The urban environment project in the city of Burgas is an exceptional example of collaboration, coordination, and implementation of solutions in favor of a more aesthetic, healthy, and humanely oriented urban setting.
With IPA, Burgas Municipality found a partner whose ideas go beyond the initial assignment of creating a local space and separate streets and succeeded in designing a shared vision for the city and new, more comfortable living conditions for its residents.
The city is a pioneer in introducing several solutions that highlight and reconstruct the entire city area. The project is unique in its scale and in the changes made in such a large territory - the entire Central part of the city and the streets in it, the inter-block spaces in the central area, and the Vazrazhdane district. To create a unified vision and a complete solution for the area, the teams of IPA and Alve Consult on both projects collaborated and coordinated closely.
With the reconstruction projects of the central part of the city and Vazrazhdane district, a new organization of movement was implemented, covering the entire city, which not only introduced a new direction of the streets but also completely revisited the way of mobility. The organization of traffic created for this project was based on the idea of lighter urban traffic in favor of people and moving away from cars as the leader in mobility. For this purpose, we optimized the directionality and expansion of the sidewalks, promoting pedestrian movement and landscaping, the inclusion of bicycle lanes throughout the city, and their optimal connection with public transport.
Other innovative ideas, successfully implemented in Burgas, are the development of a consistent color scheme and the design of individual elements of the urban environment for the neighborhoods as well as the central part of the city. The city is divided into 4 main color zones, which are used in the color of the urban design elements - red for the central, administrative area, blue - for the neighborhoods by the sea, green - for the areas in the east-west direction, and yellow for the areas in the north line - south Thus, the colors, in addition to having an aesthetic function, also serve as additional reference points for location.
Another interesting solution embedded in the traffic organization is the so-called "shared" streets, which make Burgas the first city in Bulgaria to implement this type of transport. All the southeast streets have been transformed to be "shared" - with a single-level surface and suitable for any type of traffic - pedestrian, cycle, or car. Elements of the urban design that limit the entry of cars on the sidewalks are also planned - street lighting, bollards, benches, and signs, all completed according to the specified color scheme.
The introduction of underground garbage collection and the creation of a general scheme for its implementation on the territory of the central part of the city and Vazrazhdane quarter is also a brave and innovative touch.
