Every time it rains heavily, Bucharest replays the same scenario: streets turn into canals, cars stall in the middle of the water, drains overflow, sidewalks become impassable, and people wade across holding their shoes. The phenomenon is not a surprise but a predictable consequence of the way the city was built, expanded, and neglected.

The city that outgrew its own system

Bucharest’s sewer network was designed in the early 20th century for a city of only a few hundred thousand residents. Today, the capital has over two million inhabitants and an underground infrastructure that has remained, for the most part, the same. In recent decades, urban growth has been chaotic: new residential zones, asphalt poured over old drainage ditches, and buildings that have blocked natural runoff paths.

The sewer system can no longer handle the volume of water that falls in short bursts. In some neighborhoods, it is undersized; in others, it’s clogged from years of neglect and illegal discharges. Add to that the fully paved streets and the disappearance of green, absorbent spaces, and the result is simple: the water has nowhere to go.

The unofficial flood maps

Year after year, the same points become landmarks of urban flooding:

• Șoseaua Iancului, Mihai Bravu, Vatra Luminoasă – old drainage systems with insufficient flow capacity.
• Basarab, Grozăvești, Drumul Taberei – low-lying areas where water accumulates rapidly during heavy rain.
• Pipera, Băneasa, Colentina – newly developed districts with massive expansion but secondary infrastructure built to minimum standards.
• Unirii, Victoriei, and Piața Presei underpasses – true underground basins where water collects within minutes.

Apa Nova reported that, in just one night of heavy rain, Bucharest’s sewer system handled a water flow equivalent to that of the Mureș River. The city isn’t just flooded—it effectively becomes a network of temporary basins, where elevation differences and undersized infrastructure work against it.

Why prevention doesn’t work

In theory, modernization plans exist. In practice, they get lost between institutions. Rehabilitating the sewer system requires complex, expensive, and difficult underground works. Moreover, the lack of an integrated strategy between city halls, Apa Nova, the Streets Administration, and real estate developers leads to fragmented interventions—patches that solve the problem locally but push it downstream.

Each time a torrential rain hits, the authorities speak of “record rainfall.” But records don’t matter when the infrastructure operates at 30–40% of its capacity. Every new layer of asphalt, every improvised parking lot built over green spaces, removes the soil’s natural ability to absorb water. The city has sealed itself.

What’s really missing

Not only infrastructure, but also a culture of prevention. Bucharest doesn’t treat rain as a structural factor but as a passing inconvenience. It lacks:

• Updated, public hydrological risk maps for urban areas;
• Rainwater drainage projects adapted to current climate realities;
• Buffer zones and absorbent green spaces integrated into urban planning;
• A system of continuous maintenance, not just emergency interventions after each flood.

Cities of similar size—Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna—have reconfigured their stormwater drainage systems over the past 15–20 years, combining traditional infrastructure with green solutions: underground reservoirs, parks that absorb excess water, and permeable sidewalks.

Conclusion

Bucharest doesn’t sink because of the rain, but because of the way it was built and managed. Each storm merely exposes an old truth: the city has grown beyond itself, without a plan and without foresight. What we see on the surface—flooded streets, paralyzed traffic, courtyards turned into ponds—is only the symptom. The cause lies underground, in neglected infrastructure, and above it, in postponed decisions.