects of urbanism:
the research and information, the plan and its approval, and the building
regulations and detailed plans. According to the method of Al. Davidescu^15
the aim of the plan was the development, the territorial expansion and
the beautification following the sequence: research – pre-project – legal
prescriptions for execution. The sequence of stakeholders and responsibilities
was: the public technical services – the external author of the plan – the
committee finding and facilitating the legal means for plan execution.
T. Rădulescu defined in 1929 the aim of the urban plan as urban development
and city improvement, based on a detailed and precise research phase.
The first urban plans of Bucharest in the rise of the 20th century