How does the priority given to automobiles in urban planning strategies affect the historical streetscape of Bucharest?

The proliferation of cars as the main means of personal transport strongly impacts the planning of our cities. Romania’s capital, Bucharest, perfectly illustrates this condition. This study evaluates how the various activities housed by the traditional street, such as socialisation, leisure and economic activities have been integrated with the street’s primary role of transport, asking the question: How does the priority given to automobiles in urban planning strategies affect the historical streetscape of Bucharest? The analysis is structured around three main points: the automobile’s cultural role, urban regulation concerning the car and public space’s evolution.

The emphasis in urban planning shifted from the creation of public places, to the creation of space for transport, the non-space of the moving car. At the moment, the tension between traffic and other uses of public space in Bucharest is at its peak, the city ranking second on INRIX’s 2020 Global Traffic Scorecard most congested cities list. The congestion and the parking problem in Bucharest are mainly caused by total freedom in the use of the public realm, including free unregulated curb parking, making the average motorised inhabitant just as responsible for the street’s condition as the authorities.

Since the spatial reality of walking the pavements of central Bucharest is that of walking a narrow corridor, one half made of stone and the other made of metal, cars are analysed as architectural forms, their presence being as permanent and as physically present as that of any other urban form. They are treated as islands of ‘private’ perforating the sea of ‘public’, part of the street’s profile.
Following this principle, a series of street sections from central Bucharest is compared to legally ideal street sections to determine the legitimacy of the existing streets. Historical Nolli maps of the area are used to illustrate the evolution of its urban morphology, explained through a chronological corelation with urban plans of the period. The same style of mapping is used to create the framework for performing a visual graph analysis, evaluating the impact of parked cars on public space.

The automobile oversaturation of the historic street system of central Bucharest negatively affects the quality of the public space of the area. The research presented highlights the influence of the automobile on both the conception and management of public space, at city and street levels, bringing into discussion issues regarding the cultural status of the car, its prioritisation through urban planning and its effects on the perception and the substance of the street.