Environmental Quality Page 1 of 3 The issue of Romania’s environmental quality The issue Romania has been through a great amount of historical changes with the rise and fall of communism in the period of 1968 to 1989. The 'Years of light' in the power of the leader Ceausescu lead to a large amount of development within the urban areas of Romania. Through his Stalinist belief in heavy industry and the admiration of monumental buildings, the cities of Romania became industrial centres. Due to this the workforce was largely centred too, with many of the population from rural areas becoming resident in e.g. Bucharest (Burford & Richardson, 1995). Large high rise flats were built purposely and the architecture consisted of extremely large buildings such as the House of Parliament in Bucharest. Therefore as the cities increased in population and in amount of buildings (associated with residence, industrial purposes and monumental achievements), there have been consequences for the environment. Such consequences are negative for the environment and will be discussed in singular topics such as air, water, visual and noise alterations. Geographical Outline Covering 237,500 sq. km, oval shaped Romania is larger than Hungary and Bulgaria combined. Most of central and Northern Romania is taken by the u shaped Carpathian Mountains. The Transylvanian Plateau occupies the U centre and the Moldovian plateau lies to the East. It is located to the south east of Europe, bordering Moldova, Ukraine, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and in the south-east is the Black Sea. Bucharest, Roma. (Stanley,D. 1991). The changing structure of Romanian cities From 1930 to 1948 the population of Romania was concentrated predominantly in rural areas. At the census in December 1930, 11.23 million people were registered in the rural areas, representing 78.6% of the total Romanian population. However the situation changed after the rise of the communist party in 1948. After this time new towns were declared and the urban population increased as the rural population was attracted to the industrial activities in towns. Thus in 1984, the percentage of the population inhabiting the rural area had decreased from 50.8% to 45.3% in 1994. As evident in figure 2, the population has been rising in the urban areas of Romania and decreasing in the rural areas. With the rise in the population (workforce for the industry) the number of high rise flats increased and so the cities became congested and very built Up (see figure 3.- Bucharest). C. Alecock. | 1 | 2 | 3 | Page 1 of 3