Urban planning orders for Sofia will now be signed personally by the mayor of Sofia, Vasil Terziev. This became clear at a special press conference today. The chief architect will be responsible for the technical part of the work.
„We have done a lot to curb the rapid development process of the city and to create transparency. From the very beginning, one of the things I did was to have the regional administrations publish investment intentions so that we could put them on the map of the capital“, said the mayor.
The other change that the Sofia Municipality has made in the direction of transparency is that the agenda of the Expert Council, which considers requests for PPUs, should be public and every regional mayor and regional architect not only has access to this information, but is also called upon to see what is being considered so that objections can be made in a timely manner. “This also applies to the popular Balkanton, because it concerns exactly what is public and why certain decisions were made“, Terziev specified and stated that the decision on the property in question will be reviewed.
The other general change concerns powers. “We will depersonalize the role of the chief architect. This is a technical, administrative role. Urban planning ends where it should be by law, and that is with the mayor. All PUPs will now be on my desk“, he stated.
“Another change we have been making for several months is to stop the practice of approving small PUPs, and to strive for more comprehensive urban planning, in order to avoid what is happening in Manastirski Livadi and Krastova Vada, where everything is piecemeal. We are already stopping allowing it. We are actively working to change what is in our hands – the traffic ordinance, the green system“, added the capital's mayor.