Green Struggle—Environmental Conflicts Involving Urban Green Areas in Bucharest City

Abstract

Green areas represent a vital component of urban settlements improving the environmental quality and offering a great variety of ecosystem services. However, in the context of the volatile legislation characterizing post-socialist societies, they can often get stuck between opposing interests. The study aims to outline a general image of the environmental conflicts occurring inside parks in a post-socialist city and offer an assessment model usable in any urban area. We used mass media to create a database containing all environmental conflicts related to the 25 largest parks in Bucharest. Results showed Bucharest suffered a loss in the green surface after the fall of socialism. Large areas, including almost 60 ha of parks, have been transformed mainly into residential areas or private institutional gardens. We defined five categories of conflicts occurring inside urban parks. The analysis highlighted an increasing number of conflicts in recent years, the difficulty in establishing responsible parties and the small number of solved problems. The loss of green areas is driven by a weak legislative framework and its frequent changes in line with the interests of the responsible authorities. The developed typology could help planners to develop standardized resolution strategies that are usable for each category of conflicts.