Given the predetermined dwelling frame, the initiatives of individuals or of certain communities built in a relative autonomous way with regard to the regime, were reduced to the fairly improbable choice of the house, and to minimal adjustments of the latter or of the places that were or could be appropriated. Finally, what seems to be characteristic of all those transformations, is their hidden character, the semi-clandestine space individualisation and grabbing. We already note an opposition between state-geared public space, in principle, only used by the population, and the private or appropriated territories, as intimate and as isolated as possible, in which individuals or social groups could assume a certain identity.

The Transition Town. An Archipelago of Individual Territories

The fall of the regime equated to the disappearance of absolute control and to the explosion of urban life, with an intensity proportional to the paralysis characteristic of the previous period. The number of the constructions drastically decreased as compared to the socialist epoch and the state came to play practically no role in the request and execution of those buildings. If the number of new constructions with permanent character is still a reduced one, space transformation and grabbing tried to compensate for everything that had not been possible before.

Considering the great ensembles of blocks of flats, the types of previously mentioned space adjustments continued, maybe with a slight regression of planning and maintenance of collective ?gardens?. In exchange, the transformations brought to private spaces and the overlapping on ?everybody?s? space of some territories with precise functions (the temporary commerce in kiosks and on stands, garage rows, etc.) knew a sweeping development. The urban reflexes frozen for the past 50 years started to surface again, even if in a disconcerting manner. Practically determined only by the rules of profitability and lacking any type of planning, the location of temporary commercial units re-actualises the type of animated traditional commercial street, with a continuous front (made up of kiosks and stands in this case, it?s true), unfolding an orgy of signs and colours, permanently developing and adapting. In fact, similar to the block of the socialist period, the metallic kiosk ? the expression of belated rebirth of a Romanian capitalism -came to be one of the most representative symbols of the transition period.

As a matter of fact, it is the commerce and the services that most prominently contribute to the changing of image of the urban space. The privatisation of already-existent commercial spaces, the construction of new ones and of the complexes of office buildings is complemented by the introduction of these very functions in the already-existent space. The rigid uniformity and coherence of the broad arteries of blocks (including Ceauşescu?s city) are constantly perverted by the new individual intrusions, from the invasion of the signs and of the neon signs to the exterior expression of new destinations through ?steel and glass? masks placed over the already existent facades.