The illegally arranged parking spaces, on the public domain, gardens and relaxation places illegally surrounded by metal fences are among the most disturbing things noticed by the Romanians living on the block. Authorities have often encountered difficulties in abolishing them.
Illegal fences, decommissioned in Hunedoara. Photo: Hunedoara City Hall
Hunedoara is one of the former working cities developed rapidly in the first decades of communism, with the industrial expansion, planned by the regime established after the Second World War, but in most of the new working cities of the time, many of its new inhabitants came from the rural area.
By the end of the 1950s, the population of the city erected around the steel company increased five times, compared to the war, exceeding 40,000 inhabitants.
New town have kept rural habits
Two decades later, the municipality doubled its number of inhabitants, reaching 80,000 people. Most of the Romanians established in the new working city came from villages.
“In Hunedoara, the primitive carts of the peasants, drawn by dry and tired horses, share the same roads with the big trucks in Czechoslovakia. The peasants who have remained attached to the land still carry the black fur, a funnel -shaped, tight -woven pants at home or in factories. The poorer locals cover their feet in pieces of canvas or wear Albanian pants at home. Their women dress in wide skirts, wool vests made by them, wearing berries and woolen or rubber shoes. The farmer who left his land to work in the factory has quickly gained an appearance of a city. His son seems to have been leap in less than ten years. Seeing young people and their wives dancing rock and roll and jazz at the Restaurant of the Combined, it would be difficult to imagine how this transformation took place ”, inform the newspaper The New York Times, in 1959, in a report that described the then migration of Romanians to Hunedoara.
The first working barracks from the 1950s, in Hunedoara. Photo: CSH archive
Numerous cities in Romania have gone through the same situation in the decades of communism. Their inhabitants, once moved to the working blocks that gradually took the role of primitive barracks around the factories and factories, hardly abandoned their habits in the country.
The green areas around the blocks were transformed into gardens and courtyards, and the fences raised around them were increasingly solid, without the authorities opposing this phenomenon. After 1990, the number of Romanians holding cars increased exponentially, and the green spaces, some already fenced, of block neighborhoods, have been reserved as garages or workshops.
The demolition of the annexes arouses dissatisfaction
The actions of demolition of illegal constructions and arrangements have often encountered the resistance of the locals, some of them being unhappy that they have invested in surroundings and arrangements and dedicated years to care for the green areas, which they came to be as their own.
In Hunedoara, in several neighborhoods, the illegal fences were removed, but not all the tenants were satisfied with the action of the town hall.
“The gardens next to the block do not respect the law. We understand the desire of the tenants to have a green space and maintained near the block, but it is illegal for it to be surrounded by fences and busy with such annexes, or with furniture objects. Such a “garden” is all the more disturbing when it becomes a mess generator. The first arrangements of this kind were abolished. We will also proceed with the other “gardens”, especially with the generators of misery and discomfort“Informs Hunedoara City Hall.
The authorities have proposed to the locals who want to take care of the green areas in front of the blocks to give up their fence and address the municipality if they want to plant trees in front of the blocks.
“In some neighborhoods, some have made their courtyards around the blocks. The tenants made owners on the green areas. They made fences, gates and entrances directly into the apartments on the ground floor. Probably, a lot of walls of resistance were weakened with their arrangements ”a local was crying.
Some of those who have surrounded the land in front of the blocks say they had well -founded reasons.
“We have restricted our green areas, so that no others with cars parking at our windows and not passing the world under the window, to make a joke. I planted flowers, trees, it’s beautiful. For decades we have dealt with this area ”transmits an elderly, the municipality.
Parks arranged in green areas
Along with the illegally surrounded lands, another thing frequently complained to by the Romanians who moved to the block is that their neighbors have transformed the green areas into their own parking, illegally arranged.
“A neighbor in the block made a parking place alone in the garden of the block, brought ballast and sand that he put over the grass, level him daily and newly screamed at me to change my parking place,-one that I paid to the town hall-because my car is too long and uncomfortable at parked”, A young man complains, on Reddit.
And other Romanians reported that they have gone through similar experiences.
“The neighbors also set up eight parking spaces on the green space of the block. They poured over the grass with some cheap, very beautiful asphalt. He filed a neighbor complaint, the City Hall came, thanked them, marked these places, the remaining space being quite large and gave them to the following on the waiting list. None of them were on the list because people did not get tired of applying for parking places, saying they live there. In addition, they also took a fine for the destruction of public green space”, Tells another Romanian.
Another Romanian reported that his neighbors living for decades in the block where he has recently moved are considered the masters of the whole area.
“Some elderly, who live in the communist blocks of a lifetime, are claiming that they are on their estate. They awarded their kindergarten, their place of parking unmarked on the street, the box or the storage space in the former laundry (although they do not have them on their behalf) and so on, “ he says.
