Nita - Et Al - 2016 - Romanian Urban Strategies Planning Green

European Planning Studies
ISSN: 0965-4313 (Print) 1469-5944 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceps20
Are Romanian urban strategies planning for

green?
Mihai-Razvan Niță, Ana-Maria Anghel, Cristina Bănescu, Ana-Maria

Munteanu, Sabina-Stella Pesamosca, Mihuț Zețu & Ana-Maria Popa
To cite this article: Mihai-Razvan Niță, Ana-Maria Anghel, Cristina Bănescu, Ana-Maria
Munteanu, Sabina-Stella Pesamosca, Mihuț Zețu & Ana-Maria Popa (2017): Are Romanian urban
strategies planning for green?, European Planning Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1382446
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2017.1382446
Published online: 29 Sep 2017.
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Download by: [Australian Catholic University] Date: 30 September 2017, At: 04:43
EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2017.1382446
Are Romanian urban strategies planning for green?

Mihai-Razvan Niță a, Ana-Maria Anghelb, Cristina Bănescub, Ana-Maria Munteanub,
Sabina-Stella Pesamosca b, Mihuț Zețub and Ana-Maria Popab
a
Centre for Environmental Research and Impact Studies, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania; bFaculty
of Geography, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Downloaded by [Australian Catholic University] at 04:43 30 September 2017
Faced with growing economic, social and environmental challenges, Received 28 June 2017
urban settlements increasingly use green areas in the search for Revised 14 September 2017
achieving sustainability and resilience. The first step is typically Accepted 14 September 2017
the development of policies and strategies that include a
KEYWORDS
significant green component. This present study analyses the Urban planning; green areas;
development policies and strategies of 213 Romanian cities and development strategies;
how they approach urban green areas as well as applied means of urban policies; local
development and management. We constructed a database with administration
information extracted from these documents, applied descriptive
statistical analysis and mapped the resulting distribution of
indicators. Results indicated the preference of local urban
administrations for simple objectives such as increasing or
maintaining surfaces of green areas but lacking activities for
achieving identified targets in improving the multifunctional
benefits of green areas. We concluded that there are no
differences in approaches using geographical settings or urban
ranks. We determined that further research is required to connect
policies and strategies with their subsequent implementation at a
local level and the ensuing perceived effects. Results are critical in
analysing the performance of local authorities in weak planning
systems common in south-east European countries.
1. Introduction
Green areas comprise a fundamental component of urban areas, providing a complex
variety of benefits and co-benefits, although frequently these advantages are not easily tan-
gible or quantifiable (Ives et al., 2017). The most recurrent gains are in improving the
general quality of environment through air purification and cooling (Bowler, Buyung-
Ali, Knight, & Pullin, 2010), providing opportunities for social interaction and recreation
for the population (Bijker & Sijtsma, 2017), promoting well-being (Pulighe, Fava, & Lupia,
2016), creating economic opportunities for businesses, industry and employability (Rutt &
Gulsrud, 2016), or increasing urban resilience to environmental changes (Schäffler & Swil-
ling, 2013).
To underline the importance of and necessity for integration in urban planning, con-
ceptual models such as green infrastructure (Sandstrom, 2002) and nature-based solutions
CONTACT Ana-Maria Popa anamariapopa07@gmail.com Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest,

1 Bd. N. Balcescu, Sector 1, 010041, Bucharest, Romania
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M.-R. NIȚĂ ET AL.
(Eggermont et al., 2015) have been incorporated in both scientific literature and planning
policies. This shift to a recognized contribution of green areas to the sustainability of the
city (Bianchini & Hewage, 2012) comes as a response to present societal challenges faced
by cities (Tzoulas et al., 2007), increasing their resilience to climate change, water regime,
urban regeneration or societal issues (Raymond et al., 2017).
The European Union invests considerable efforts in urban studies and strategies for
developing green areas in Member States (Bouwma et al., 2017). The most prominent
achievements are the winners of the European Green Capital programme. Over the past
six years, many cities within the EU established guidelines for a long-term management
of natural areas. Examples are Stockholm, which in 2010 became the first European city
to win the title of The Green Capital with results that indicated high accessibility to
public green spaces, whereby 90–95% of the population lived within 300 metres of
green areas, Ljubljana with nearly three-quarters of the urban area devoted to green
areas or Copenhagen focusing on providing easy access to all green facilities (Kabisch,
Strohbach, Haase, & Kronenberg, 2016; Vedel, Jacobsen, & Skov-Petersen, 2017).
However, for Romania the main drivers of developing urban green come from existing
strategy of European Institutions which use existing legislation, policy making and
funding schemes in promoting their development (European Commision, 2013).
Through its projects, the EU is pushing for member states to include more innovative
forms of green in their cities, such as green infrastructures or nature-based solutions
(Raymond et al., 2017).
Sustainable development of urban areas becomes a prevalent objective and green areas
are particularly well-suited for achieving that goal although not always with the best results
(Andersson, 2016). Urban planning increasingly promotes projects aimed at sustainability
through the practice of green areas (Heberle & Opp, 2008). The main challenges derive
from finding specific resolutions for specific societal, economic, natural and cultural
characteristics of cities (Astiaso Garcia, 2017), and appropriate composition of strategies
for their implementation (Wagner, 2016).
Challenges to green areas’ planning arise from the difficulty of linking them with
methods and tools specific to other fields of study (Spanò, Gentile, Davies, & Lafortezza,
2017) and the lack of integrated planning models to evaluate synergies and tradeoffs
among various benefits and values provided by green areas (Meerow & Newell, 2017).
Added are the concerns of planners, policy-makers or administrations that the promotion
of green measures will add an unnecessary burden to the management of cities (Kaczor-
owska, Kain, Kronenberg, & Haase, 2016).
Besides the environmental, economic and societal challenges characterizing urban
environments, specific challenges are interrelated to the actual urban planning system,
where lack of vision and specific mechanisms of planning can significantly disturb the
form and functionality of cities (Gavrilidis, Ciocănea, Niţă, Onose, & Năstase, 2016;
Ianoş, Sorensen, & Merciu, 2017). In most of Europe, green areas are approached from
a socio-ecological perspective due to the compact nature of cities (Mell, 2011), but their
economic (Schäffler & Swilling, 2013) or institutional (Yamaki, 2016) mandates are
equally applicable.
In Romania, the planning process endured profound changes in the transition period
from a communist to a democratic regime, which affected both its form (Suditu et al.,
2010) and processes for environmental impact assessments (Niţă, Buttler, Rozylowicz,
EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 3
& Pătru-Stupariu, 2015). These changes were determined by shifts in the property regime
of lands (from predominantly public to private property) (Grigorescu et al., 2012), a leg-
islative void for the first years and incomplete or misinterpreted regulations that followed,
loss of clear attributions by planning institutions or reduced transparency of public
administration (Niţă, Bălaş, et al., 2015). The funding of green areas’ management and
development has been totally transferred from a central to a local level, which due to con-
stricted budgets resulted in a serious lack of funds.
Recent shifts in planning policies allowed cities to experiment with participatory and
smart urban planning (Blanco et al., 2009), although in specific situations economic inter-
ests prevail over green areas’ management (Simeonova & van der Valk, 2016). In this
context, green areas are increasingly being used by local administration of cities as mech-
anisms in their search for sustainability (Meerow & Newell, 2017; Mell, Allin, Reimer, &
Wilker, 2017).
Cities are increasingly delineating specific policies and strategies accounting for the
present situation, promoting development objectives and specific mechanisms for attain-
ing sustainability (Addanki & Venkataraman, 2017). Such policies and strategies confront
notions such as regulation of land consumption, balancing relation between supply and
demand for services, reshaping administrative processes and streamlining urban manage-
ment systems (Zeković, Vujošević, & Maričić, 2015).
The explanation of these policies and strategies has shifted to a more participative
manner (Panagopoulos, Gonzalez Duque, & Bostenaru Dan, 2016; Wilker, Rusche, &
Rymsa-Fitschen, 2016), in that different actors can voice their position according to
their own interests or needs. Concerning green areas, policies and strategies should
provide innovative approaches for management and identifying effective solutions to
existing problems (Astiaso Garcia, 2017). However, disapproval is also expressed as
the nature of the approaches is still focused on aesthetics and economics and does
not emphasize the multiple benefits or values provided by them (Haaland & van
den Bosch, 2015).
Urban growth and environment issues need integration (Breda-Vázquez, Conceição,
& Móia, 2010). For this to materialize partnership and cooperation is necessary, with
the principal objective being global and sustainable development. This objective
encompasses a link between urban environment and economic development, a shift
towards local measures rather than a national or international assessment and a
move for additional scientific and technical research. In Romania, integrative docu-
ments that support urban planning include forms of Agenda 21 or Strategies for sus-
tainable development, elaborated by the administration or consulting agencies. These
are newer methods in the workflow of public administration and their form and
role can still be deficient in respect to urban planning. A significant percentage of
people employed in local administration view these methods more as mandatory
tasks to be conducted by their institutions than instruments through which urban plan-
ning can achieve its objectives.
The main aim of the present study is to provide an insight into the occurrence of green
areas with strategies for development of Romanian cities. We established two objectives:
(1) evaluating the positioning and role of green areas in development strategies and
(2) assessing challenges and strategies in promoting green areas.
2. Methodology
2.1. Database construction
We examined public websites of Romanian cities for strategic documents detailing the
existing situations and forecasting tendencies of development at the city level. There are
320 cities in Romania (Bălteanu, Badea, & Niculescu, 2005), distributed across 41 counties
and 8 development regions.
Our data selection was based on the principle that strategic documents should rep-
resent development strategies of that city, such as ‘Development strategy’, ‘Agenda 21’
or any other form of document forecasting the objectives of development and the
methods to realize them. We chose general development strategies as we were
unable to select specific strategies for the management and conservation of green
spaces as other authors did (Kabisch, 2015). The occurrence of such documents for
Romanian cities is extremely low.
Like other studies that extracted data from similar sources (Daw, Morgan, Thomson, &
Law, 2013; Dotson, Jacobson, Kaid, & Carlton, 2012) we distributed the sample of docu-
ments among two teams of three coders each, college-educated, native Romanian speakers
and they were instructed on filling the data in a formatted spreadsheet containing data of
interest (Table 1). We shared 7.04% of the documents between the two teams for inter-
coder reliability and obtained a 94% similarity between them.
Table 1. Information extracted from documents.

Information class Aspect Considered aspect explanation Data type
Metadata Document name Name of the document Text
Year Year of issue Date
Author Who elaborated the document? Text
Link For further reference where the document is Web address
available to the public
Green areas Chapter and subchapter In what context are green spaces approached? Text
approach title
Definition of green areas How do administrations perceive green areas? Presence/
Absence + Text
Definition of green How modern are the concepts presented? Presence/
infrastructure Absence + Text
Typologies of green Which categories of green spaces are considered? Presence/
Absence + Text
Benefits of green What social, economic or environmental benefits are Presence/
associated with green areas? Absence + Text
Problems of green Main challenges in the development and Presence/
administration of green areas. Absence + Text
Future programmes Existing plans or programmes directed to or Presence/
influencing green areas. Absence + Text
Quantitative data Quantitative descriptions of the green areas. Presence/
Absence + Text
Green strategy Objectives related to What does the administration plan for green areas? Text
green areas
Actions for achieving How can objectives related to green areas be Text
objectives achieved?
Indicators for How can we account for the success of green areas in Text
monitoring success achieving their objectives?
Indicators Total green area surface Indicator of the green available in the city Number
Green area per capita Indicator of how much green per capita Number
Other indicators If encountered, description and their values Number
We built a database using quantitative and qualitative approaches (Hellsten, Porter, &
Nerlich, 2014). The resulting database registered metadata such as title, date and category
(Daw et al., 2013). The variables included the section in which green areas were presented,
the approaches taken (definition, typologies, benefits, problems), the strategy (objectives
set out by local authorities, methods of achieving them or factors monitoring success)
and the existence of quantitative data (value of indicators and data sources). Coders
used a spreadsheet for data entry, formatted so that entries would consist of numeric
values (e.g. 0/1 for absence/presence of an analysed item). After the database was complete
it was converted into a MyStat file for additional statistical analysis.
2.2. Data analysis

We completed a descriptive statistical analysis for the raw data series using MyStat soft-
ware in which we applied basic analyses: average, median, standard deviation,
minimum or maximum values. We applied a non-parametrical statistical test to identify
statistically significant relationships or differences between variables. The Mann–Whitney
U test was used to check for differences between two categories over a continuous variable
(indicator of green area per capita).
Using ArcGIS 10.2 we associated each record to the spatial location of the analysed city
and mapped each analysed parameter and, by spatial analysis (Figure 1), the relationship
among them. For city limits we used data provided by the National Authority for Cadaster
and Real Estate (www.ancpi.ro, accessed on September 20, 2016) and official data of the
surface and population from the public database of the National Institute for Statistics
(www.insse.ro, accessed on 20 September 2016).
Figure 1. Methodological flow of research.

3. Results
Of 320 Romanian cities we found development policies and strategies for 213 – represent-
ing 66% (Figure 2). These 213 documents were for the interval 2002–2016 with 2012 being
the average year.
3.1. Presence of green areas in urban strategies

The first finding was that green areas are rarely present as a stand-alone chapter or section
in the policies and strategies of Romanian cities; most commonly they are included in sub-
sections or within broader environmental sections.
Of the 213 analysed cities, in a single case (the city of Sebeș), green infrastructures are
existent as a concept, and the theoretical characteristics associated with urban green areas
are represented in the documents of a reduced number of cities (Table 2). The most
encountered aspects connected with green areas are generally descriptive or theoretical
ones.
In larger proportions are present the benefits of such spaces, the associated problems
and drawbacks or the future strategies for green spaces’ developments at the city level.
Quantitative data illustrating urban green areas, which should be the basis for establishing
coherent policies and strategies, are represented by aspects such as surfaces by typologies
of green areas, protection surfaces, surface or length of development, costs of management
Figure 2. Analysed cities from Romania.

Table 2. Main aspects associated with green areas in the analysed

documents.
Aspects No. of cities % of cities
Definition of urban green infrastructures 1 0.5
Definition of urban green areas 9 4.2
Typologies of urban green areas 94 44.1
Benefits of green areas 68 31.9
Problems 90 42.3
Future strategy 148 69.5
General quantitative data 91 42.7
Indicator of total green surface 118 55.4
Indicator of green area per capita 85 39.9
or development, number of personal, number of visitors, etc. The most encountered indi-
cators, which should describe the efficiency and success of green areas in achieving their
objectives, are denoted by the total surface of green areas and the green area per capita
ratio.
We found no significant differences in the manner in which cities from various regions
of the country, or of different categories, present meaningful material in their policies and
strategies. Data such as typologies of green areas, benefits, problems and strategies
(Figure 3) are distributed evenly at the national level. Only 37 of the analysed cities
present simultaneously the four attributes noted above.
Figure 3. Geographical distribution of: (a) typologies of green areas; (b) benefits; (c) problems and (d)
strategies present in the analysed documents.
3.2. Main challenges and strategies

Strategies are an umbrella concept for analysing the future plans of municipalities regard-
ing green areas, including their objectives, actions to achieve them and indicators for
monitoring. The most encountered general objective in the extracted documents is
increasing the surface of green areas (142 cities), followed by the conservation of existing
ones (49), developing new typologies of green areas (28), managing existing green areas
(24) or increasing their societal value (16).
Some of the frequent specific objectives are related to the expansion and management
of green areas and plantations of trees and flowers. The most common approaches in the
strategies of authorities concerning green areas are those related to the management of
existing green areas (49 cities) and future developments of green areas (38 cities), with
other aspects devoted to their administration structures (18) or educational programmes

(15) related to green areas.
The presentation of future actions shows similarities between the analysed cities. In a
ranking of actions, the most frequent ones are the management of existing parks and
development of new ones, forestation on degraded lands, developing green alignments
or planting trees and flowers, and leisure endowments in green areas. We found no geo-
graphical or city-rank pattern of distribution for actions such as allocating a specific
percent of green to new developments, financial compensation for management of
private property green areas, participatory management of green areas with local popu-
lation or economic agents, restricting car access inside specific green areas or improving
connectivity through the use of green corridors.
For approximately half of the objectives declared in the documents we found associ-
ated future actions as specific methods of achieving those objectives. A weaker connec-
tion is present in the case of relation between the declared objectives and indicators for
monitoring the progress and achievement of those objectives – only 12 cities present
such indicators useful for assessing the impact of their proposed measures. We
found no pattern of distribution of these 12 cities representing all regions and
having various rankings. Indicators used for monitoring the impact included the
surface, length or number of newly developed green areas, the number of projects, allo-
cated budget, visiting population or participating in awareness campaigns about green
areas’ benefits. Information is missing about the monitoring mechanism: which insti-
tution or department of the administration is responsible for monitoring or calculating
indicators, and most importantly which are the instruments of dynamic management if
the indicators are not achieved.
The indicator of green area per capita (Figure 4) as presented in the documents has an
average of 37.04 m2 capita–1 (range = 0.36 – 438.95, stdev = 77.06). However, if we
extracted population size from unrelated sections of the strategic documents and
compared it with the total surface of green area in the city from the same documents,
the indicators of green area per capita decreases to an average of 24.52 m2 capita–1
(range = 0.42 – 163.46, stdev = 27.95). Therefore, using the data provided by adminis-
tration, the calculated indicator has a different value than the one presented in the docu-
ments. The Mann–Whitney comparison test reveals significant differences among the two
values of the indicators (p = .024), revealing the inconsistency of these documents regard-
ing the indicator.
Figure 4. Values of the indicator green area per capita as presented in the analysed documents.
4. Discussion
The fact that we found documents for only 66% of the cities is partially due to the low level
of participatory and strategic planning characterizing Romanian administration (Gavrili-
dis, Grădinaru, Iojă, Cârstea, & Pătru-Stupariu, 2015). In addition, the technical process of
finding the documents using the website’s menu was challenging, given the user-
unfriendly navigation and quality of the interface characterizing them (Niţă, Bălaş,
et al., 2015). The number of towns grew at a faster pace than the urban population in
Romania following the transition period (Platon & Constantinescu, 2015); so former
rural settlements have been declared as cities without their personnel of administrations
and infrastructure being prepared for this change.
The approach of green areas in these documents is not realized in a separate and dis-
tinct section, but integrated into other fields (especially as paragraphs of the environ-
mental section). The term green areas is not clearly and uniformly defined, but it is
represented mainly by exemplifications of its typologies, with the most frequent ones
being parks, street squares and alignments, playgrounds or other recreation and leisure
facilities. This is frequently encountered in planning documents that target environmental
components and their framework even without mentioning them explicitly (Kabisch,
2015).
Almost all of the 94 cities that presented typologies of green areas stated this only as an
enumeration of the type: parks, urban forests, squares, public and private gardens, insti-
tutional gardens, street alignments and forest alignments. Administrations do not
present in-depth analysis of the management requirements and benefits of each category
at the city level, nor do they account for the specific characters in the context of their geo-
graphical, social or economic environments.
The main benefits of green areas identified in the 68 documents are represented by their
recreational and aesthetic benefits, as well as influences on public health. Other types of
benefits, such as ecological, societal interrelation, economic and employment market
opportunities are missing or found only inadvertently in the iterations of municipal auth-
orities. Furthermore, we found no comprehensive evidence that administrations account
for the multifunctionality which characterizes green areas in most cities. The low represen-
tation of benefits provided by green areas makes the implementation process of these
documents challenging. There are groups of stakeholders, seeking inclusion, to legitimate
by informed representation the management of green areas (Spanò et al., 2017) in which
will rise the challenge of identifying specific benefits for each group. Such is the case of
economic agents (Vandermeulen, Verspecht, Vermeire, Van Huylenbroeck, & Gellynck,
2011) or population groups of special needs (Maas, Verheij, Groenewegen, de Vries, &
Spreeuwenberg, 2006) not supporting green area development and management as the
benefits are not specifically emphasized.
The term green infrastructure has only been located in a single city. Either the concept
is not known or understood by local authorities or they prefer to use the categories existing
in Romanian legislation (Badiu et al., 2016). The absence of the term could also be a con-
sequence of unqualified personnel that created it. Likewise, green infrastructure is not con-
sidered in the strategies of authorities, indicative of a prolonged task ahead of them in
attaining all the benefits deriving from such an infrastructure.
Regarding the authors of the analysed documents, 56 documents are realized by the
Local Council of cities or City Halls, with the rest compiled by commercial firms, univer-
sities or specialists. Several documents have no identifiable author, although the munici-
pality acknowledges it as representing the official position of their government.
In our study we attempted to validate the development strategies of cities’ current indi-
cators used for monitoring the attainment of the proposed objectives. However, even in
the case of the 12 cities which presented such indicators, the indicators had no specific
timeframes of calculation, nor did they present past or reference values for monitoring
progress in the future. The deficiency of such monitoring indicators may lead to deviations
from the proposed objectives, especially for green areas that, in most of Eastern Europe,
are confronted with the absence of planning practices integrating green areas with the
more dominant socio-economic aspects (Parysek & Dutkowski, 1994; Simeonova & van
der Valk, 2016). In some Romanian cities we can detect a passive form of urban manage-
ment which could be reduced to the ‘business as usual’ base scenario (Ianoş et al., 2017),
with reduced potential for inclusive and collaborative developments in the city.
Some of the changes regarding green areas are included in measures corresponding to
fields such as economy, public health or cultural impacts, which would imply that moni-
toring of results would be even more difficult, since they are not in the provenance of a
single department (Bijker & Sijtsma, 2017). Therefore, it is concluded that planning for
green spaces is frequently done with little understanding of values actors assign to
green areas (Ives et al., 2017), and Romania is no exception. Furthermore, minimal coordi-
nation and future vision characterize the common management of different domains at
the city level and may lead to ad-hoc planning decisions (Wagner, 2016), with a reduced
degree of sustainability.
The principal objectives of public administrations in Romania are related to the main-
tenance of green areas where they exist and establishment of new ones where they are
absent (particularly of park categories). These objectives may be considered over-simpli-
fied, but they should be critically analysed considering the characteristics of a system
which has green areas under continuous development pressure. Loss of green areas is a
trend characterizing many environments that are the result of development of built-up
areas and densification of the cities (Haaland & van den Bosch, 2015), with previous
studies revealing, for eastern Europe cities, a direct correlation of land abandonment or
changes as a precursor of built-up development – especially at the periphery of cities
(Aksoy, 2011; Grădinaru et al., 2015). Objectives are listed through simple enumeration,
without the means by which they can be attained or a demonstration of the multiple
benefits that can simultaneously result in green areas regardless of their management
approaches (Ives et al., 2017).
Regarding quantitative indicators, current documents reduce many prospects of follow-
ing the proposed plans. Several cities propose indicators such as the tendency of green
areas, number of playgrounds and number of green areas around schools or surface of
new urban forests. A single city had an educational indicator regarding the number of
awareness programmes referencing the benefits of green areas. This is significant as pre-
vious studies exposed the potential of such small-scale green elements or approaches in
improving the connectivity and multifunctionality of green networks at a city level
(Iojă, Grădinaru, Onose, Vânău, & Tudor, 2014).
Green area per capita is the most encountered indicator found in the analysed docu-
ments. Values of the indicators, as presented by the local administration, should be
viewed with a degree of uncertainty. Significant differences exist between the values we
found in the strategic documents (Table 3), those from the National Institute of Statistics
or Environmental Reports of Counties and data extracted from aerial imagery realized in
Table 3. Comparative analysis of green space per capita indicator from different sources.
Mapping from aerial National Institute of County environmental Strategic documents of
City imagerya Statistics reports cities
Baile 20.22 127.13 35.32 12.50
Herculane
Braila 22.11 16.81 24.93 19.50
Deva 19.25 21.71 23.86 18.00
Draganesti-Olt 24.72 28.90 0.00 22.90
Focsani 18.16 3.52 7.95 10.39
Husi 20.82 22.40 22.60 19.39
Iasi 27.59 25.06 25.06 14.00
Mioveni 6.29 29.37 1.42 26.00
Mizil 11.88 37.41 0.00 13.36
Moreni 17.98 12.76 0.00 23.08
Oradea 23.12 30.14 11.47 27.32
Piatra-Neamt 21.92 24.55 22.10 22.31
Popesti 23.72 23.25 14.21 26.00
Leordeni
Sacele 8.49 1.49 1.41 2.34
Targu Lapus 12.81 0.88 0.88 1.71
Targu Mures 22.18 16.03 0.00 9.00
a
Based on information calculated for other studies (Badiu et al., 2016).
other studies (Badiu et al., 2016). These differences may be partially due to the differences
in reporting and gathering of the data, but correspondingly to the categories of green areas
considered in calculating values of the indicator.
The problems of green areas are evident, the principal one being their diminishing
surface. In Romanian cities, this reduction is due to changes in land management over
the past 20 years that considered green areas as an option for new construction and an
ineffective legislation and planning system that permitted, or even encouraged, this
trend. Especially in large cities, green areas have been seen by some administrations as
a space which was not used for constructions, and thus available. Situations appeared
with green areas transformed into shopping or residential spaces (e.g. Park Lake Mall
or Oaks Residential) or with the mandatory percent occupied by green area in the case
of new development being calculated on the sides or top of buildings. Therefore, the
importance of planning for sustainable green areas in Romania (Ioja, Rozylowicz,

Pătroescu, Niță, & Vânău, 2011) is a documented reality for both scientist and prac-
titioners, but less so for local administrations. At a higher policy level, Romania aims at
increasing the green areas per capita ratio in all cities, regardless of their characteristics.
The European institutions mandate that Romania attain specific green targets, but the
manner in which this was transmitted to local authorities was rather confusing. Local
administrations were made aware that all cities in Romania should reach 26 m2 of
green space per capita (Badiu et al., 2016), regardless of the current status and structure
of green. This might be an explanation for why at the local level 148 cities advanced
the status of green areas. Each local authority established a series of future programmes
aimed at increasing the quality of living and prosperity by increasing the surface of specific
green areas. This is challenging for cities in Romania, which in most cases are not prepared
to undertake and sustain these measures (Mitrică, Săgeată, & Grigorescu, 2014). However,
in a few istances urban areas have promoted and implemented specific programmes for
sustainable development (Lucian, 2015) including a significant environmental component
in which green areas are included. The implementation of such development programmes
for the development of urban green areas was unfortunately not monitored at the national
or local level; so their achievements are not formally recognized. Standards should be
established and realistically indicate a healthy, clean and relaxing environment for Roma-
nian cities.
5. Conclusion
The presence of green areas in development strategies of Romanian cities is common but
under an unbalanced approach. Frequently they are included in the broader setting of the
environmental chapter, focusing on green areas’ types and surfaces. Local administrations
fail in providing sound strategies for green areas’ development or management. Green
development strategies contain unrelated objectives and poorly defined indicators for
monitoring progress.
Although these strategic documents can represent an instrument in the search for sus-
tainability and resilience, in the case of urban green areas they account predominantly for
the preservation of the existing situation. Centrated on the total surface of green areas and
without integrating their functionality and benefits, the urban green model is not included
traditionally in the planning process of Romanian cities.
The present study represents a practical insight into the approach local administrations
in Romania take on green areas. Further research is required to determine the implemen-
tation impact of the documents, consistency of the plans and results of the monitoring
processes.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Edward F. Rozylowicz for proofreading and providing valuable
comments on the manuscript and the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for the feedback
that helped improve the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research
and Innovation, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-RU-TE-2014-4-0434 – Developing a
model for evaluating the potential of urban green infrastructures for sustainable planning.
ORCID
Mihai-Razvan Niță http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3420-2204
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European Planning Studies

ISSN: 0965-4313 (Print) 1469-5944 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceps20

Are Romanian urban strategies planning for

Mihai-Razvan Niță, Ana-Maria Anghel, Cristina Bănescu, Ana-Maria

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2017.1382446

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Are Romanian urban strategies planning for green?

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Ana-Maria Popa anamariapopa07@gmail.com Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest,

Table 1. Information extracted from documents.

2.2. Data analysis

Figure 1. Methodological flow of research.

3.1. Presence of green areas in urban strategies

Figure 2. Analysed cities from Romania.

Table 2. Main aspects associated with green areas in the analysed

3.2. Main challenges and strategies

other aspects devoted to their administration structures (18) or educational programmes

importance of planning for sustainable green areas in Romania (Ioja, Rozylowicz,

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 6(1), 64–81. doi:10.1080/17524032.2011.

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