Bucharest City Hall and the Bucharest Community Foundation announced on Friday, July 31, that they have begun transforming the city’s major northern park, Herăstrău, according to the priorities expressed by nearly 10,000 participants in the public consultation.
The process benefits from private funding worth EUR 900,000 already mobilized by the Bucharest Community Foundation. The first EUR 90,000 will be invested in the studies and expertise required for the regeneration of the park’s green spaces, with the remainder to be directed as the stages are established together with the public administration.
The funds will cover the tree inventory through a TreePlotter-type digital application, the creation of a public inventory, specialized studies, technical and dendrological expertise, assessment of tree health and risk, preparation of the tree management plan, as well as the documentation needed to establish design requirements for future interventions.
The digital tree inventory will be public and accessible both to the administration and citizens and will form the basis of a Green Register dedicated to Old Herăstrău Park. For each tree, GIS location, dendrometric characteristics, health status, and management recommendations will be recorded. Data can be permanently updated by the public administration, and the tool can be gradually expanded to the entire Herăstrău Park, providing a permanent instrument for monitoring and adaptive and sustainable management of tree heritage.
The two partners began working together through a new collaboration model that brings together public administration, the community, specialists and private funders. The new working mechanism allows preparatory stages to begin quickly, independently of the public budget calendar, while maintaining decision-making, control and ownership of the documentation within the public administration.
The Bucharest Community Foundation will finance and contract specialists for the regeneration of green spaces based on specifications agreed with the authorities and experts involved, while the results will be handed over to the Bucharest City Hall and will serve as the basis for future design and construction works.
Meanwhile, the two partners will prepare the administrative framework for major interventions and mobilize the private sector and civil society to attract the financial resources necessary for the subsequent stages of the regeneration process. Private resources will accelerate project preparation without transferring decision-making rights over the park to funders. Control, validation and ownership of documentation will remain the responsibility of the public administration, while intervention solutions and priorities will be defined in collaboration with specialists, funders and community members, in accordance with the principles of the New European Bauhaus.
Going forward, the Bucharest Community Foundation aims to attract funds of up to EUR 10 million from the private sector and civil society for the subsequent intervention plan.
“If we waited for the completion of administrative procedures for landscape design, as well as for securing the lakeside area, we would not have enough speed. That is why I cannot sufficiently emphasize the role of the Bucharest Community Foundation. My role was to be open to collaboration and, together, to create this mechanism through which we can get on track, set things in motion, and accelerate interventions,” said Bucharest mayor Ciprian Ciucu.
Public consultation
The planned works follow a public consultation carried out between May and June 2026, in which nearly half of respondents said that they were dissatisfied with the current state of the park.
Participants’ expectations were very concrete. Modernization of general infrastructure was considered a priority by 83.2% of respondents, while 74.3% indicated the restoration of the natural environment as one of the main intervention directions. Permanent public toilets, more numerous and cleaner, represented the most requested specific measure resulting from the consultation, indicated by 85.5% of respondents. Better lighting at night was desired by 81.4% of respondents, followed by the rehabilitation of paths and paving (77.9%), ensuring functional drinking fountains (68.9%) and improving urban furniture (61.6%).
Restoring the natural environment was equally important. Among the respondents, 78.6% requested more trees and denser vegetation for shade, cooling and air filtration, while 71.2% wanted improved lake water quality, and 56.9% wanted better access to the waterfront. Nearly half of participants mentioned degraded paths and sidewalks among the main complaints, while responses indicate a clear preference for preserving the park’s natural character and avoiding excessive interventions.
(Photo source: press release)
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