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Romania is among the European countries which have applied contradictory and discontinuous, frequently radical policies in the urban areas within the last two centuries. I hereby refer to the intervention programs in the historical centers of the cities or across the entire urban area. Even if some were consonant and synchronous with the mainland urban policies, the ones which have left serious traces in the urban or rural Romanian texture were dissonant compared to the contemporary European or even the global ones. "Repeated destructions and reconstructions" would be the concept that defines this status quo as far as the Romanian cities in general and the ones in Moldavia and Wallachia in particular are concerned. The causes are multiple and they deserve to be discussed briefly below, with particular reference to the cities outside the Carpathians area.

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Teodor Octavian Gheorghiu is an architect. He graduated from Ion Mincu Architecture Institute in Bucharest in 1973. He is a University Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Timisoara and has published approximately 26 titles and contributed to other 15, completed by over 120 published articles in Romanian and foreign magazines.

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