URBAN ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION

Gheorghe Ionascu
Director, Ministry for Public Works and Territory Planning

Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts are still inadequately used. People still list water, forest and environment in the same sentence, putting the parts on the same place with the whole; a confusion is made between growth and development, not to speak about sustainable development that is misunderstood due to the translation of the French word "durable".

1. ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

The environment concept is intuitive, representing the hierarchy of the ecological systems, namely the unity of environment elements (water, air, soil, flora and fauna), including the human settlements. The environment includes everything in the system, meaning: matter, energy and information, respectively the content and the binder. The environment represents the whole; it may consist of parts, but cannot be placed near the parts as a separate entity. Consequently, syntagms like "water and environment" or "water, forests and environment" are inappropriate as the parts and the whole cannot be listed together. The term "environment" is often used only as a slogan without conferring to it the deserved importance. The environment represents a global concept, being hierarchically superior to its components. Even the combination "surrounding environment" is logically controversial as it induces the question: "surrounding what?", question that has no answer. Is it possible for an element not to be part of the environment of the said element? Accordingly, it seems more appropriate to use the term "ambient". The ambient means the material and social environment encompassing the human beings or the human community, more explicitly everything that surrounds us within the environment we are living in; the ambient represents the environment in direct contact with  people. Called "ambience" as well, the word is a neologism.

Development - a multidimensional concept, is the progress of the present world towards the future world, the carrying out of natural and social processes and phenomena over  time. Within the natural systems development follows nature's rules, ensuring the ecological balance through retro-action. By comparison, within social systems, the development is guided by the society rules, by alternating evolution and leap, fall / decline and thriving, stagnation / regress and progress. The development is a fundamental right of people since it focuses on improving their living environment, by creation of specific infrastructures, for example buildings, designated to protect the man from the harmful effects of  natural phenomena. Development should not be confused with  growth, which is something completely different; growth means increase in quantitative terms and development means expansion in qualitative terms. Growth leads to going out of scale , to exceeding the capacity of ecological support and to other negative effects, whenever it is excessive and unbalanced. At the end of this century and millennium, the ''development'' concept which in the past had quantity-related connotations, undergoes a transition to quality-wise aspects.

This new type of development is what we call sustainable development. Sustainable development is that type of development which, while satisfying the present needs, facilitates the fulfilment of next generations options. The English term "sustainable development" means a development which is self-sustainable in time, a self-reproductive development. This involves a well-balanced distribution of resources between generations and a responsible management of the natural capital needed for development. Development cannot be sustainable just on component parts, but only as a whole. Often the term is abused when speaking of "sustainable transport, sustainable land planning". The relation ''environment -development'' is fundamental , profound and philosophical; it is obvious that the environmental state depends on the way of development, and the attribute ''sustainable'' introduces the environment protection desideratum in the process of development .Thus the urban or rural environmental state depends on how the progress of human and socio-economic development is managed, on the type of technologies used by man. The energy-intensive economic growth, the use of polluting and unperforming technologies have led to pollution and ecological balance degradation. The habitat represents the territory on which a population lives in a natural way and the environmental conditions as a whole, but also the inhabiting process itself. For people, the habitat represents ''the hearth of the settlement'' or the limits of building area, the dwellings and the technical and public utility infrastructure, the access to services. The unit of the human  habitat is the dwelling, and the minimum level of the habitat system is the ''human settlement'', the dwelling being its fundamental component. The human settlement is a human habitat system with ecological valences, in which living and non-living components blend in mutual relations. (Berindan E., 1988)

Biosphere and  society are mutually inter-conditioned through human action, humans being biologically and socially conditioned.The essential character of the ''society-biosphere'' relation is a continuous and upward transformation of the natural environment through the artificialization and linearization of biochemical circuits.

In the last decades, the awareness of environmental aspects priority in the development process has overturned the historical binomium "development -environment" into "environment-development", with environment on the first place, as development desideratum and condition.

2. THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

Agenda XXI of the 1992 Rio Summit laid down the coordinates of sustainable development of all human activities. Human settlements make the object of Chapter VII, but human habitat problems are presented in other chapters too. Chapter VII includes 8 fundamental programs which together could ensure a sustainable development. These programs should stay in the attention of local public administration bodies which should use them in the elaboration of the local Agenda XXI.

The local Agenda XXI should be the background document for the future sustainable development of settlements. The local Agenda should have 3 time horizons: the first 20 years (2001-2020), until 2050 and until 2100 (tendencies). Development planning of the first 20 years must be concrete and included in the town planning projects. The necessity of the elaboration of the local Agenda XXI results from the recommendations of the World Conference Habitat II, organised by UN in 1996, in Istanbul, Turkey. In Romania, a few cities tried to elaborate their local Agenda XXI , but this has not become a general tendency. A methodology for approaching and elaborating a local Agenda XXI will be necessary in order to be used as a guide.

The National Centre for Human Settlements, established by Government Order no.515/1991, has the duty to elaborate and apply the principles of the national strategy for inhabiting. NCHS is  an inter-ministry body composed by general managers from all ministries; the president is the Minister of Public Works and Territory Planning and the Executive Manager is the State Secretary for Territory Planning and Town Planning.

The Technical Executive Secretariat is the core of this body, it has a permanent character and carries out the co-ordination of activities in the interval between statutory meetings of the members of the Centre; it is organised as Directorate within MLPAT. In the activity program for the year 2000, a study is included  on the methodology of elaboration of the local Agenda XXI.

3. THE CITIES STATE

A. The state of the world cities

The world future will be placed mainly in the urban environment, the town being the engine of economic growth. Although the city is the place where discoveries and inventions were made and the crucible of modern technologies, it has gradually become the pole of  major conflicts between man and environment. However, not urbanisation itself constitutes the cause of all environmental problems in cities, but the uncontrolled way of their developing; city development, under various circumstances and pressures, escapes from the control of designers and even of authorities. Big cities, like Bucharest, escape from the control of authorities because of their exaggerated territorial expansion and complexity of problems to address. Losing the right scale and exceeding the environment support capacity disturb the ecological balance of the cities and make their development more difficult. ''The concentration of millions of people in huge urban formations has been proven to be an aberration ''stated Carlos Della Paolera based on the deficit of all urban functions in these agglomerations, in which life becomes completely artificial. "The solution is to look for the man-environment balance; any other direction is an illusion that will, in the end, be punished". (Le Corbusier)

The human population interferes brutally with the operation of terrestrial ecosphere, with the delicate and fragile mechanism of nature, about which it does not  have sufficient knowledge. (Botnariuc.N.,VadineanuA.)

The industrial imperialism has led to urban imperialism. The forced industrialisation has brought about the forced urbanisation, the occurrence of the bedroom-districts, without appropriate facilities and services.

In cities, the following dysfunctions appear:

• agglomeration and superelevation of buildings,
• monotony and rigid aspect of apartment buildings with worn out facades,
• lack of vegetation, which is progressively driven away from cities,
• acoustic discomfor,
• air pollution and chaos of traffic,
• lack of a responsible waste management,
• precarious state of the technical and town infrastructure,
• lack of social cohesion and loneliness of the individual in the community,
• lack of cultural models and of civic consciousness for development,
• neglect, indifference, alienation.

B. The state of towns in Romania

In Romania, there are not so many serious problems in the towns, like in other countries, with the exception of poverty specific to the transition stage which will hopefully end. The network of urban settlements is well-balanced in the territory. The percentage of urban population is 55%. In all, in Romania there are 262 towns, of which 82 are cities. From all towns, the biggest is Bucharest with approximately 2.5 million inhabitants; 11 cities have between 200,000 and 400,000 inhabitants, 13 cities have between 100-200,000 inhabitants; 23 towns have 50-100,000 inhabitants, 29 - have 20-50,000 and 185 towns have between 5 and 20,000 inhabitants.

The cities of Romania are, generally, well integrated in the natural environment and they are not too crowded, except some districts in Bucharest and some other big cities.The most polluted cities are: Baia Mare, Suceava, Bacau, Tulcea, Ploiesti, Pitesti, Brasov, Ramnicu Valcea, Turnu Magurele, Isalnita, Copsa Mica, Targu Mures and Zlatna.

In Romania, the cities have developed mostly in the 60's and the 70's and less in the eighth decade. If in 1950 there were 148 towns, in 1968 their number had risen to 236; at present, there are 262.

The intensive industrialisation process has led to an intensive and forced urbanisation, which produced numerous dysfunctions. The so-called ''bedroom-districts'' were built for the industrial workers displaced from their rural background, without creating, concomitantly, the needed town services and commercial, health and cultural facilities. A lot of apartments were built but with no concern for comfort. After the stagnation of the building process in the 90's, it is necessary to start a national program for urban rehabilitation in all existing towns. Urbanisation is a modern tendency of civilisation. Thus, it is important to achieve the modernisation of the living process through a well-balanced urbanisation, in agreement with the environment.

4. THE REQUIREMENTS OF URBAN ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION

Urban planing entails the existence of the following documents:

• The local Agenda XXI;
• The general town plan on  15-20 years;
• The zonal plans for districts and ensembles.

The relationship between town planning and environment protection:

• the town plan foresees all the measures for environment protection, has a global, complete view on the development of the city;
• the common order of the two ministries involved in the town planning-environment relation requires an environment impact assessment in order for the environment permit to be issued;
• environment protection is one of the four fundamental objectives of territory planning; thus, the measures for environment protection are proposed within the respective planning and the environment permit is released on the basis of complete documentation.

The requirements for urban management are:

• town planning (general and area/district ones),
• compliance to regulations,
• consolidation of the existing buildings,
• rehabilitation of technical and town infrastructure,
• revigoration of the natural habitats system,
• responsible management of wastes,
• appropriate traffic regulation,
• pollution control.

The priorities include :

• the existence of a good town plan, which should be the basis of the town development and the release of all construction and demolition permits; this obligation is already enforced by a government decision providing that, in the year 2000, all towns should have approved urban plans in accordance to which construction permits may be issued;

• the consolidation of all buildings affected by earthquakes;

• availability of an adequate technical and town infrastructure.

5.  THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC WORKS AND TERRITORY PLANNING TO THE PROTECTION OF THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT AND TO THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES

The decrease of natural risk, especially through preventive measures, in order to diminish natural factors negative effects is the object of activity of a directorate in the Ministry-the Directorate for disaster prevention and seismic risk. It deals with regulations on incentives for the consolidation of buildings  affected by previous earthquakes, ranging from free technical evaluations to low-interest credits for rehabilitation construction works. It also elaborates the study on a new section of the National Land Planning Document dealing with issues related to the natural risks for the habitat. It concerns the three types of natural risk, i.e. earthquake, flood and ground gliding.

The role of territory  planning is to determine the inter-relations between settlements, between these and the territory, their access to resources and even the hierarchy of settlements. It should be noted that such plans include measures for biodiversity conservation, natural and built patrimony protection in the delimited protected areas.

The role of town plans in urban environment protection is very important; one of the plan purposes is precisely environment protection as foreseen by the European Territory Planning Charter. The general town plan, the district or detailed plans regulate the optimum utilisation and division of the respective area, providing at the same time for the measures of environment protection, cultural patrimony protection, the conservation of flora, traffic regulation, pollution control, etc.

Improving urban infrastructure is part of the urban environment protection. MLPAT, through the Directorate for Town Services, undertakes works in various towns. It collaborates with the International Agency for Development of Japan (JICA), through a partnership . Japanese experts elaborate feasibility studies for the waste water treatment stations in seven Danubian towns. There are also other collaborations with other partners for different cites.