Environmental issues in Bucharest metropolitan area

The development of metropolitan areas represents the main feature of today’s urban evolution trends. Romania started to adopt the concept of metropolitan area from scientific point of view in the 1990s and from political point of view in the 2000s. With the fall of the communist regime in the year 1989, Romania experienced radical changes in all fields of activity. A first branch to be seriously affected by the restructuring process was agriculture. The major changes in land use during the transition period from a centralised economic system to the market economy (1989-2005), are related to decollectivisation and privatisation. These changes are determining structural relocations of the different land use categories affecting rural development with direct impact on the quality of the environment. The uncontrolled evolution of the Bucharest Metropolitan Area can be also analysed through urban sprawl (sub-urbanization). As a whole, urban expansion accompanies land fragmentation and land use diversification, improper waste management as well as high pressure upon water resources, agricultural land and biodiversity. The paper analyses the effects of rural development and urban sprawl within Bucharest Metropolitan Area as well as the main environmental issues related to sub-urbanization process (land fragmentation, land abandonment, land market dynamics, uncontrolled waste deposits, water supply system, sewage system, gas supply system) with negative impact on metropolitan landscape.