Drumul Taberei - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Drumul Taberei is a neighbourhood located in the south-west of Bucharest

Bucharest

Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

, roughly between Timişoara Avenue (south of Plaza România and the Cotroceni Railway Station) and Ghencea Avenue, neighboring Militari

Militari

Militari is a district in the western part of Bucharest, in Sector 6. It is home of more than 100,000 inhabitants.In the past a village called "Militari" existed here, but today they are only few houses left from this time....

to the North, Panduri

Panduri

The panduri is a traditional Georgian three-string plucked instrument common in all regions of Eastern Georgia: such as Pshavkhevsureti, Tusheti, Kakheti and Kartli...

to the East and Ghencea

Ghencea

Ghencea is a district of the Romanian capital city Bucharest, which is home to the famous football team FC Steaua Bucureşti. It is also home to the rugby team Steaua Bucureşti Rugby.-Notable landmarks:*Stadionul Steaua, home stadium of Steaua Bucureşti...

and Rahova

Rahova

Rahova is a neighbourhood of southwest Bucharest, Romania, situated in Sector 5, west of Dâmboviţa River. It is named after the Bulgarian town Rahovo , site of a battle in the Romanian War of Independence....

to the South and South-East.

It is one of the few examples of successful urban planning during Communist Romania

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

, despite it being built in the Eastern European tradition of "dormitory neighborhoods". This success is mostly due to the unique approach of the architects and planners to the concept of high-density urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

living, an approach that was not used elsewhere in Bucharest.

History

The neighbourhood was built in the mid-to-late 1960s, on former agricultural fields and marshland, using an old road as a backbone. It was called Road of the Camp because Tudor Vladimirescu

Tudor Vladimirescu

Tudor Vladimirescu was a Wallachian Romanian revolutionary hero, the leader of the Wallachian uprising of 1821 and of the Pandur militia. He is also known as Tudor din Vladimiri or — occasionally — as Domnul Tudor .-Background:Tudor was born in Vladimiri, Gorj County in a family of landed peasants...

set there his Pandur

Pandurs

The Pandurs were Croatian Austrian frontier soldiers, who inhabited the areas of the Kingdom of Croatia and Military Frontier, and fought not only in the East-Turkish front, but also in the West-European front. They were a non-linear army, made out mainly of Croats...

camp before entering Bucharest in 1821.

Urban planning

The central concept of the area was providing for a comfortable living environment in a high density urban area. The main concepts used were standardization of buildings (most of the residential buildings are standard Eastern European tower blocks - "cutii de chibrituri", literally "matchboxes"), providing for quick and efficient mass transit to the center of the city but also inside the neighbourhood and creating large, green spaces to counterbalance the massiveness and bleakness of the standardized apartment buildings.

The heart of the quarter is Drumul Taberei Park, a small park

Park

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...

, complete with an artificial lake and a public swimming pool

Swimming pool

A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...

. The main avenue of the quarter circles the park forming a "U" shape, extending outwards to the east, and linking the quarter to the center of the city. Immediately east of the park, a large North-South street (Braşov Street) cuts across the U-shaped avenues in order to provide quick access to Militari

Militari

and Ghencea

Ghencea

. Next to the park, a large open-air market (Drumul Taberei) was built.

Public transport was constructed to be an integral part of the neighbourhood. As such, even today, the neighbourhood is extremely well connected to all parts of the city, even though it is not served by the Metro

Bucharest Metro

The Bucharest Metro is an underground urban railway network that serves the capital of Romania, Bucharest. The network is run by Metrorex. It is one of the most accessed systems of the Bucharest public transport network with a ridership of 177.23 million passengers in 2010...

. Around each trolleybus

Trolleybus

A trolleybus is an electric bus that draws its electricity from overhead wires using spring-loaded trolley poles. Two wires and poles are required to complete the electrical circuit...

stop, commercial areas were planned and built, to include stores, restaurants and cinemas, to serve for each small community served by that stop (many of these commercial areas still keep their original names - "Favorit", "Orizont", "Drumul Taberei 34"). The design of the neighbourhood was influenced by the then-fashionable brutalism, visible especially in the design of the commercial areas. This design, despite being very popular and very efficient, was not adopted anywhere else in Bucharest, partly because most other high-density neighbourhoods were built over a pre-existing layout, with old buildings being razed and rebuilt, and partly because the process of designing and planning such a complex layout all over again was rather slow (Drumul Taberei was completed around 1974). In all, 63,000 apartments were built.

Transportation

The design of the neighbourhood placed a great importance on mass transit. Trolleybuses connect all parts of the quarter with Gara de Nord

Gara de Nord

București Gara de Nord is the main railway station in Bucharest and the largest railway station in Romania...

, Eroilor and Universitate, while Light Rail

Light rail

Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...

41 links the neighbourhood to Ghencea

Ghencea

, Militari

Militari

, Crângaşi

Crângasi

Crângaşi is one of the smallest neighbourhoods in the 6th Sector of Bucharest, Romania. It is situated on the west side of the city near the Dâmboviţa River, where it flows into Lacul Morii. Its name means "people living in a young forest". Nearby neighbourhoods include Giuleşti....

, Ion Mihalache

Ion Mihalache

Ion Mihalache was a Romanian agrarian politician, the founder and leader of the Peasants' Party and a main figure of its successor, the National Peasants' Party .-Early life:...

Herăstrău and Băneasa

Baneasa

Băneasa is a borough in the north side of Bucharest, near the Băneasa Lake . Like all north-side districts of Bucharest, it is relatively sparsely populated, with large areas of parkland...

. The network also features a number of bus

Bus

A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...

lines, serving additional routes inside the neighborhood. An extension of the metro to Drumul Taberei is planned, with work scheduled to commence in autumn 2015, and an estimated completion date of 2020. As the neighbourhood was heavily designed around public transport, parking spaces are rather scarce, and traffic jams and gridlock

Gridlock

The term gridlock is defined as "A state of severe road congestion arising when continuous queues of vehicles block an entire network of intersecting streets, bringing traffic in all directions to a complete standstill; a traffic jam of this kind." The term originates from a situation possible in...

are quite common occurrences, especially at the Răzoare

Razoare

Răzoare may refer to several places in Romania:* Răzoare, a neighborhood in Bucharest* Răzoare, a village in Frata Commune, Cluj County* Răzoare, a village in the town of Târgu Lăpuş, Maramureş County...

intersection, where one of the three center-bound roads out of Rahova

Rahova

meets two of the centerbound roads out of Drumul Taberei.

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