Abstract: According to the New Universal Dictionary of Romanian Language, Bucuresti

Chisinau, published in 2006, urbanism is a scientific discipline whose objective is formed of

activities connected with organizing, arranging, spatial and volumetric composition of cities, in
accordance with their social-economic development, technical possibilities, specific elements of
the place, background for historical development, traditions, cultural level, a.s.o. Or, such an
object of study requires a scientific base that has to rely on principles as exact and explicit as
possible, that have to find their ascendant in practice. However, actual legislation is an
ambiguous one, having a vast possibility for interpretation , with general expression, that hardly
may find applicability, even though its about a series of normative acts that settle one of the
activities having the highest degree of pragmatism in Romanian legislation. From our point of
view, those really passionate and especially those having as main instrument of work the
legislation of territorial planning and urbanism should have retorted by now, combatively but
motivated, trying to invalidate or at least modulating the principles that support the two fields.
Keywords: urbanism, territorial planning, local autonomy , transparency, economic cohesion,
decentralization, sustainable development.