Paradoxically, the dullest space of the town (i.e. the districts and the boulevards of blocks of flats) underwent the most striking changes due to the spontaneous actions of the dwellers ? be these individual or collective ones. The project of shaping ?the New Man?, in its architectural embodiement, most probably triggered an implicit reaction of self-defence, by means of individualisation and appropriation of the imposed dwelling structure. On the other hand, living in a block of flats offered the kind of safety one could not enjoy in an ?old house? (that we shall discuss below). Anyway, such an apartment could not be nationalised, overcrowded with imposed persons, and ? an essential quality in the last years of the regime - the demolition was out of the question.

The different transformations of the interior and exterior spaces throughout this period, produced despite of an almost always-felt control, which however, never really functioned perfectly, are now extremely hard to decipher. To these were added the evolutions after 1989; all the utilisation and appropriation types mentioned below extended over the last ten years, with incomparable intensity, to which other categories of changes, whose simple existence would have previously been inconceivable are added.

The main transformed spaces are the privileged apartment spaces; they underwent some changes that have nothing exceptional but that attempted, giving the communist context, not only to increase comfort but also to concentrate almost all the possibilities of expression of a certain individual identity and of a certain social status. The visible signs, as discreet as possible, of this differentiation were usually limited to the various arrangements of the balconies, from the symbolic gardens to the space won by closing the balconies (in fact, an illegal operation).

The halls and the staircases kept their neutral character, of passage space, and suffered numberless types of degradation, or, on the contrary, were turned into spaces of representation and social contacts. The various arrangements (flowerpots, photos, paintings, and sometimes, new plastering) bear the imprint of collective actions by the next-door neighbours or represent extensions and markings of the private spaces of some of the apartments.

Still, the most significant changes concerning the relation between dwellers and the urban space are the outdoors changes, theoretically falling under the jurisdiction of public administration. The first category of types of spaces distinguished from the initial homogeneous exterior space consists of the zones closely neighbouring the blocks of flats that were transformed in real planted and delimited ?front yards?.  Often green pergolas and benches marked these entrances in the house. This is what made the individualisation of some initially identical units possible, as well as the appropriation of some spaces by a certain social group.