Upgrading To A Smart City: Adopting The Urbanism Code

The smart city concept has been a topic of much debate and several legal instruments, such as the New Leipzig Charter or the Pact of Amsterdam. Nevertheless, robust legal support from the Romanian government is needed to transpose the European decisions and to narrow the gap between innovative ideas and their implementation.

A smart city means technologies that facilitate everyday life, with plenty of green and efficient spaces. Many recent worldwide regulations focus on climate-related aspects. For smart cities to work in Romania, new legislative provisions are needed, including in relation to urban planning.

Romania's urban planning legislation has undergone many changes, leading to fragmentation and incoherence. The poor correlation of normative acts, legislative voids, open-ended provisions and deficient legislative techniques have necessitated the launch of the Land Development, Urban Planning and Construction Code project (the "Code"), which aims to unite