Mihai Alexandru
Urban planning through major planning
documents after 1999: urban centrality between
vision and reality
Two complementary ways of understanding the inner centrality of
BucharestThe issue of urban centrality can be discussed from two complementary points
of view: the first one refers to the city-center: a place of privileged centrality
with historic heritage and sentimental value is recognized and rediscovered
today, albeit several alterations and moments of decline in popularity due to
administrative ignorance, bad intent or growing interest in other sites of the
city; the second one, refers to other places of centrality in the city, oscillating
between planned and unplanned, between project and reality. In the urban
history of Bucharest - other European cities are no exception - both instances
(city-center and multi-centrality) fall under the concept of ordering principle
applied as a measure to counteract certain urban imbalances or under the
idea of operational concept to which is attributed a major role in guiding
development based on a hierarchical thinking^1. On the other hand, a third
interpretation can be found in the real fabric of the city, in its own evolution,
impacting on the very fabric of the city-center.
A further difficulty in discussing the urban centrality of Bucharest comes from
the fact that the city-center is a heterogeneous entity, composed of several
distinctive parts such as the historic core, the central area and also several areas
where centrality is more diffuse^2. As such, although there is no clear consensus
on what is the city-center it is important to note that it is a dynamic element of
the city, as highlighted in figure 1, subject to different studies.
Earlier attempts in understanding the centrality of BucharestOne of the most important attempts to define the city-center belongs to a
multi-disciplinary team that in the mid 70’s tried to define the perimeter of the