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Planning Capital Cities PDF

290 Pages·2015·16.15 MB·English
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Grigor Doytchinov, Aleksandra Đukić, Cătălina Ioniță (Eds.) Planning Capital Cities Belgrade Bucharest Sofia Imprint Editors: Doytchinov Grigor/Đukić Alexandra/Ioniță Cătălina Title: Planning Capital Cities: Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia Publisher: Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz, www.ub.tugraz.at/Verlag Graphic design: Martin Grabner, www.martingrabner.com Print: www.primerate-druckerei.at © 2015 Verlag der Technischen Universität Graz ISBN: 978-3-85125-398-6 ISBN (e-book): 978-3-85125-399-3 DOI: 10.3217/978-3-85125-398-6 Cover illustration: Detail of the cadastral map of Sofia by Bartel, 1897. (Museum of Sofia) We would like to express our thanks to the Institute of Urbanism and the Faculty of Architecture of the Graz University of Technology for the financial support of the monograph. We owe Georgi Petev, Nadin Nadja Schaupp, Ana Jeinic, Nelly Tsenova, Alexandra Doytchinova a debt of gratitude for the assistance. Table of contents Table of contents Hannes Swoboda Foreword 6 Harald Heppner Capital city as national vision at the Serbs, Bulgarians and 10 Romanians Mirjana Roter Blagojević The modernization and urban transformation of Belgrade in the 20 19th and early 20th century Monica Sebestyen Urban image and national representation: Bucharest in the 19th 44 and the beginning of the 20th century Andreea Udrea The first urban plans of Bucharest in the rise of the 20th century 62 Maria Duda Shifts. A brief history of public plazas in central Bucharest 80 Hristo Ganchev, Grigor Doytchinov Sofia before World War II: urban design as a cultural implication 98 Miruna Stroe Bucharest’s urban planning instruments during the communist 116 regime: systematization sketches, plans, projects and interventions 4 Grigor Doytchinov Designing Sofia’s city core in the context of the changing 140 ideological paradigm 1945-1989 Aleksandra Đukić New Belgrade: visions, plans and realizations 1950-2014 160 Eva Vaništa Lazarević Urban regeneration tools (city branding) in Belgrade after the 174 democratic change in 2000 – social frame Milena Vukmirović Belgrade: The quest for the desired city image 188 Nikola Samardžić Belgrade 1714-2014: Utopianism and urbicide 212 Angelica Stan Urban expansion in Bucharest, after 1990: errors and benefits 224 Mihai Alexandru Urban planning through major planning documents after 1999: 234 urban centrality between vision and reality Yani Valkanov Suburbanisation in Sofia: changing the spatial structure of a post- 248 communist city Grigor Doytchinov, Aleksandra Đukić, Cătălina Ioniță The urbanism of Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia - analogies, 264 influences and differentiations Abstracts 272 The authors/editors in alphabetic order 288 5 Hannes Swoboda Foreword The subject of this very timely and interesting publication is the development and urbanism of the three capital cities Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia. These capitals are located in a region, which is often neglected and rarely in the focus of the European scientific and political attention. Interestingly, they are the capitals of two EU member countries, Bulgaria and Romania, and of a candidate country, Serbia. This fact shows the artificial and spiritual boundaries we are still confronted with in Europe. The regional neighborhood and the approximately comparable historic background make the three cities a unite object of research. Their development is closely connected to the delayed nation building process and the nomination for capitals. This is especially true for the unification and transition of different regions into the new state of Romania. But it is also true for the other two countries in their fight for sovereignty. It is not by chance, that often in the past, but sometimes even today, the name of the capital is used when reference is made to the state. Therefore today‘s capitals are synonymous for their respective nations and the state as a whole. They represent and symbolize the successful formation of the nation by bringing together different people and cultures into one state and a capital where the government and the important institutions are located. One of the big questions for the future of all capital cities is their role in a common Europe without borders on the one hand and the ongoing globalization on the other. Cities in general and capital cities in specific will have to find new roles and tasks. With a growing urbanization worldwide they will be more and more defining our living conditions, irrespective of national boundaries and historic identities. They must be able to bring together people of different cultural origins and different lifestyles and to create a future, out of their diverse past, which is accepting and promoting diversity 6 Foreword in unity. It is the inherited heterogeneity of Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia which characterizes them, but which could be seen as a potential to master the future. Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia have their own characteristics and phases of development. The Ottoman political and cultural influence is one of the most interesting commonalities in the urban history and is still visible today. It makes the three capitals comparable and distinguishes them from the art of organizing the western European cities. There are many common issues of development after the achieving of the national sovereignty in the 19th century: the speed of urban growth, the prompt change of the cultural paradigm and the implementation of the western European urbanism and urban models. Romania’s connection to France and also to other countries from the Roman language family is well known. Sofia and Belgrade have had special relations to Central Europe, especially to Austria and Vienna. Many Austrian architects practiced for example in Bulgaria establishing the academic architecture and urbanism. The relations between Belgrade and Vienna were not always easy, but Vienna was often the place to give asylum to Serbs, from Vuk Karadic to Bogdan Bogdanovic. All three capitals examine an analogue shift to the modernistic ideas in the period between the world wars. They have a valuable stock of historic buildings from this period which needs to be renovated and integrated into the modern city, capable to master the future. The post-war period is characterized by ambivalences caused by the differentiation of the socialist political systems. However, the traces of the socialist modernity are omnipresent in the cityscapes of Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, forming a specific heritage. The cityscapes are also affected by some buildings from this period, mostly for housing, but also by buildings of political representation, especially in the case of Bucharest. Today these buildings create a lot of problems for the integrated urban planning and development. An additional issue concerning all the three capitals is the underdeveloped public transportation system. In spite of many links to Central and Western Europe all the three countries and their capitals still have to fight today for recognition and acceptance. Their urban images are connected in the mind and perception of many “westerners” with poverty, backwardness and corruption. But instead of arrogance we would need to exchange ideas and visions about the future and offer understanding, support and help. A special task is for example the integration of the Roma population we have to solve in Bucharest, Sofia and Belgrade. I have seen horrible situations, but also extraordinary successful pilot projects. I have met a lot of engaged citizens, but I have also seen a lack of courage of some city officials to improve the situation of poverty and discrimination. In a united Europe with more or less open borders this is a European issue and not only one of the three countries and their capitals. 7 Hannes Swoboda Each of these capitals has its peculiarities and its own atmospheres. My first visits to all three cities took place after the political changes 1989. Perhaps in their “chaotic”, contradictory and sometimes neglected ambiance they were and maybe they still are expressing a special amalgam of backwardness and modernity, bourgeois and proletarian forms of life and housing. These characteristics and structures are closer situated to each other than in any other cities of Western Europe. It will be an enormous task to transfer and to link the inherited backwardness to the present and to promote modern structures without destruction of valuable ingredients of the past. A high degree of sensitivity will be necessary to manage this transformation. Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia could be a different kind of “smart cities”, where modern technologies should not substitute, but complement the long historic development with all its benefits but also wounds and scars. I want to thank all the authors and editors, in particular Grigor Doytchinov, for their engagement. They present in their contributions an overview of the historical development as a basis for reflections about the past and the future, which each one of the capital cities must define and implement as a sophisticated and innovative continuation of the past. 8 Foreword 9 Harald Heppner Capital city as national vision at the Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians Introduction When tackling the issue of capital cities in the national vision of the Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians, it is necessary at the outset to reflect on how far and in which way a particular area eventually comes to constitute that vision of a nation state comprehensible to the respective population. Should one not wish to fall into the trap of nationalism, according to which the nation has always existed and exerts a right to a particular territory, one must be aware that there is a complex process in which components sometimes together, sometimes separate, define the nation-state model and attribute a normative power to it.1 Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian ‘lands’ are like all lands with national characteristics fictional, because 1. The geographical area under consideration gives no indication as to its ‘owner’; 2. Countless systems and regimes of rule have overlapped and claimed these territories throughout history leaving behind no discernible national characteristics; 3. in pre-modern times, regional organization and structures of consciousness possessed no national character, directly contradicting notions of an inherent nationalism. The continuity of settlements throughout history does likewise not legitimize any claim to those areas in question because, 1. Within each settlement, large tracts of territory were not occupied (mountain, forests, wetlands), 2. The people inhabiting these areas mixed continuously, 3. The inhabitants could not possibly be aware of their belonging to a particular nation (the concept of which was not invented until much later), and 4. Language, one of the most important criterion in distinguishing national identity was, in the case of settlements not codified or reformed until much later and therefore cannot be interpreted as endemic of any national language in the strict sense of our understanding of the concept. 10

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