Land and property rights within the urbanism law

• Author: Dana Georgeta Alexandru
• Position: Faculty of Humanties and Social Sciences Departament of International Relations, Political Sciences and Security Studies University 'Lucian Blaga' of Sibiu, Romania
• Pages: 1-11

AGORA International Journal of Juridical Sciences, http://univagora.ro/jour/index.php/aijjs

ISSN 1843-570X, E-ISSN 2067-7677

No. 2 (2016), pp. 12-11

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LAND AND PROPERTY RIGHTS WITHIN THE URBANISM LAW

D.G. ALEXANDRU

Dana Georgeta Alexandru

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Faculty of Humanties and Social Sciences

Departament of International Relations, Political Sciences and Security Studies

University "Lucian Blaga" of Sibiu, Romania

*Correspondence: D. G. Alexandru, ULBS, Calea Dumbrăvii St., no. 34, Sibiu, Romania

E-mail: dana.alexandru.g@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The study intends to highlight the functions of property rights in relation to the

characteristics of urbanism law. The analyse aims to identify the role of public authorities in

the production process of planning public policies, under current regulations in force in

Romania. Moreover, while the legislasion led to confer a social function of property rights,

this conception of property rights comes up against the revival of private property, which is

likely to complicate the implementation of public planning policies. The social function of the

property law, however, could reach its limits in the coming years. Indeed, the jurisprudence

appears to give a boost to the individualistic dimension of ownership complicating the

achievement of public planning policies.

KEY WORDS: PROPERTY LAW, PUBLIC AUTHORITIES, LAND USE PLANNING

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the dawn of it’s becoming, the society has used its own means to reshape

the natural environment and create within it a self-made environment which the authors call

“artificial”, with volumes, spaces and structures that significantly differ from the natural

environment in terms of quality.

In order to overcome the challenge of ruthless exploitation of natural resources and

intrusion of the artificial environment

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into the natural one (which further leads to chaotic

development of urban agglomerations and destruction of large areas) a new approach on the

urbanism practices was necessary. This revival has – progressively – reached each and every

aspect of urbanism: the purpose, the methods and the scope of application. Although the word

“urbanism” is relatively recent, the discipline it designates is very old, and it roots back in the

antiquity when it referred to cities with orthogonal, regular shape

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.

As regards typology of contemporary sources, one may notice that international law is

completely silent in this matter and EU law addresses the matters of urbanism and land

development only to the extent that consequences exist or influence the environmental law.

The Constitution of Romania is quasi used in this matter but it only contains provisions that

govern the property right. The regulations that govern the urbanism are of legislative nature

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Beneficiary of the Project financed from Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu research grants LBUS-IRG-2016-02

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Elena Maria Minea, Urbanism și amenajarea teritoriului (in English, Urbanism and land development), Training support

for remote education, Cluj-Napoca, 2011, p. 24.

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The word “urbanism” was first used by Ildefonso Cerda, a Catalan engineer, in his work titled Teoría general d e la

urbanización y aplicación de sus principios y doctrinas a la reforma y ensanche de Barcelona, published in 1867 (briefly, in

English, General Theory on Urban Planning). He used the Latin word “urbis” to designate the science of city development.