Sofia Chief Architect Petar Dikov: Bulgarian Capital Will Reemerge as Center of Southeast Europe

Petar Dkov, Chief Architect of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Photo by BGNES

Exclusive interview of Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) with the Chief Architect of Sofia, Petar Dikov.

Twenty years ago Sofia used to be a city of 1 million people with closed residence. Today some estimates place its population at 3 million people, and over 1 million cars. How has Sofia changed during the post-communist transition? How would you describe the greatest problems of the Bulgarian capital?

Sofia has changed a lot in these past 20 years. First, the major thing which has changed is the motorization. This has had a very negative effect on Sofia. I recently watched many TV shows regarding the fall of the Berlin Wall, and November 10, 1989, in Bulgaria, and hear many comments on how much we must be thankful to the Western World because the Wall fell and we have become a part of the European civilization.

At the same time, we don’t account for the fact how much the West won from the fact that we rejoined Europe. I am saying this with a little irony and a sense of humor but when you look at the car park in Sofia, there are at least 500 000 second hand cars here from the ones that the Western European states were supposed to throw out. One can estimate what sum of money leaked out of poor Bulgaria only for the purchase those old cars. Of course, this is something on the side.

The most detrimental change in Sofia has had to do with the increasing levels of motorization. Because during the communist period, the closed residence did not manage to save Sofia from growing. It was the harsh limitations on the import of cars that did, and preserved Bulgaria from excessive motorization.

In the late 1980s, the motorization rate of Sofia was under 200 cars per 1 000 inhabitants – about 180-185 cars per 1 000. And this was mainly thanks to the fact that at that time one had to wait for 10-15 years to buy a car, while keeping one's money without interest at a state company.

As soon as the market was opened, everybody wanted to own their personal car, and the motorization rate grew by 2,5 times. Currently, there about 530-540 cars per 1 000 inhabitants in Sofia. Which has had a catastrophic impact on the traffic and the infrastructure of the city.

The streets, sidewalks are overcrowded with cars, the traffic capacity of all roads decreased. What is most irritating for the people in Sofia today is the traffic and the garbage. These are the two major problems to be solved.

At the same time, since everybody had been waiting to own a car, and the dream of every Bulgarian and Eastern European was to buy a Western car, when all those cars got imported, the Bulgarians stopped using the public transport. And they were actually used to using the public transport.

This in turn caused the neglecting of the public transport, its income dropped, its facilities were not well-maintained, and as a result even more people stopped using it. So now one of our main tasks is to make – in the best possible sense of the word – the people go back to the public transport again.

Also, it turned out that the thing which used to be very well-developed here has now become very modern in Western Europe. Now the development of the public transport is priority number one in alleviating the traffic. We had this thing here, we nearly destroyed it, as a result of the changes, and now are looking to restore it.

What are the directions of your urban planning strategy for the development of Sofia? What are the city’s advantages that it is going to build upon?

The greatest advantage of Sofia is its geopolitical location. Historically, Sofia has always been a regional center of Southeast Europe. It is a known fact from the Roman history that Emperor Constantine wanted to make Sofia the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire at one point. It is not a well-known fact that he was from the city of Nish but his favorite city which he developed was Sofia.

Sofia is the crossroads not just of European routes but of global ones. Unfortunately for us, first, we were for a long time part of the Ottoman Empire, which created a very sharp border to the west of us between Christian Europe and the Muslim world, which also included our territories at the time. Later, for a brief period from the Liberation in 1878 until 1944, we were part of Greater Europe.

This is when Sofia mostly developed from a village of 10 000 people into an European city of 350 000. Then unluckily for us came the period of the Cold War blocs division when Sofia remained in the periphery of the Eastern Bloc, and again we constructed “walls” to the west and to the south of us, there were those curtains which totally hindered Sofia’s connections to the world.

After these barriers collapsed in 1990, Sofia gradually started to renew its role as a regional center, which is more visible politically than economically. Because the fact that Sofia is currently developing, the interest of the foreign investors is not waning unlike other spots in Europe where it collapse whereas Sofia continues to see it, is mainly thanks to the fact that the foreign investors perhaps see better than we do and appreciate this extremely good and important geopolitical position of Sofia.

How is your urban planning strategy for Sofia utilizing this advantage?

We have drafted and adopted a new territorial organization plan for Sofia which gives a very good framework for development. We are now working on the updating of this plan which is to be adopted shortly in order to respond to the new position of the city and the investors’ interests. It gives a much better structure of the communications, a better set of free terrains for the development of the city, mostly in the northern direction.

Because since the building of the railway from Nish to Instanbul right after the Liberation in the 1880s, Sofia has always been artificially divided by the line into a northern part, which has been considered of lower quality, and has been mostly industrial, and the southern part, which has been seen as being of better quality, and has been mostly residential.

With the new organization plan we are going to give the city the opportunity to go beyond the railway, and to expand to the north – both in its present northern territories, and on the southern slopes of the Balkan Mountain.

Let me ask you then about those areas. You have said many times that the Kremikovtzi factory, which used to be Bulgaria’s largest steel-maker, must be shut down and liquidated. Why do you think so?

The factory is already shut. Its liquidation will be confirmed by the last court hearing on Thursday, November 12, on its insolvency, which is almost entirely certain because the bondholders have rejected the capitalization of its debts and the recovery plan. As far as I know, the state has also given up on that.

So on November 12, two days after the historic date of November 10, the post-communist transition will be over for Kremikovtzi, this dear child of the Bulgarian-Soviet friendship.

How is Sofia going to benefit from Kremikovtzi’s closure, and what is it going to lose?

Sofia is not going to lose anything when Kremikovtzi stops functioning. It will gain clean air, and a territory which is very well equipped with infrastructure, and which is a unique reserve for urban development.

And since you have many foreign readers, I want to mention that, after the insolvency procedure is completed, Kremikovtzi will be declared for sale in full, not as a plant in operation but as one in liquidation.

I am convinced that the smart investors are going to consider whether to buy it even in today’s time of crisis. This is 15 000 decares of land with several hundred thousand tons of scrap worth about EUR 400 M. This will prove to be a very rare deal.

And since once the liquidation process is completed, there will be no plant with extremely huge debts, just its assets will be on sale.

What is going to replace Kremikovtzi?

Whatever the new investor decides. I am sure that the second part of the production cycle - i.e. after the electric furnaces – will be preserved in order to smelt all the scrap left. I have information suggesting that the smelting furnaces could work for four years only smelting the scrap available in the factory. The rest of the land can be turned into a high-tech park, office space, logistics, even residential space.

The Sofia Municipality has recently taken up a number of projects to alleviate the grave traffic situation such as overpasses and underground parking lots. Has the economic crisis caused any delays in those projects?

There are delays in the improvement of the street system as a whole, caused by the crisis. But there is an acceleration of the projects related to the public transport about which I am very happy because it is going at a very fast pace. Now we are also starting to work on the tram lines network.

How long will it be before those projects tangibly alleviate the traffic in Sofia?

It will happen in 3,5 years. I think they are all going fine because now is the time for public investments.

You recently said that it was a mistake to build the first line of the Sofia Metro under the Dragan Tsankov Blvd instead of the Tsarigradsko Shose Blvd. Why do you think so?

The natural route of the subway would have been the Tsarigradsko Shose because this where the huge traffic and the large masses of people are. We cannot compare the number of passengers at the Interpred Metro Station, for example, with the potentially much higher number a metro station at the Pliska Hotel would have attracted. It is just beyond comparison.

So why was this mistake allowed then? We are talking about a subway – a huge project, how did that happen?

Because 5-6 years ago somebody decided that a tunnel built 24-25 years ago under the TV tower, and designed for trams, could be used in order to save EUR 60-70 M. In my view, Sofia has lost a lot more as a result of this shift but that is already a fait accompli.

How can this situation be fixed?

It can’t. We will just have to use the other forms of transport in order to correct some of the effects of that.

Three metro lines have been planned for the subway, the first one is mostly completed. Is a ring line also to be constructed?

No, we are going to create a ring line through lighter, ground transport, most likely with trolley buses.

Why is that? Isn’t a ring line the best way to connect the three “beams” and the outer quarters of the city?

Because the ring-line travels do not entail movement from one end of the city to the other but movement to some of the radiating lines going to the downtown. So if you imagine a diagram, the load on a potential ring line is going to look like a sinusoid – a huge passenger load in the zones crossing the beams, and a much smaller load in the other parts. If someone decides to travel from Lyulin to Mladost, they are not going to use the ring line, they will travel through the downtown.

What about traveling to outer quarters which are closer to each other – for example Lyulin and Ovcha Kupel?

Then the same thing – people would go from Lyulin to the downtown, and then change to the other line. In the case of the public transport, the ring lines have no importance. They are very important for the car traffic, and this is where we need them in order to shift it from the downtown to the outer routes.

What is the situation with the Sofia Coliseum?

Its time will come. Currently, for the first time in many, many years, we have started to uncover Sofia’s archaeological heritage. We have started to build the Sofia Largo project. I hope that we will uncover a lot of archaeological structures there. We have also started to build the metro stations under the Maria Luisa Blvd, and a lot of archaeological structures are definitely going to be uncovered there.

When we complete these two projects, we are going to start working down the Dondukov Blvd towards the Sofia Coliseum, and up the Maria Luisa Blvd to the Sheraton Hotel, where there is evidence that the palace of Constantine the Great was located.

Does this mean that some of the downtown buildings will have to be torn down in order to dig the Sofia Coliseum out in the open? There has been talk of having to tear down the building of the Goethe Institute and of the UK Consulate in order to uncover the Sofia Coliseum, is that going to happen?

First, this means that streets and squares will be reconstructed in order to “bring out” the archaeology structures, and to make them accessible for the pedestrians. Then, we are definitely going to suggest that the Goethe Institute building be torn down for that purpose. We will hardly have to tear down the UK Consulate because it is outside the area of the Coliseum.

When are these projects going to be realized?

No earlier than five years because a lot of money is needed.

So this means that in a decade…?

Yes, there will be a second layer. The people and guests of Sofia will be walking on Roman streets.

If the planned moving of the government to a new government complex along the Tsarigradsko Shose Blvd is realized, how much is this going to change the downtown?

This would change the downtown a lot but I don’t see it happening as a real alternative in the coming years. It is something which should have been done much earlier and much faster.

What is the situation with the business districts in Sofia? Where are they, and how are they developing?

The Sofia Business Park in the Mladost 4 Quarter is one such district. It is a modern solution, a business park in the outskirts of the city. The other business district will be in the western direction along the Todor Alexandrov Blvd which has just now started to develop, and will probably be ready more or less in 5-6 years. And then, a business district with a very big potential is the area around the Central Railway Station, which, in addition to everything else, features a lot of currently unoccupied plots.

Are there going to be skyscrapers in Sofia any time soon?

I personally don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future. Sofia still does not have the prerequisites for skyscrapers. First, the skyscraper is a building whose construction is 30%-50% more costly than the alternatives. Second, its operation is also about 30%-50% more expensive. Skyscrapers will appear in Sofia the moment somebody is willing to pay twice as much as an owner or a tenant. Currently, the trends show the companies want to pay twice as little.

Still, how would skyscrapers affect the Sofia landscape should one or more of them appear?

There are dozens of examples of city landscapes around the world. A classic example is the American one where the downtown consists of skyscrapers, and all other buildings are one- or two-storey.

Last year, I was in Tel Aviv, which has a different landscape – a city spread around on a rather interesting terrain, and some higher buildings looming here and there. Sofia is more probably going to look like Tel Aviv than like Atlanta or San Francisco.

Since you’ve mentioned the American model of urban planning – is Sofia going to have large residential suburbs with houses in the outskirts and with people commuting or driving to the city?

Sofia already has some. Many people have moved to the villages on the southern slope of the Balkan Moutain such as Voynyagovtsi and Pozharevo. Now with the smoke from Kremikovtzi gone, many people are going to move to those villages because the pollution was the main problem there. Now when I pass by, I am happy to be able to clearly see the mountain behind the factory. Earlier there was no way it could be seen.

The municipal administration recently announced the situation with the lack of cemetery space was really grave. Is Sofia going to run out of cemetery plots just as it ran out of space in its dumpsites, and had to transport its bales of garbage to Plovdiv?

For now, it is not. We are expanding the three existing cemeteries which will cover us for 2-2,5 years. After that we will need two new cemeteries but the projects are ready and we are about to start building them. There is no danger of running out of cemetery plots. We will not have to send off dead people to other locations.

What are your projects with respect to the green areas in Sofia?

We have a number of them well under way, and they are going as planned. The first one to be completed as early as 2010 will be the Vazrazhdane Park.

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