FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.

2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

Histria da Cidade do Porto 2014.2015 2 Semestre

Comparing the Ilhas of Porto with the Mahala of Bucharest.

The ilha of Porto

According to the definition of municipal services, the ilhas are "groupings of two rows of single-storey houses, unhealthy,
separated by a very narrow street layout with only one facade. As a rule they have three or four divisions, two of them
without direct lighting and ventilation, with toilets outside and lower than the number of housing serving ".
The construction of this type of living in Porto, through private initiative, was performed mostly during the second half
of the XIXth century. It stemmed from the necessity of housing a significant part of the working class population,
migrating to Porto from rural settings. They emerged initially in the eastern part of the city, but quickly spread to the
city center and neighboring municipalities. The English influence in the city is believed to have contributed to the
appearance of the islands. The scheme of the islands is frequently associated to the first back-to-back houses in Leeds,
both in terms of morphology, promoters and in terms of construction order.
The origin of the islands is unknown given that in the XVIII century there were already reports of houses that were called
ilhas. In inquiries of D. Afonso IV (1291-1357) there are references pointing at sets of dwellings with only one exit to the
street. It was, however, at the second half of the XIX century, with the industrial development of the city and the arrival
of many migrants from the north of the country, that this type of housing is massified. Thus, large number of incoming
people combined with low wages propelled the acquisition of low-quality housing at low cost.
Joo de Almada e Melo was the main urbanist of the city of Porto in the XVIII century and the primarily responsible for
the organization of space that nowadays is referred to as the city center. The almadino lot was normally 5.5 meters wide,
facing the street, for some 100 meters long. The bourgeois houses were built in the first 30 meters, with about 70 meters
left in the rear of the houses. The owner opened a link below the house by a corridor to the backyard, 1-2 meters wide,
and on one side and another built small substandard housing. These were then smaller households with areas that did not
exceed 16 m2 (some with only 9 m2), built in queue (sometimes back to back), in the back yards of middle-class houses
that overlooked the street. The fronts of these houses were generally about 4 meters, and had a door and a window
which overlooked the central corridor.

Figura 1 Main type of ilhas (Teixeira, 1996, p. 184)

Legenda:
1. Ilha construda num nico lote.
2. Ilha construda em dois lotes com corredor central.
3. Ilha construda em dois lotes, com as casas dispostas
costas com costas e dois corredores laterais de acesso.
4. Ilha construda em terreno de traseiras correspondendo a
vrios lotes. Filas sucessivas de casas construdas costas com
costas.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

Porto society at the end of the XIX century

As previously mentioned, contrary to the claims of several authors, the "islands" do not arise as a product of
industrialization in the second half of the XIX century. It is a much older phenomenon. The census of the city's houses,
held in 1832, at the height of the Siege of Porto, reveals the existence of some 200 "poverty islands", only in the walled in
area, which would have around 50 000 inhabitants. The main hubs of "islands" were already located in the same areas
where they will undergo further expansion in the second half of the century (S. Vtor, Paraso, Praa da Alegria, Monte
Belo, Rua Bela da Princesa, Bairro Alto, Rua das Musas, Rua da Carvalheira, Largo da Fontinha, Germalde, Campo
Pequeno, Rua do Breyner, etc.)
It is true that, at the industrialization stage and
especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, the islands achieved an impressive
expansion, housing by the mid 1880s, around
20000 inhabitants in 530 islands. By 1900, there
were more than a thousand and exceeded the
35,000 residents, about a third of the
population of Porto.
But the pre-existence of these popular
residential spaces, a bit all over the city,
certainly took a significant role in the
integration of poor households in urban areas.
In the second half of the nineteenth century,
Porto lived a climate of industrial euphoria that
attracted rural populations to the city, coming
from the Minho, of Tras-os-Montes and Alto
Douro and Beira Alta, fleeing the rural crisis
that was happening there.
Figure 2 Areas with ilhas in Porto, mid XIX century.
The need for cheap accommodation made these clusters of barracked dwellings, with a single entry, an attractive
business, mainly operated by smallholders who, having little capital, trusted that the islands would guarantee a rapid
recovery of the invested capital, and short term, significant profits. In 1832, there were about 200 islands, but the
number grew exponentially until the early twentieth century, with 1050 islands, which housed nearly 50000 people.
The interiors of these homes where whole families sometimes of up to 10 or more people lived, were out of wood, had no
sewage or water supply, had no ventilation and only small windows that provided dim lighting. Added to these conditions,
the common use of certain equipment, living with animals (a survey mark 709 pigs in 1124 visited homes), the lack of
education of these people and the moral poverty of some, let imagine the atmosphere of these spaces.
As the Municipal Code of Postures 1869 limited the inspection of the city council only to areas visible from the street
(which in this case was the front of an ordinary house, usually the promoters) and that the islands were being built inside
the blocks, they were not subject to municipal control, and the sight of the citizen. At a first glance the city did not show
that misery.
Between 1878 and 1890, 5100 homes were built in the islands, housing up to a third of the city's population by 1899.
According to a survey conducted by the city of Porto in 1939, the city accounted for some 1152 islands by then, home to
45291 inhabitants, that is, at that time, 17% of its total population. In 1940, a survey was carried out to the islands in
which an estimated 13000 homes in the "islands" that then existed in the city, only 3700 could be improved; all others had
to be demolished and new houses were to be built to replace them. The municipal authorities thus engaged in the
progressive demolition of Portos islands, relocating families in large, off-centered, social housing complexes, in an
attempt to sanitize the city in order to avoid the risk of epidemics from occurring. The first intervention in the islands
emerged really in the early twentieth century. At this point a tuberculosis outbreak forces the officials to decree a state
of quarantine in the ilhas.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

Solution to the problem of the ilhas

Out of the various programs for collective housing, those who were best known were the Improvement Plan for the City of
Porto (Plano de Melhoramentos para a Cidade do Porto), conducted between 1956-1966 and the SAAL Project (Local
Support Ambulatory Service) between 1974-1976.
The Improvement Plan for the city of Porto was responsible for the construction of the large collective housing in the city
that still exist today. Throughout this period, more than six thousand 6000 households were built and about 15% to 20% of
the population was transferred from the city center to the periphery.
The SAAL project in Porto claimed the right of people to remain in their neighborhoods and be integrated in the city. This
intention will have raised the resistance of owners and speculators who saw their interests threatened. There were then
7000 houses in the ilhas. Prematurely terminated, the program did not yield the fruits that their mobilizing capacity
promised: 11,568 families in 33 intervention areas scattered throughout the city. Although they produced a few hundred
new housing, this highly participated process, deserves to be remembered when seeking solutions to the present.

Figure 3 Areas with ilhas in Porto, inhabited and abandoned, nowadays.

Despite successively stated intentions and the various resettlement programs
the problem of "islands" endures to this day. Many remain in place and
attempt to renew themselves as a matter of counteracting the cold and
impersonal spirit that increasingly defines life in social housing complexes.
Although there are homes that have been restored and upgraded, this is not
the reality for the entire population inhabiting the islands. Recent data points
to the persistence of 1,130 islands, in use or abandoned, scattered around the
city of Porto.
The architecture of the ilha
As to architectural morphology, as can be seen in most plans submitted for
the city council approval, most of the descriptions of the time, or even in the
surviving reality of nowadays Porto, most islands were and are corridor ones,
consisting normally in housing arranged in one or two rows, which is accessed
by a narrow road.
Figure 4 Basic morphology for an ilha (Teixeira, 1996, p.192)

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

But the fact that this is the most common morphology does not mean the absence of others, from the lhas where the
houses were sat around an inner courtyard to the ones comprising a large tangled agglomeration of dwellings on the slope
facing the Douro, as seen in Corticeira, Fontainhas, Guindais (Gaspar Martins Pereira). Whatever the arrangement of
houses or the size of the island, the common point among all of them is that the ilha is always a shell-like space, closed
in on itself. The common entry, usually through a street accessed portal, and common equipment for washing, well,
water closets, and so on, facilitate the formation of a community spirit, founded on close neighboring relations,
reinforced often by formal or informal family ties.
These features generate not only a weak boundary between the public and the private space but also, as already pointed
out, a community spirit that generates solidarity and forms a specific socio-cultural universe where the access of
strangers, although not forbidden, is frowned upon and at times even highly discouraged, or harassed.
The strong industrial growth of the city in the second half of the nineteenth century does not destroy domestic
production and traditional craft making. In many islands of the late nineteenth century small workshops subsist,
especially those related to weaving, linking neighboring relations to socio-professional identity.

The mahala in Bucharest.

In their current effort to retrieve the old Bucharest, the researchers reserve a special attention to the mahala. They
are looking on the one hand to define its urban reality starting from a new premise, that of a logical development of the
Romanian capital. On the other hand, the term is recycled in the current context, attempting an overlay of the new
social and urbanistic realities of the city.
Mahala is one of those terms whose meaning has been distorted over time and whose initial meaning we rediscover today.
The mahala is an urban phenomenon that characterizes oriental cities. Aristotle speaks in Politika about two types of
cities, those divided in streets and those characterized by "crowding of houses next to each other without any order". The
first type is characteristic of the West, the second of the East. With regards to Aristotles words, "no order" should rather

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

be read as "a different kind of order. " The growth of a city, driven by the growth of a community, naturally obeys a
certain type of logic, even if it cannot be discerned through an obvious visual order. As people live under certain laws,
similarly their homes are built and placed in a certain way. In the case of oriental cities, the principle must be sought in
the way of life of its communities.
From an etymological stand point, mahala is derived from the arabic "mahalle", later taken on by the Turks, referring
to a part of town or a neighborhood. The term first appears in what used to be the kingdom of Romania in 1626. It
designates an act of social reality and urban previously appearing in the language as enorie, meaning parish. The
difference in tone between the two terms fades, as the first meets the specific meaning of the second. Considering two
parallel examples - "enoria Popei Comino", the parish of Father Comino and "mahalaua Popei Drguin", the mahala of
Father Drguin , the first mentioned in 1590 and the second in 1752, we understand that the terms cover the same
reality. The historical and cultural factor that determined the word enoria to be replaced by mahala is the rise of
Turkish influence on Romanian territory.
Urban segregation has been present over time on different levels in the making of what is Bucarest now. By means of
segregation one can identify several types of mahalas in the interbellic (between World Wars) Bucarest: ethnic ones,
social condition ones (those that included all rich people, and those that included all poor people), mahalas that are
based on a certain economic activity, and dangerous mahalas. An interesting detail to note is that while the term
mahala was becoming more and more negatively connoted into slum, the well seen mahalas such as the jewish one or
fine commerce based ones, have seen their name slowly change from Mahala to Cartier (from the French quartier),
whereas the infamous ones have stayed as mahalas.
1)

Ethnic mahalas

Out of all the different ethnicities living in Bucarest throughout the years, three groups have created neighborhoods that
sustained themselves through centuries, and of which part of their urban tissue still exists even though the people living
there are not necessarily of the descent of those ethnicities any longer. As such, Bucarest had an Armenian mahala, a
Jewish one, and a Gypsy one.
The Armenian mahala started to form in the XVII century and perdured until the early XX century. The ethnic group was
segregated to the outer limit of the XVII century city based on religion from the rest of the mostly orthodox population of
Bucarest. However, this mahala ended up becoming part of the city while it grew, and throughout the years it became a
very important commercial area in the town.
The Jewish mahalas, were very important, in terms of population living in those areas, as well as in terms of commercial
and cultural standing. As the term mahala gained a pejorative understanding the neighborhood started to be called with a
French synonym for neighborhood, cartier. Several Jewish mahalas existed in Bucarest, some richer than the others, but
in every one of them, Jewish people of all social classes coexisted. Most of the main Jewish mahalas were destroyed at
the end of 1980, in the enormous demolition process of the old Bucarest in order to create new communist
neighborhoods.
The Gypsy mahalas were small and on the outskirts of the city. However, in the city center lived a community of Gypsies
employed by force by other Romanian people. This mahala was big, at the foot of the hill on which the main cathedral of
the town stood and still stands. Their houses were very poor and basic, sometimes mostly underground, with only a few
windows and the roof peeking out. Once these gypsies were freed from the forced work, they left the grounds, and the
mahala was replaced with other neighborhoods.
2)

The slums formed by the accumulation of wealth or, where applicable, poverty.

In terms of slums formed by the accumulation of wealth, the situation is much more delicate because over time the
wealthy people migrated thanks to privileges they have enjoyed. Things are clearer in the case of poor slums.
Because of their migration from villages to the city, and their constant moving to better areas, the most wealthy areas by
mid XIX century some of them had mainly settled on the right bank of the Dambovita along the Calea Rahovei. Thus, mid
XIX, Calea Victoriei and Calea Rahovei were inhabited by a large number of landowners, thus becoming a rich mahala, of
the boyars of the urban privileged nobility, as Vintil Mihailescu sometimes called them.
In general, most of the space in Bucharest was marked by a state of poverty at some level in the mahalas. Hence the
pejorative connotation that the term mahala has gained in time. However, some of these slums have suffered from a

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

strong poverty. Among those worth mentioning, the Flamanda (famished) covering around 60 houses, Caimata (repented)
with 24 houses, Calicilor (invalid) and Dracului (devil) mahalas. The latter two are part of ill-reputed slums category.
The Calicilor mahala was located
outside the city, outside the walls,
outside society perceived as "normal",
ordered and civilized. This slum was of
particular importance because it housed
the invalids of medieval Bucharest, the
sick and helpless, involved primarily
with begging. Discredited and
marginalized by society, they led a
derisory life. Some authors have nuimt
treacherous because it provoked disgust
that city residents because they were
beggars. Every time the area of the city
grew, the Invalid mahala migrated to its
new outer limit because of strict
segregation laws from the city. This
slum existed since the XV century and
was formed by huts, shacks and cottage
ruins inhabited by beggars and sick
people. With time, this slum has disappeared because the invalids were forced to migrate to a further away hill and then
to leave the city permanently towards peripheral spaces.
As part of the same category of slums ground in poverty, the Dracului mahala, or the Devils slum appears at the northern
border of the city late in the second half of the XIX century. The precarious situation of the inhabitants generated a deep
fear towards this area of Bucharest.
3)

Slums evoking the kind of economic activities performed.

In a growing city, all kinds of subdivisions occur in the mass of the population, caused by the concentration of each
groups work in a smaller space. As the population increased and the city expanded, the number of slums also evolved.
Thanks to the multitude of economic activities and their spatial concentration, the slums evoking the type of economic
activities provided there, have left many traces in history. Out of the over 30 different economic activities mahalas, the
following were the most prominent and long lasting - the Tanners mahala (one of the oldes), the Jewlers mahala
(between 20 to 50 houses, and at the lowest only had two houses), the Brickmakers mahala, the Potters mahala (potters
making and selling their products, as well as people just bringing pottery from other parts of the country and selling it
there), the Soapmakers mahala ( butchers who also had to process cow fat out of what they made and sold soap).

The creation an urban particularities of mahalas

The overthrowing from the throne of the great builder
that was Constantin Brancoveanu, on one hand, and the
coming to power of the foreign princes, with no
territorial ties and in general representing the rich class
from the Greek Christian neighborhoods in
Constantinoples, on the other, were determining factors
in the major changes in the urban structure of Bucharest
in the eighteenth century.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

The plan of the city brings to light a new type of urban structure, characterized by the presence of large agricultural
lands: it is the only sign that the area is located at the
boundary of the city. To better view the urban changes
that occur during this time, the map of Bucharest
established by Borroczyn in 1852 was used, separately
highlighting the built mass and the roads.
By highlighting the roads, the comparative study of these
two areas brings to light a certain type of roads in the
interior of the city, replaced on the outside of the it by
a different structure: along Calea Mosilor, behind the
dense front of buildings are very large areas of land. It is
clear that these large areas, called maidan, could not be
formed along the tracks already crowded with buildings,
but in areas located beyond them, providing a specific
and unusual note to the urban fabric and particularly to
the roads. On the Borroczyn plan, each maidan has a
fountain. We can also link the church which is either in
the middle of the terrain or nearby it. The maidan was therefore a public space for meeting, commercial exchanges, a
place to socialize.
Another specific element of this new urban ambience is unveiled by the analysis of the structure of proprieties located in
the new quarters of the city. The layout of the houses results from subdivision, each lot comprising cultivable land
generally behind the house, hidden from the road.
Dana Harhoiu not only believes the mahala is a phenomenon specific to the Phanariot Bucharest, but also notes structural
similarities when doing a parallel between Bucharest and Constantinople. These were generated on the one hand by the
introduction of the Constantinoples urban legislation in Bucharest, and on the other by the great demographic growth
which made it applicable to new residential areas. This growth continued due to the gradual stabilization of the status of
the city as capital of the country. Bucharest was founded on the principle of a wild honeycomb, by adding structures in
places where the interests of the new residents were matched with those of the existing society. The city was not
restrained to a fortification wall, but rose along the roads.
The elements that give coherence to this increase pertain to the sense of community and spiritual considerations. "A big
city, a capital city is not a place to create a state of belonging to the community. Whereas, the urban space precisely
may have the ability to induce a sense of security, of retrieval of residents in a familiar environment, a space of possible
contacts between people (...). In a city that was not theirs, townspeople identified with a particular place, one in which
their lives had common landmarks: the church, their habits, their contacts.
This area is the mahala. Its undeniable features
are, therefore, the church, spiritual center,
and the maidan place of social interaction.
A proof of these urban and social realities is
the 1810 census, which tracks the state of
churches in Bucharest. They are designated
according to the slum they serve. As an urban
substructure, the mahala also acquires
administrative facets; so drawing a parallel,
over time, between the emergence and
evolution of the term in papers and the
evolution of the urban and social reality of the
slum, these two overlap but also some gaps
appear. They are due to the evolution of
society that can also be read in the city
structure.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

In the XVII and XVIII centuries, the mahalas appear in documents as props to identify the locations and persons and as
administrative units. At that time, 80 mahalas are mentioned in Bucharest. They covered the entire surface of the city,
from the borders of the ruler's palace to the periphery of the city. They were created according to a shared activity of its
inhabitants or were simply communities clustered around churches. The church, as the sine qua non element, either leads
to setting the necessary foundations for the formation of a slum or is founded by some members of a mahala community
already existing. In those centuries, the term and the reality of it overlap entirely. The defining elements of the mahala
were found in the city center and at its margins, all the same.
The case of the XIX century, and in particular its last quarter, requires a more attentive look. It is the period of
Westernization of the city that brings new types of organization. Also, the widening of the center and especially the
application of new urban standards here, lead to radical changes of landscape, accompanied by a change of mentality,
and create a difference in the sense of the term mahala. The "mahala" starts to have a pejorative meaning designating
a particular landscape and a certain social class. In the documents of that era a new term appears - that of suburb [9]. It
runs in parallel with the word mahala, designating the same urban reality. The nobler echo of this new term, due to its
origin, adds more to the vulgarization of the term mahala, making the first to gain more and more ground while moving
towards the XX century.
This phenomenon is due to a chronological gap between the center and the outskirts areas in terms of urban
restructuration. In other words, what was the early XX century mahala resembled to a certain extent the past centuries
mahala. At the same time, areas of former mahalas now rather resembled Western cities and were, therefore, more fit to
be called suburbs. The social reality of the mahala disappears with westernization.
Individualism increases and materializes also in terms housing and community interactions. If the maidan, the vacant
land, were community spaces with a precise purpose present in the daily lives of the inhabitants of the mahalas, the
squares that replace them in the urban structure have a much quieter and monotonous existence. In the Westernized
Bucharest of the early twentieth century, the population settlement in the city, following the criteria of social status,
makes the mahala, now seen as a slum, to be pushed to the periphery.
Paradoxically, today we are faced with an update of the term mahala in
its communitarian sense. This is due on the one hand to the communist
policy of expropriation that attacked precisely the social class that had
previously Westernized the former mahalas. The houses that reflected a
certain social and intellectual standing of those who had built them
were repopulated with residents of the periphery whose standard of
living was much lower. This led to the tragedy of so many houses whose
tenants who did not know to respect the nobility of their heritage.
Instead, in an anachronistic way, this class, closer to rural living, has
brought back to the heart of the city the ways of a forgotten community
life.
Today some give a new meaning to the term mahala - it combines some things of the past, the least present of all past
meanings being that of a parish, enorie. Thus, in the landscape of Bucarest, we can distinguish several mahalas of "Classic
I" and "Classic II" types, the first one being characterized by houses dating from before the 1900, the second by almost
rural appearance and habits, satellite-neighborhood-style mahalas, and even "generalized post-revolutionary" mahalas.
Revisiting the postmodern spirit of this term makes us more attentive to its original meaning. The Bucharest mahala, in
its original meaning, is a phenomenon that already belongs to history and therefore deserves attention.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

The architecture and spacial organization of the mahala

In the XX century, in the remaining mahalas,
now seen as slums, the homes are of the
practical Romanian style, with "a winter porch
that protects your house from the northern
winds" and "a covered summer porch where
women work and on rainy days children play,
and on which the Romanian sleeps during the
hot summer nights", as quoted by Henri Stahl.
Slum dwellings had low, unsteady, woodenframed walls with gaps filled or coated with
different materials, wattle or battens plastered
with clay. Very often the walls were heavily
whitewashed and the subsequent cracks were
filled with yellow earth. In these houses, with
much damp, fleas, flies and dust in summer
and ankle high mud in winter, a feeling of
comfort was somehow kept through the
beautifully painted windows and doors and the
potted flowers decorating the windows.
There are also middle class slums where people lived in houses with monotonous appearance, clusters of rooms in parallel
rows, inhabited mostly by the Jewish people. In most cases the house had a garden.
Within the mahala, the richest or the poorest ones, the order and place in which the houses are built follows the
importance in social standing of their owners, in a concentric way. As such, on the main road of a mahala one could
always find the church, the priests house, and the houses of the most prominent liders of that community, therefore,
the most important buildings and members of that slum. Behind these houses, on the second circle importance, were
placed the commercial houses with their houses, making in time for commercial streets to grow more important than the
actual so called main street. A final circle was comprised by the houses of the poorest members of the mahala, that were
left on the outskirts of it.
There are very few areas where parts of mahalas have
survived, seeming old Romanian villages or boroughs,
half converted by new type of westernized and later on
communist housing. The most characteristic slums in
this regard are especially those of Sarbi, Dobroteasa,
Vitan, and Foisor, in the center of Bucarest. The houses
in these areas have a sort of an off the ground terrace
erected along the narrow front wall (and sometimes the
side of the house) bonded with earth or paved with
planks, bordered by a short wooden railing, covered by
a roof held by columns joined by arches, some covered
with stacking.
The residents of mahalas used to go spend time inside
the house during the winter or when receiving guests
only. Women spent their day in the garden and on the
street and the men at work. Children used to populate
the streets and the maidan, playing.
As occupations, and in close connection with the arrangement of slums, we know that the Gara de Nord area were the
army mahalas, in the Amzei Square were wealthy mahalas, Hala Traian was populated by working class mahalas,
craftsmen and school workers, and the Hala Obor area held active people mahalas with workers in agriculture, merchants
and officials.

FAUPHCP2014.20152Semestre.DATA:2.6.2015
ALUNO:CameliaPetre

As with any community misunderstandings between people often arose and revenge was generally carried by throwing
ones sewage in front of the others front gate or house
steps.
The most important people in the slum was generally
the priest, followed by the innkeeper, the barbers and
grocers the two latter ones considered to bring about
progress. The barbers opened in their own house
generic Antiseptic shaving, cutting and milling salons."
Over the centuries, one would find their way in the
slum by asking for the local pub, thus making the
owner of the pub "more mentioned than saints". He was
considered the richest member of the community and
the delegate of the entire slum in most cases.
The pub represented that street space with a greasy
grill sizzling traditionally made meat, where workers
just out of factories were willing to spend their daily
stipend, especially on a Saturday. Musicians were
generally entertaining the crowd at the pub that
through tangos, waltzes and romances conquered the
hearts of women, or calmed down the outbursts
between the men. Another type of music very common
in slum pubs was the traditional Lautars party music.

The massive demolition of Bucharest and of the mahalas

The 1980s were the years of urban development in the socialist city of Bucharest, development that destroyed not only a
good part of the built mass of the city, but especially its spirit.
The new civic downtown and zoning plan meant the loss of an important history of the town and the introduction of a
development plan completely independent of urbanism notions. The system is based on the principle "I want it my way",
the "I" being first and foremost the dictator and his megalomaniac dreams, followed shortly by any person that had a
however small decision making power.
This "I want it my way" meant destroying Spirii Hill, the neighborhood Uranus, the entire Jewish neighborhood Dudesti,
the Udricani area, the Union square, the Sfanta Vineri area, Calea Rahovei, all the bridges over the Dambovita river,
demolishing churches, destroying all of the public
transportation network etc, to refer only to the most
important part of the built environment.
The communist regime was overthrone by the people in
December of 1989. That last decade of dictatorship
was the one that scarred the city urbanistically and
architecturally, the most, as all texts that show the
demolition and construction of the new downtown
especially remind us that an area about the size of
Venice was demolished.
The mahalas, already changed by the early XX century
into modernist buildings and art nouveau villas, were
completely mutilated by these demolitions. Now, only
parts of streets remain from the old mahalas, or sole
standing houses here and there.
Figure - The Dudesti slum, having become a residential area (a suburb) in the 1930s, was erased almost totally during the
systematization of the city, ordered by dictator Ceausescu in the 1980s.

10