Drumul Taberei

Drumul Taberei (Romanian: [ˈdrumul ˈtaberej], The Camp Road) is a neighbourhood located in the south-west of Bucharest, Romania, roughly between Timișoara Avenue (south of Plaza România and the Cotroceni Railway Station) and Ghencea Avenue, neighboring Militari to the north, Panduri to the east and Ghencea and Rahova to the south and south-east.

It is one of the few examples of successful urban planning during Communist Romania, despite it being built in the Eastern European tradition of "dormitory neighborhoods". This success is mostly due to the unique approach of the architects and planners to the concept of high-density urban living, an approach that was not used elsewhere in Bucharest.

The neighbourhood was built in the mid-to-late 1960s, on former agricultural fields and marshland, using an old road as a backbone. It was called Road of the Camp because Tudor Vladimirescu set there his Pandur camp before entering Bucharest in 1821.

The central concept of the area was providing for a comfortable living environment in a high density urban area. The main concepts used were standardization of buildings (most of the residential buildings are standard Eastern European tower blocks - cutii de chibrituri, literally "matchboxes"), providing for quick and efficient mass transit to the center of the city but also inside the neighbourhood, and creating large, green spaces to counterbalance the massiveness and bleakness of the standardized apartment buildings.

The heart of the quarter is Drumul Taberei Park, a small park, complete with an artificial lake and a public swimming pool. The main avenue of the quarter circles the park forming a "U" shape, extending outwards to the east, and linking the quarter to the center of the city. Immediately east of the park, a large north-south street (Brașov Street) cuts across the U-shaped avenues in order to provide quick access to Militari and Ghencea. Next to the park, a large open-air market (Drumul Taberei) was built.

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