realized and properly used. The 1935 planning period was an opportunity for
C. Sfințescu, a mature planner, to make up after the much contested General
Urban Plan PGS|21 and to finally realize his old proposals for Bucharest. T.
Rădulescu and I. Davidescu were the coordination core of the Working Group.
They were with an experience of over 10 years within the Municipality and
whose activity evolved around Bucharest urban plan. The PDS remained the
highlight of their careers. T. Rădulescu shaped the vision and the general
guidelines of the plan and while I. Davidescu worked on the details and
proposed clear projects and tools - a new building type for low income homes,
the ratios and specific locations for the green spaces system and the table with
regulation specifications. I. Davidescu was the only member of the Working
Group to remain in Bucharest Municipality and to work on the PDS until 1947.
There were some fundamental differences between C. Sfintescu and the
Working Group regarding the result of the plan. C. Sfințescu was looking for a
plan to decide how a city should function in every little detail: an extensively
detailed scheme that should have covered every aspect of an intervention and
would require a centralized decisional mechanism. The Working Group was
looking in opposite for a global plan orientated towards the morphology of the
city and the social needs that animates it, a general guideline for the city with
typologies of interventions subject to adjustment and interpretation.
There were differences concerning the use of a plan. C. Sfințescu saw the plan
as a global work that was continuously improving, never final, always explored
and improved as it was used. The responsibility for urban planning belonged
according to Sfințescu only to a public apparatus with highly specialized experts.
The plan depended further on detailed procedures and a good work ethic. The
Working Group saw in opposite the plan as a popular, accessible and public
tool, to be useful to any builder.
With regard to the urban vision, Sfințescu understood the city only of major
projects and as a place of building activities. The Working Group had itself
the vision of and every-day city for every citizen, with a certain construction
discipline and a pleasant and comfortable living.
Closing notesIn a time when the urban plan as a product was the only acceptable result
of the modern urbanism, the PDS|35 appeared form the continuous belief
that the urban plan could have been the engine and the warrant of national
development. On that ground, being the first public attempt to create an urban
plan based on an continuously supporting environment, the mythological
image arouse around PDS|35 to be the first modern urban plan of Bucharest
even before it was drafted. This image remained until nowadays. The experts
created the need for a new plan throughout popular conferences in all related
fields and throughout enthusiastic articles that announced “the new modern
The first urban plans of Bucharest in the rise of the 20th century