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The industrial development policy focusing on heavy industry, mainly the steel and machine-construction branches, was a characteristic feature of the socialist-type political systems of Eastern Europe. Its notable consequence for the system of human settlements translated into forcible urbanisation, but only insofar as quantity was concerned (artificial multiplication of towns and of the town population). As industrial units set up, some villages, functioning as dormitories, would be turned into towns: other would be integrated into the urban administrative territory; on the other hand, some dominantly rural residential districts would be attached to the town and a new type of settlements, connected with the construction of big industrial estates, would be built on empty terrain. As a result, a new type of town-integrated settlements would emerge, but the quality of their urban-type infrastructure falls far below that of traditional centres. Their individual character is marked by a fluctuating evolution, in the majority of cases much closer to countryside, that is, decreasing population and growing vulnerability connected with the units they had been engendered by. Considering the foregoing, we could say that these settlements, now part of the town, represent a distinct, intermediary category between the urban and the rural system and should be designated as such. The state capital determines a specific organisation of the state territory, as materialised in a certain pattern of communication routes and a specific layout of the other urban nuclei with macro-territorial functions. Bucharest’s peripheral position within the national territory calls for the decentralisation of its functions concomitantly with remote regional metropoles becoming more important as spatial structuring nuclei. Bucharest’s high degree of hypertrophy compared to the second city in the urban hierarchy, together with its distinct position within the Romanian urban system, asked for a distinctive organisation of its built-in area as early as the beginning of the 20-th century.

This paper intends to delve deeply into the current understanding of the ways in which the transition from a central-based economy to an economy relying on free competition has led to changes in the big urban centers, bringing about a change in the relationships with the suburban areas. The authors take into account the high population density, the lack of space, and the elevated price of land within the big cities, which leads to urban functions migrating beyond the administrative boundaries, thus favoring the process of suburbanization. Given the context, commercial forces shift, migrating from the center to the urban peripheries or even outside them. This research is based on a comprehensive process of participative investigation (2012–2022) in Bucharest, Romania’s capital city. The research relies on field investigation, statistical and quantitative analyses and bibliographical sources. The conclusions rely primarily on the idea that political changes cannot be separated from economic, cultural and environmental ones, highlighting globalizing flows and the development of big cities. Industrial activities, strongly developed within a central-based economy, have significantly declined, which is partly compensated for by the development of the tertiary sector and, in particular, of commercial services leading to a functional reconversion of the urban peripheries and of suburban areas. The conclusions suggest that it is very important to be highly careful regarding the dilemmas and challenges ensuing from uncontrolled urban growth; therefore, several measures of urban planning should be taken with a view to achieving a better cooperation between urban stakeholders and those from the metropolitan areas so as to attain some common objectives in infrastructure in order to reach an integrated regional development.

The assessment of the socio-economic disparities at the regional level is one of the priority development topics. In particular, in formerly socialistic-planned countries, the development driven by the transition period, the accession to the European Union and the economic crisis, the regional disparities are present. The main aim of the research has been to identify the most competitive and the most cohesive Development Regions in Romania by computing, mapping and analysing two secondary indices (Territorial Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion). Overall, the investigation shows that economic performance is more consolidated in central and western regions based on their mature and innovative industries, better-developed services and urbanisation/suburbanisation processes, while the eastern and southern development regions, with predominantly rural traits, experienced a significant industrial decline and social deprivation. The most competitive Development Region is Bucharest-Ilfov, given the advantage conferred by Bucharest Capital City, the main economic and social polarising centre in Romania. For reducing regional disparities, the Cohesion Policy should allocate increased funds for countries with least developed regions. The study provides the result of quantitative and qualitative analysis on the regional-level territorial disparities in Romania that could easily be considered as guidelines in the decision-making process while trying to achieve the competitiveness and cohesion goals.

Since 1990s, many Chinese immigrants have come to Romania and they are numbering, nowadays, 2 017 people (83% of the total legal Chinese residents live in urban areas). The aim of this paper is to analyze the territorial, economic and socio-cultural hallmarks of the Chinese minority established in the Romanian urban areas. To meet this objective, both qualitative (interviews and observations) and quantitative (selecting, structuring and valorizing the statistical raw data) methods were used. This study is important due to its multi-territorial levels approach and to its results (e.g. revealing that the economic hallmark influences and shapes the territorial traces of the Chinese minority, identifying the Chinese children as being a sort of ”driving force” which would facilitate the social and linguistic integration of the Chinese minority into the Romanian society) which could support and suggest new topics for the geographical research.

This article intends to outline the correlation between territorial planning policies and the urban physiognomy against the historical and geopolitical background specific to Central and Eastern Europe, in general, and to Romania, in particular. A representative case-study is Bucharest-City. From a historical perspective, analysing this correlation allows individualising Romania’s Capital-city by six “architectural layers” with a homogeneous physiognomy and historically attested, which emerged and evolved in the geopolitical circumstances specific to certain mediaeval periods and influences. When the Romanian traditional architecture suffered by Turkish and Greek influences, as well as French ones (end of the 19th cent.-early 20th cent.). In the interwar period it was the American, the Soviet (1950-1960), the North-Korean (1980s) and contemporary (as of 1990) influences, globalising fluxes and the generalisation of Western architectural models being quite obvious.

Urban development represents a permanent challenge for space organization in large cities. Space organization is to be achieved by observing the homogeneity and specificity of dwelling cores (urban quarters) as premises for urban structure functionality and viability. The administrative boundaries should overlap discontinuity areas in the city, which cause divergent population flows. The radial-concentric type morphostructure of Bucharest, Romania’s capital-city, is based on the sectorial model of six administrative sectors, in this case. Each sector has both central and peripheral zones, with sharper inter-sectorial than intra-sectorial disparities. Massive industrialization and urbanization in the socialist period led to the development of the housing stock and the individualization of quarter centers as secondary polarization cores in the city. This situation calls for revisiting the current administrative boundaries in the light of city discontinuities and establishing some multicore sectors by encompassing homogeneous quarters in terms of functionality, specificity, and social-urbanistic problems, so that administrative and local development policies could better match the concrete situations on the ground.

Concentrating incomes in large cities has encouraged the development of specialist services and the opening of big commercial units. The downfall of ideological barriers east of the former Iron Curtain made global culture combine with endemic sub-cultures, influenced by the living standard. The only limitation of this process appears to be social segregation which restricts demand and creates preferential segments of users. In Romania, financial segregation is directly reflected in the commercial investment made in Bucharest and in the large cities, mostly in the centre and western part of the country. The paper analyses the correlation of financial and commercial services, as well as their location and dispersion strategies at the level of the Romanian urban system.

The structural changes brought about by the collapse of the communist system also included the reconfiguration of social memory, so that future generations have a more objective imagining of the impact of the communist period on the societies from Central and Eastern Europe. In this view, the depoliticization of recent history is a top priority. The present study aims to highlight the way in which the schoolbooks in Romania bring into the memory of the young generation a strictly secret episode in recent (pre-1990) history: anti-communist dissent. Two categories of methods were used: researching the data and information contained in history textbooks and other bibliographic sources on anti-communist dissent in Romania in the overall socio-political context of that era; and assessing—with the help of a set of surveys—the degree of assimilation by young people in Romania of the knowledge about communism conveyed through textbooks. Research points to the conclusion that the Romanian curriculum and textbooks provide an objective picture of the communist period in this country, but young people’s perception of communism in general and of Romanian communism in particular tends to be distorted by poor education, poverty and surrounding mentalities rooted in that period.

The paper highlights the impact of excessive industrialization during the centralized economy era on urban spatial identity, as well as the disruption of this identity through political-administrative decisions, a phenomenon characteristic of the Central and Eastern European region during the era of centralized economies. The tendency to rebalance urban territorial systems is achieved through deindustrialization, together with reindustrialization and tertiarization. All these changes affect functionality, physiognomy as well as urban culture, and can be quantified through the changes in the memory of places. Urban toponyms related to industrialization are disappearing and are replaced by toponyms that illustrate the historical past of the city and, in general, its spatial identity. The paper aims to contribute to the development of research on the impact of oversized industrialization on the memory of places, in the context of the transition from industrial to service-based economies, a process that affected the states of the former Communist Bloc after 1990. Based on bibliographic sources and field research conducted between 2008 and 2020 in two cities in Romania (Bucharest, the country’s capital, and Galați, the largest river and seaport and the main centre of the steel industry in the country), we have evaluated quantitatively these changes with the help of indices resulting from the toponymic changes resulting from these processes. The study shows that the functional disturbances due to the oversized industrialization that characterized the communist period only managed to a small extent to affect the correlation between the spatial identity of the two cities and their toponymy.

In Romania, managing and recycling household garbage is one of the least performing systems in the European Union. Numerous waste dumping sites are unconformable to European standards, besides there is little garbage recycling. This paper makes a complex waste management analysis of the Romanian Danube riparian towns subjected to strong human pressure; this sector is also of great European interest for the protection of its biodiversity. The main dysfunctions of garbage dumping, the price asked by scavenging services, the steps taken for the ecological management of waste dumping sites in conformity with EU norms and better waste recycling, as well as future measures are also discussed in this paper.

Having in view the low absorption of European funds, it is extremely necessary to have a regional administrative system put in place. The present paper, based on a many-sided critical study of functional relations among human settlements, offers a viable alternative to current controversies concerning Romania’s administrative- territorial organization. Proceeding from regional, county and local polarization cores, a four-level type of regional administration has been devised, namely, the region, the county, the small rural district (Rom. plasă) and the town/commune, among which clear-cut hierarchical relations of decentralization and concentration of services are to be established. What has emerged is a number of eleven administrative- territorial structures worth being vested with regional administrative status. These structures are based on the historical regions developed over time as homogeneous mental and functional spaces.

The profound economic and social changes that took place during the period of transition from a central-based economy to the market system have deeply marked the evolution of industrial towns, particularly those targeted for heavy industry development between 1950 and 1989. The present paper analyses this model of urban evolution affected by the interference of the political-ideological factor. Three towns, Galaţi, Târgovişte and Oţelu Roşu, in which a strong iron-and-steel industry was planted, have been taken into the study. Galaţi – a large town with complex functions, a regional and crossborder polarization center, was singled out for this type of industry by political decision within the context of the industrialization drive of the 1950s; Târgovişte – an old middle urban center, was pushed into the iron-and-steel route in the 1970-1980 decade. Oţelu Roşu – a small town, has a traditional iron-and-steel industry based on local raw material resources. Relying on historical documents, bibliographical sources and field work, the author correlates urban development evolutions with the industrialization policies, highlighting the causes that have led to the present decline of these towns and the challenges facing the local authorities in revitalizing them in a sustainable manner.

The functional typology of human settlements is shaped, among others, by their political-administrative function. Its distinctive place is determined by subjective factors, such as the political-administrative decisions, which have changed the course of some settlements to the benefit of others, or reverted them from their normal, natural evolution. That means outside involvement in space organization to the detriment of self-organization, the latter being the outcome of the permanent tendency of territorial systems to rebalance from exogenous factors-induced dysfunctions. Lately, the country’s territorial-administrative organization has been steadily challenged years over the past few based either on the 1925 administrative map, or on the disparities in the structure of the present counties and the economic and social fluxes going on at the local level of the settlements system. In view of the above, we have attempted to work out an optimal model for the administrative organization of Romania’s territory by proceeding from the distance between communal seats and the town towards which they gravitate. The latter’s capacity for discharging an administrative function, and the relations of subordination or competition amongst these towns in also discussed.

The fall of the communist regime and the demise of the bipolar political order have been factors for the development of globalizing connections on the levels of the urban systems in Central and East-European states. The main social impact of this complex phenomenon is the expansion of the diffusion area for the products of global consumerism, which involves the development and the diversification of commercial services. Their localization is still a direct consequence of financial segregation; the determining agent for the degree of penetration of global consumer goods at a local level is the localization of banking investments. Considering this context, this article is correlatively analyzing localization and dispersion factors for financial (banks and banking units) and commercial services (malls, international networks of hyper- and supermarkets, restaurants etc.), having as case studies the Romanian urban system at a larger scale and its capital city at a micro scale.