Reclaiming the Intermediary City: New civic institutions and practices of participative urban regeneration within mass housing estates in the post-com

The Intermediary City: New institutions and practices of participative urban re-sourcing in the collective housing estates of the post-communist context of Bucharest, Romania. Most of the urban population in Romania lives in collective housing neighborhoods. After the end of the realist socialism episode in late `50s, these estates were the translation into built form of the intersection between the modernist vision of radical mass housing and the communist social engineering project to create the `new man'. Different from their modernist western counterparts, these ensembles were not social housing, but houses for all, as the only available form of new dwellings for several generations. Due to economical constrains, most of the social infrastructure associated with the modernist project was never built, creating the mono-functional `dormitory-neighborhoods. But this inconsistency in planning was an ideal breeding ground for bottom-up actions to grow. Here, the initial intentions were tested, confirmed or invalidated, and by the accumulation of individual actions that regained the social life and the community practices, the neighborhood became a `deposit of experiences'. After the fall of communism, the working paradigm of the dormitory-neighborhoods went from one extreme to the other, from state's property and control, to radical privatization and deregulation in the mid `90s, reaching almost 100% of individual property. The only form of institutional relationship between the inhabitants, the administration and the (some privatized) utilities companies, were the weak and rather technically driven Owners Associations that represented one building each, with no interest or say in the management of the in between common spaces. Consequently, the spatial transformation of the neighborhoods by the sum of individual actions exploded, triggered by a dynamic social fabric and acting as an internal fuel for re-sourcing the neighborhoods facing the new economic and social realities of the post-socialism. After 25 years, the administration stepped in and started a superficial rehabilitation program insulating the buildings, without a solution for the degradation of the privatized structures themselves, or for the moral rehabilitation of the neighborhood's spatial structure. Nevertheless, within the socio-economic context of the region, these neighborhoods are here to stay for several generations to come. Despite their adaptive vocation shown over the past decades, these habitats are continuously degrading. By approaching such a complex subject like the context of inherited socialist estates, the research aims to work on both ends of the topic. First, engaging the institutional framework where the inhabitants and the administration are meeting. Mapping the existing legal frame and the roles, duties and action potentials of the stakeholders, the research aims to detect options for constructing and piloting new institutional formats of collaborations. These new formats could work as a support structures where the existing public institutions and actors could act. And second, to engage the largely ignored potential of the informal interventions and civic actions developed in these neighborhoods in such way that they can become the fuel of the new type of emerging civic institutions. This institutional pursuit is attempting to crystallize an emerging intermediary format within the present rather dysfunctional environment existing between the administration and citizens, as a pilot prototype that can apply to the great mass of similar situations, both in Romania and the region.