New green areas will not be absorbed for industrial use

Green areas safeguard the merging with neighbours

Narodno delo Newspaper

The role of a gateway to the European Union is beyond doubt the most important feature for the future of Varna. The definition “gateway” hardly needs a detailed description, because the city has always had this function in relation to the country. The present-day geopolitical circumstances presume its importance to increase. The trend of this process will surely arise most solidly in the next two decades. The new GCP of Varna includes the forecast for this period. The expected international role of the city is one of the fundamentals of the elaboration. According to the classification of the European cities ESPON Varna has been defined as a European FUA (functional urban area). To compare, we should state that Bourgas and Plovdiv have such statute as well.   Even though, statistically speaking, Varna is the country’s third largest city, the trend is that in the near future it will become the second largest after the capital of Sofia, the Senior Research Scholar D-r Arch. Petko Erev of the National Centre of Territorial Development - Sofia affirms. He is the author of the concept about the connections of Varna on a district level, which is presented in the new GCP.  The concept envisages Varna as an agglomeration establishment, formed as a result of the continuous concentration of economic energy, activities and population. To the west, the municipality of Varna has an agglomeration function in relation to the industrial-production and the transport-harbour activity, and to the north - in relation to tourism. In the first direction Varna has reached its maximum of territorial enlargement, the authors of the new GCP state. The industrial agglomeration with the city as its centre will become denser, but will not expand its territory. This development is also expected to bring the commercial-storage activity up to a leading rank at the production expenses. To this respect the lake of Varna will have a leading part and will become the centre of the process. It is interesting to note that with the expectations for the south side of the lake, it will become an element for another city enlargement as a tourist agglomeration. To this respect, the authors of the new GCP see the holiday system of the Black sea coast as a whole - from Durankulak to Rezovo. The principal aim is to avoid here the tendency of urbanization of the entire coast, and the Plan contains specific decisions safeguarding the so called ‘natural breaks’. In practice, this will guarantee that apart from being a European harbour and a logistic centre, Varna will remain a holiday centre of European scale, as it has been in the last decade.

The flow of cars determines the city influence

The time, it takes to reach Varna by car, characterizes two areas of city influence. The boundary of the first one expands to the areas, from which the city is accessible within half an hour, including Aksakovo, Beloslav, Devnya, Avren, Dolni Chiflik and Balchik. The external area of influence includes the municipalities, which are within an hour’s drive from Varna. According to the authors of the Plan, these are Dobric, Novi Pazar and Shumen, and Obzor to the south. It goes without saying that for this expectation to become true, a clear and steady national politics for the district development are necessary, and above all the advance in communications in it. The highway “Black Sea” has a special significance for this process. It will become the axis of the economic development in the region. The Plan provides for some new industrial areas to be built, where the economic activities, not characteristic for the urban area, will be transferred.

The importance of the small municipalities is growing

The new function of Varna as the Bulgarian gateway to Europe to the east will have a positive effect on the entire region and will increase the significance of the nearby small towns, the new GCP of the municipality envisages. They will play an important role in the preconstruction and the development of the village regions and the enrichment of their functions, which in the past were mainly agricultural, but at present are actively changing. The municipalities with smaller population will become centres of small and medium businesses, the trends analysis show. The ones which are along the coastline will play another important role, and namely will become centres of tourism.

Economic and natural buffers

The establishment of new and more profound relations between Varna and the region does not mean in any way merging or urbanization of the territory in between. According to the elaboration for regional connections in the municipality presented in the new GCP, a couple of buffer zones are differentiated. The first one is of natural origin and is needed to keep the possibility for future development of tourism. The other one refers to the necessity of finding a terrain for the expected new investments. The place of this buffer zone is in the city suburbs, where an international transportation-logistic centre is expected to be located. Its presence is compulsory to guarantee that Varna functions as an eastern gateway to the European Union.