De-cityfication: the reality of expanding urban characteristics outside cities, paradoxically leading to un-city-like forms of urbanism.
Interview: Vasile Ernu
Photo: Ștefan Tuchilă (above, detail), Marius Vasile
The latest census has brought a multitude of new data, even new phenomena. One of these phenomena is showing us that our cities are decreasing. You wrote an analysis on Romania’s `de-cityfication`. Where did you start this analysis, and how? In sociology, we have terms such as peri-urbanisation or rurbanization. You have studied these phenomena. What is the difference between them and what you call de-cityfication, and is this different from the urban ruralisation phenomenon?
The Preliminary data of the Census of Population and Housing (RPL 2021) in Romania is indeed showing the deepening of a phenomenon that started over a decade ago: the country’s de-cityfication. While the number of city inhabitants is decreasing (we are mainly concerned with county capitals), the number of inhabitants in their adjacent communes (and, in some cases, cities), is increasing. The phenomenon is widespread at country level, but a few examples are paradigmatic, such as Bucharest’s outskirts, where the population has increased by over 150,000 inhabitants over the last 10 years. In a recent article, we noted and analysed the periurbanization phenomenon happening in Romania, further confirmed by census data. Our argument is that the periurbanization process in Romania is a form of „exploded urbanism”, that is, an expansion of urban characteristics outside the cities’ administrative borders, in forms related to the realities of those cities’ economics. In actual terms, for instance, a city specializing in services will develop a different periurban area when compared to a city specializing in industry or agriculture. Then, periurban areas acquire their own dynamics, but this connection between the city and its periurban area, given by its economic activities and, implicitly, by the nature and dynamics of its workforce, is fundamental. This is, we believe, why the periurbanization phenomenon in Romania cannot be regarded as a de-urbanization one. On the contrary, characteristic urban elements and phenomena (whether imperfect or incipient) are coming into the periurban area from the city and are modelling it.
The concept of de-cityfication seeks to understand this reality of expanding urban characteristics outside cities, paradoxically leading to city-less forms of urbanism. Let us look at Popești-Leordeni, Chiajna or Florești (other similar examples in Romania can also be invoked). In these localities, there is a spectacular rise in the number of inhabitants, in the number of employees, in real estate – all urban characteristics – but without the characteristics of a city. In other words, there are urban constructions without also being cityish. The issue is that what happens in the periurban area (city-less urbanism) seems to also begin to affect cities themselves: a lack of planning, deficient or missing public transport, hyper-densification, lack of public spaces etc.
The continuation of rural characteristics and practices within cities was mostly an issue in the inter-war period (to the extent to which we can speak of urbanization at that time), but also during the Socialist period. Over the last decades, the situation has changed, and we are attempting to analyse it by understanding the peri-urbanization process, simultaneously registering this de-cityfication process.
At the same time, it needs to be said that this process is not homogenous. We are currently working on a text about the contexts where periurbanization does not happen. That is, those cities (usually, county capitals), where there is no periurban growth, or it is completely negligible. Slobozia, Tulcea, Alexandria, Severin are such examples where the population is dwindling both in the urban area, and in the periurban one. What is happening there? Is there something about the area’s economy, or are there other types of pressures?
What is the new contribution of this phenomenon – de-cityfication – and what could its central causes be? Why are our financially strong cities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi, Timisoara) decreasing, and where do people go? If cities such as Cluj and Bucharest see declines of 12 % and, respectively, 9 %, how can we explain that there is an intense construction activity, and sales prices are continually rising?
One reason leading to the decrease in the number of inhabitants in the “large” cities is the increased cost of living. Apartment prices, rent levels, the minimum monthly basket, are all increased here and, considering Romanian wages, the number of people affording to pay such costs is decreasing. Over the last years, the pandemic and then the inflation have accelerated this process of overall increased costs for living in cities (the census reference date is December 1st, 2021).
The general demographic decline also plays an important role. In 2021, there were two deaths for each birth in Romania.
On the other hand, we are also considering the fact that the census-registered population decline might be an administrative illusion. In other words, it is possible that the census might have registered a decline in the population with official residence in the respective cities, rather than an actual decrease of population. One of us (Norbert Petrovici) researched two Cluj-based multinational companies, revealing that approximately 65 % of their employees did not have an officially registered residence in Cluj, although they were living in the city. In large cities such as Bucharest, Cluj, or Timisoara it is possible that the population is rather underestimated. We should therefore stress that, although it seems like we are witnessing a generalized decline of the urban population, in actual terms the population is polarized around magnet regional cities, unequally distributed from a geographical point of view, a phenomenon which is not registered as such due to the fragmentation of space in adjacent communes, cities, and even urban villages.
I have travelled these “new luxury ghettoes”, as I call them, quite a lot, and I’ve been writing about their multitude of issues: such as the disappearance of the public space and the proximity of public infrastructure, for instance. What are the major issues you are seeing for these areas? These issues related to the new settlements must have some effects: what would they be? And are there solutions for them? Is there a deep discontent – from infrastructure to access to resources, etc.? How do you see this conflictual state?
There’s very little luxury in these new ghettoes. In many of them, the level of living is far below that of the so-called “Communist” apartment buildings. This is the opinion of architects and professional researchers and is attested by documentaries such as “Coșmar residence” (Nightmare Residence), which capture the severe living issues in these areas. Until recently, this type of real estate development, which is improper from all points of view, used to be mostly specific for the city outskirts or periurban areas. Now they also tend to become very present in cities as well. Marius Vasile has recently documented (including in visual material) such rather recent neighbourhoods in the heart of Bucharest. Mayor Nicușor Dan’s initiative to suspend the zoning plans until their clarification is praiseworthy from this point of view. But this is just an emergency administrative measure. After 30 years of the cities and their adjacent areas being rather victims to developers and real estate speculators, the solution is, of course, to rethink how we are publicly managing living (if not our entire urban life as such, but we would not ask for the impossible from the very start). From the point of view of comfort, as well as, and especially, as access to housing.
To avoid the curse of speculative urbanization in Romania’s large cities and their neighbouring communes, we should develop legal instruments to build neighbourhoods that could house 20-60 thousand inhabitants. Urban planning at the scale of a city area entails replotting land and creating a suitable street network, saving land for public services and minimum utilities (water, sewage). More importantly, all these need to be built.
Incorporated plots are fragmented, and the ones outside city limits follow the structure and shape of the town’s small-sized agricultural exploitations. It is only possible to avoid speculative urbanism if local public administrations undertake the restructuration of these private plots through their zoning urban plans. But they cannot easily do that, as they risk facing costly trials initiated by landowners. This is why mayors often only resort to the instruments provided by expropriation.
To guarantee the allocation of plots for public services, for instance, schools, and to equip the new neighbourhoods with an appropriate street network, authorities usually prefer expropriation, which can lead to the payment of exorbitant amounts, for instance, EUR 2-4 million for an incorporated hectare necessary to build a school. This method is not efficient when it comes to building neighbourhoods to house 30-50 thousand inhabitants.
In the large cities, the low unemployment rates and the full usage of manual labour resources prevent the subcontracting of large-scale construction projects. Besides, it is necessary to create laws to allow the creation of public utilities companies, owned by public administrations, that should plan and build these new neighbourhoods. They would allow the public administration not to use bids for constructions, but to assign them directly to their own companies, to build a new neighbourhood for 30 thousand inhabitants.
Are any structural changes predicted in this respect?
It seems that the change of the economic development and investment model will end speculative urbanism as we have known it. In the large cities, there are wide unbuilt plots where the former industrial platforms used to be, and they are attractive for direct foreign investment through transnational companies which restructure them for housing. This process is happening at IMGB in Bucharest, at Elba in Timisoara, in Parcul Industrial Nord of Cluj or on the Iasi industrial platform on Chișinăului Street. Over the last decades, speculative urbanism has been mostly practiced with local capital, with the results we are seeing and discussing. The extensive planning of territories by transnational speculative capital will provide a solution to the chaos we’ve seen so far, due to the financial resources available to urbanize these former industrial platforms. It will still be speculative urbanism, but at a different geographical and financial scale.
Do you think that a territorial reorganization, a legislative and territorial revamping, would solve any of these urban dysfunctionalities?
The main aspects of the current territorial-administrative structure date back to 1968. The economic, political, social, and demographic realities which led to it have disappeared. This structure still exists today because no politician or party can afford to upset their local-level source of power and votes: the mayors. Romania has 3,180 mayors (7 in Bucharest alone). Besides them, there are over 40,000 local councilmen, nearly 1,500 county councilmen and 41 presidents of county councils. Therefore, an important number of people having a direct interest for this structure to be preserved. A decrease in the number of these positions would also impact the political parties’ interests, which would then have nothing to promise their members in exchange for their loyalty. Thus, despite the virulent and generalized anti-Communism in the Romanian public space and despite the repeated condemnation of the Ceausescu regime, three decades after its fall, Romania is still functioning based on a model designed back then. The territorial-administrative structure is crucial for how the country works: from how MPs are elected, to how the GDP is reported, to how investment is made etc.
There have been proposals to rethink this model, but they were all left in project stage for the reasons above. A more targeted discussion is perhaps needed, including on the social agent to be called upon to implement this change. For the purposes of this text we suggest, briefly, that the solution is to start from the cities and consolidate them. This would mean greater responsibility granted to mayors, but also added social pressure for complex forms of urban planning. At the same time, it would also mean augmenting some localities. There is no logic in Florești and Cluj being two distinct TAUs, to consider a well-known example. Such a formal expansion of the cities would lead to expanding uniform practices and services (from zoning plans to public transport) and would put an end to (or at least slow down) the de-cityfication process described above.
In this context, it needs to be said that many of Romania’s cities have long ceased to comply with the formal criteria for this statute (and we are not talking only about the number of inhabitants). Others, it is true, never actually complied with those criteria. So, it would take not only an expansion of urbanization, but also an intensification of this process in existing cities.
