This article reviews the planning history of Sofia since its designation as the Bulgarian capital in 1879. It argues that Sofia's planning has been persistently shaped by two perennial dilemmas—how to reconnect the city with nature and how to define its relationship with the region. In response to these dilemmas, different visions, shaped by both local conditions and dominant foreign theories, were proposed at different times. Some promoted a compact city, while others advocated a dispersed form. The case of Sofia demonstrates the significance of the city-nature and the city-region relationships in the evolution of planning thought. It also points to the difficulties that arise when local ideas of how to organize these relationships are inspired by international models made for cities with different historic experiences.
Dobrina Jeleva-Martins , “Bulgarskoto gradoustrojstwo kato krustoput na Iztochnia i Zapadnia Avangard,” Arhitektura2 (2000): 21-24; and Dobrina Jeleva-Martins, “ Bulgarskoto gradoustrojstvo po putya na modernizma,” Arhitektura2 (1994): 36-39.
2.
A. Yerolympos, “ Urbanism as Social Engineering in the Balkans: Reform Prospects and Implementation Problems in Thessaloniki,” in Urbanism Imported or Exported: Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans, ed. Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2003); and Roumen Daskalov, Mezhdu Iztoka i Zapada: Dilemi na Bulgarskata Kulturna Identichnost (Sofia, Bulgaria: Lik, 1998).
3.
Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait , “Introduction,” in Nasr and Volait, Urbanism Imported or Exported.
4.
Stephen Ward, Planning the Twentieth-Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2002); and Stephen Ward, “Reexamining the International Diffusion in Planning,” in Urban Planning in a Changing World: Twentieth-Century Experience, ed. Robert Freestone (London: Spon, 2000).
5.
Nasr and Volait, “Introduction.”
6.
A. Yerolympos, “ Urbanism as Social Engineering,” and C. Hein, “The Transformation of Planning Ideas in Japan and Its Colonies,” in Nasr and Volait, Urbanism Imported or Exported.
7.
Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (New York: Blackwell , 1988).
8.
Christine M. Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983).
9.
Maria Kaika, City of Flows: Modernity, Nature and the City (New York : Routledge, 2005).
10.
G. Marsh, “ The Study of Nature,” in American Environmentalism: The Formative Period, 1860-1915, ed. D. Hall and D. Howe (New York: John Wiley, 1871/1973).
11.
Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City.
12.
See William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York : Norton, 1991).
13.
Fredrick Olmsted, “ The Urban Planners as a Civilizing Force,” in American Environmentalism.
14.
Kaika, City of Flows.
15.
Talen also points out that a focus on reforming the existing city versus a focus on creating new towns in the city periphery is a key axis that divides the main planning schools of the twentieth century into two types. See Emily Talen, New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures (London: Routledge, 2005).
16.
Hall, Cities of Tomorrow; and Jonathan Barnett, The Elusive City: Five Centuries of Design, Ambition and Miscalculation (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).
17.
E.g., see E. Pinheiro, “Europa, Francia and Bahia: Diffusion and Adaptation of Urban European Models” ( Paper presented at the Conference of the International Planning History Society , Barcelona, Spain, 2003); and A. Almandoz, “ Longing for Paris: The Europeanized Dream of Caracas Urbanism, 1870-1940,” Planning Perspectives 14, no. 3 (1999): 225-40.
18.
Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City.
19.
Barnett, The Elusive City.
20.
James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brazilia ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and Barnett, The Elusive City.
21.
Le Corbusier , The Athens Charter (New York : Grossman Publishers, 1933/ 1973).
22.
Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.
23.
Ebenezer Howard, GardenCities of Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform (London: Faber and Faber , 1898/1946).
24.
Robert Fishman , Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987); and Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982).
25.
David Gordon , Planning Twentieth-Century Capital Cities (London: Routledge2006 ); see also, e.g., C. Garnaut and A. Hutchings, “The Colonel Light Gardens Garden Suburb Commission: Building a Planned Community,” Planning Perspectives 18 (July 2003): 277-93; B. Izaskun and D. Landa, “Urban Models and Transferences in Caracas” (Paper presented at the Conference of the International Planning History Society, Barcelona, Spain, 2003); and D. Mittner, “The Influence of the Garden City's Idea in Israel and Egypt” ( Paper presented at the Conference of the International Planning History Society , Barcelona, Spain, 2003).
26.
Lewis Mumford , The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1938).
27.
Patrick Geddes , Cities in Evolution (London : Williams & Norgate, 1915/ 1949); Stephen Wheeler, “Planning for Metropolitan Sustainability ,” Journal of Planning Education and Research20, no. 2 (2000): 133-45; and Robert Fishman, “ The Death and Life of American Regional Planning,” in Reflections on Regionalism, ed. Brice Katz (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000).
28.
Mary Sies and Christopher Silver , “Conclusion: Planning History and the New American Metropolis,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996).
29.
Richard Stites , “Utopia in Space: City and Building, ” in Revolutionary Dreams: Utopia Dreams and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
30.
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City ( New York: Payson, 1932).
31.
E.g., P. Self , “The Evolution of the Greater London Plan, 1944-1970,” Progress in Planning57, no. 3-4 (2002): 145-75; and Wheeler , “Planning for Metropolitan Sustainability .”
32.
Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias.
33.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 19-20.
34.
Stephen Wheeler , “The New Regionalism: Key Characteristics of an Emerging Movement,” Journal of the American Planning Association68, no. 3 (2002): 267-78; Fishman, “The Death and Life of American Regional Planning”; and Sies and Silver, “Conclusion.”
35.
Hall, Cities of Tomorrow.
36.
E.g., Holmes Rolston, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); and T. Regan, “The Nature and Possibility of an Environmental Ethic,” Environmental Ethics3 (1982): 19-34.
37.
Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1971).
38.
Martha Conroy , “Moving the Middle Ahead: Challenges and Opportunities of Sustainability in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio,” Journal of Planning Education and Research26, no. 1 (2006): 18-27; and M. Whitehead, “(Re)analyzing the Sustainable City: Nature, Urbanization and Socio-environmental Relations in the UK,” Planning Perspectives40, no. 7 (2003): 1183-1206.
39.
According to the UN's Brundtland Report from 1987, sustainable development is development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
40.
Scott Campbell , “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities? Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development,” Journal of the American Planning Association62, no. 3 (1996): 296-312.
41.
U. Wikan, “ Sustainable Development in the Mega-city,” Current Anthropology36, no. 4 ( 1995): 635-55.
42.
Like sustainable development, new regionalism is a concept with many different meanings. Some British scholars, for example, have used it to promote the foundation of new regional political bodies in Scotland and Wales (e.g., Wheeler, “The New Regionalism”). This article discusses only the more popular meaning of the term, which implies the overcoming of regional disparities and the protection of unspoiled open spaces via promoting compact forms, reurbanizing existing cities, and building more active links between city and suburbs. See Sonia Hirt, “Toward Post-modern Urbanism: Evolution of Planning in Cleveland, Ohio,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 25, no. 1 (2005): 27-42; Emily Talen and Gerrit Knaap, “Legalizing Smart Growth: An Empirical Study of Land Use Regulation in Illinois,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 22, no. 4 (2003): 345-59; Wheeler, “The New Regionalism”; Wheeler, “Planning for Metropolitan Sustainability”; Congress for New Urbanism, New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report & Best Practices Guide (Ithaca, NY: New Urban Publications , 2001); and P. Healey and R. Williams, “European Urban Planning Systems: Diversity and Convergence,” Urban Studies 30, no. 4/5 (1993): 701-20.
43.
Wheeler, “The New Regionalism.”
44.
European Environment Agency, Environment in the European Union at the Turn of the Century ( Brussels: European Environment Agency, 1998); American Planning Association, PAS Report 479: Principles of Smart Development (Chicago : American Planning Association, 1998); President's Council on Sustainable Development, Sustainable America: A New Consensus for Prosperity, Opportunity, and a Healthy Environment for the Future (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1996); and United Nations, Agenda21 (New York : United Nations, 1992).
See Dobrina Jeleva-Martins, “Horizontalna organizacia na grada: Sinhronen analiz,” Arhitektura3/4 (1991): 25-28.
48.
Peter Tashev , “Urbanization in Bulgaria,” in International History of City Development, vol. 8, Urban Development in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Romania and the U.S.S.R, ed. E. Gutkind (New York: Free Press, 1972); and Peter Tashev, Sofia: Arhitekturno i Gradoustrojstveno Razvitie: Etapi, Postijenija i Problemi ( Sofia, Bulgaria: Tehnika, 1972).
49.
Dobrina Jeleva-Martins , “Izbrani fakti i komentar za purviya regulacionen plan na stolicata,” Arhitektura2 (1999): 38-40, and 3 (1999): 38-40.
50.
A. Ishirkov, “ Naselenieto na Sofia,” in Jubilejna Kniga na Grad Sofia (Sofia, Bulgaria: Knipegraph, 1928).
51.
Gyorgi Labov , Arhitekturata na Sofia ( Sofia, Bulgaria: Tehnika, 1979).
52.
John Lampe, “ Interwar Sofia versus the Nazi-StyleGarden City: The Struggle over the Muesmann Plan,” Journal of Urban History11, no. 1 ( 1984): 39-62.
53.
D. Jurdanov, “ Sofia kato industrialen center,” in Jubilejna Kniga na Grad Sofia (Sofia, Bulgaria: Knipegraph , 1928).
54.
Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
55.
Stolichna Goliama Obshtina, Izgrajdaneto na GolyamaSofia: Kakvo Predvijda Musmanovia Plan (Sofia, Bulgaria: Stolichna Goliama Obshtina , 1938), 6.
56.
See Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
57.
Atanas Kovachev , Zelenata Sistema na Sofia ( Sofia, Bulgaria: Pensoft, 2005); Sonia Hirt, “ Planning the Post-communist City: Experiences from Sofia,” International Planning Studies10, no. 3/4 (2005): 219-39; and Jeleva-Martins, “ Horizontalna organizacia na grada.”
58.
Jeleva-Martins, “ Bulgarskoto gradoustrojstvo po putya na modernizma.”
59.
Todor Goranov , “Pulni avtentichni obyasnenya po Musmanovia plan,” Zora5669, May 19, 1938, p. 30.
60.
Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
61.
Dobrina Jeleva-Martins , “Doktrinata na modernizma: Interpretacia na Musmanovija plan na Sofia,” Arhitektura5 (1998): 36-39.
62.
Ivan Ivanov, “ Rech na stolichnia kmet Ingener Ivan Ivanov po gradoustrojstvenia plan na Sofia, izraboten ot professor Musman, proiznesena pred Stolichniya Obshtinski Suvet na 18 maj 1938 g,” in Izgrajdane na Budeshta Golyama Sofia: Kakvo Predvijda Musmanovia Plan (Sofia, Bulgaria: Stolichna Golyama Obshtina, 1938); Stolichna Golyama Obshtina, “ Izgrajdaneto na Golyama Sofia,” 41; and Adolph Muesmann, “Gradoustrojstevenite problemi na Sofia,” Spisanie na Bulgarskoto Injenerno-Arhitekturno Drujestvo17/18 (1936): 169-72.
63.
Goranov, “Pulni avtentichni obyasnenya,” 30.
64.
Sonia Hirt, “ Centralization or Decentralization: Sustainable Development (or Not) in Planning the City of Sofia, Bulgaria,” in Sustainable Planning & Development (Southampton, UK: WIT Press, 2003), 847-57.
65.
Stolichna Goliama Obshtina, “ Izgrajdaneto na Golyama Sofia,” 29; and Lampe, “ Interwar Sofia.”
66.
Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
67.
Stolichna Goliama Obshtina, “ Izgrajdaneto na Golyama Sofia,” 49-70.
68.
E.g., K. Karat, The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1976 ).
69.
J. Pino, “ On the History of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro,” Latin American Research Review32, no. 3 (1997): 111-22.
70.
Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
71.
Stolichna Goliama Obshtina, “Izgrajdaneto na Golyama Sofia ,” 13-15, 43.
72.
Protokoli ot Sreshtite na Ingener Ivanov s Grajdanska Delegacia Dokladvashta Opozicia kum Musmanovia Plan (Sofia, Bulgaria: Sofia Archives, Source 1K, part 3, Archival Unit 482, July 27, 1938), 6.
73.
Hirt, “ Planning the Post-communist City”; and Lampe, “Interwar Sofia.”
74.
“Naredba-zakon za izmenenie na Obshtija Gradoustrojstven plan na Sofia i Stolichnata Goliama Obshtina,” Durjaven Vestnik29 (1945).
75.
Jordan Tangurov , “Modernata arhitektura 1944-1990,” Arhitektura2 (2000): 46-48; and Lyuben Tonev, “Golemite greshki na plana Musman,” in Po Putya na Bulgarskoto Gradoustrojstvo (Sofia, Bulgaria : Izdatelstvo na Bulgarskata Akademia na Naukite, 1959/1987).
76.
Peter Tashev , Sofia: Arhitekturno i Gradoustrojstveno Razvitie: Etapi, Postijenija i Problemi (Sofia, Bulgaria: Tehnika, 1972), 30.
77.
Jeleva-Martins, “ Doktrinata na modernizma.”
78.
Lyuben Tonev , “Za Generalnia Plan na Sofia ot 1945 godina ,” Arhitektura7/8 (1992): 26-36; and Tonev , “Golemite greshki na plana Musman,” 436-38.
79.
Lyuben Neikov and Boris Samodumov, Uchebnik po gradoustrojstvo (Sofia, Bulgaria: Narodna Prosveta, 1952), 177-81.
80.
See Kovachev, Zelenata Sistema na Sofia; D. Mushev, “Za stolicata i nejnite proektanti ,” Arhitektura7/8 (1992): 21-23; and Labov , Arhitekturata na Sofia.
81.
“Zakon za priemane i prilagane na Obshtija Gradoustrojstven Plan na Sofia,” Durjaven Vestnik89 (1961).
82.
Tonev, “ Golemite greshki na plana Musman,” 442-45.
83.
David Crowley and Susan Reid, eds., Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2002).
84.
Peter Lizon, “ East Central Europe: The Unhappy Heritage of Communist Mass Housing,” Journal of Architectural Education50, no. 2 (1996): 104-14.
85.
Mushev, “Za stolicata i neynite proektanti.”
86.
Gyorgi Andrusz , “Structural Change and Boundary Instability ,” in Cities after Socialism: Urban and Regional Change and Conflict in Post-socialist Societies, ed. Gyorgy Andrusz, Michael Harloe, and Ivan Szelenyi (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996).
87.
Robert Buckley and Sasha Tsenkova, Strategia za Razvitie na Grad Sofia: Predvaritelna Ocenka (Sofia, Bulgaria: Stolichna Obshtina, 2001).
88.
A. Yoveva, D. Dimitrov, and R. Dimitrova, “ Housing Policy: The Stepchild of the Transition,” in Housing Policy: An End or a New Beginning, ed. M. Lux (Budapest, Hungary: Open Society Institute, Local Government and Public Reform Initiative, 2003).
89.
A. Elbers and S. Tsenkova, “ Housing a Nation of Home Owners—Reforms in Bulgaria,” in Housing Change in East Central Europe, ed. S. Lowe and S. Tsenkova ( Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003).
Sonia Hirt and Atanas Kovachev , “The Changing Spatial Structure of Post-socialist Sofia,” in The Urban Mosaic of Post-socialist Europe: Space, Institutions and Policy, ed. Sasha Tsenkova and Zorica Nedovic-Budic (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer/Physica-Verlag2006); Staddon and Mollov, “ City Profile: Sofia, Bulgaria”; and G. Genov, P. Slavejkov, and H. Ganev, “Urbanizirani teritorii,” in Sofia: 120 Godini Stolica ( Sofia, Bulgaria: Academichno Izdatelstvo Profesor Marin Drinov, 2000).
92.
Dobrina Jeleva-Martins , “Sofia i selishtata: Budeshte za minaloto ,” Aspekti6 ( 1995): 14-20; and Alexander Alexandrov , “Noviyat Generalen Plan na Sofia mejdu vchera i dnes,” Arhitektura7/8: (1992): 30-48.
93.
“Zakon za izmenenie na zakona za podgotovka, priemane i prilagane na Obshtija Ustrojstven Plan na Sofia,” Durjaven Vestnik41 (1998).
94.
Hirt, “Planning the Post-communist City.”
95.
N. Karadimov , “Konkurs za budeshteto na grada: dumata na jurito,” Grad v Polite na Vitosha2 (2001): 2-6.
96.
Peter Dikov, “ Scenarii za socialno-ikonomichesko i prostranstveno razvitie na Sofia i Stolichnata Obshtina v perioda do 2020 g,” Arhitektura4 (2001): 29-31; and Vesselina Troeva, “ Vajen etap ot podgotovkata na Obshtija Ustrojstven Plan na Sofia,” Arhitektura4 (2001): 32-33.
97.
Stolichna Obstina , Obsht Ustrojstven Plan na Grad Sofia i Stolichnata Obshtina: Faza Predvaritelen Proekt, Etap 2, Scenarii za Socialno-ikonomichesko i Teritorialno Razvitie na Grad Sofia za Perioda do 2020 g ( Sofia, Bulgaria: Stolichna Obshtina, 2001).
98.
Ibid.
99.
Stolichna Obshtina , Obsht Ustrojstven Plan na Grad Sofia i Stolichnata Obshtina: Faza Predvaritelen Proekt, Etap 3, Idejni Proekti za Teritorialno Razvitie na Grad Sofia i Stolichna Obshtina (Sofia, Bulgaria: Stolichna Obshtina, 2002).
100.
According to official data, Sofia has density of 57.5 persons per hectare. This compares to 42.3 in London, 46.6 in Paris, and 48.8 in Amsterdam. See J. Kenworthy and F. Laube, An International Sourcebook of Automobile Dependence in Cities, 1960-1990 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1999).
101.
As of 2000, the highest residential density in Sofia, 180 people per hectare, was within a radius of one kilometer of the heart of downtown (see Buckley and Tsenkova, Strategia za Razvitie na Grad Sofia, 72). Densities tend to decrease toward the periphery with the partial exception of the socialist housing estates.
102.
According to data made available to the author by Colliers International, as of 2003, Sofia's center held around half of the total office space in the metropolis.
103.
According to data from real estate agencies in Sofia, in July 2005 housing prices in Vitosha averaged 654 euros per square meter, while in the center (e.g., Oborishte district) they were 769 euros per square meter.
104.
Zorica Nedovic-Budic , “Adjustment of Planning Practice to the New Eastern and Central European Context,” Journal of the American Planning Association67, no. 1 (2001): 38-52.
