The conclusion of our volume reconnects its three analytical parts by exposing how local, national, and global interfaces triggered the capitalist transformations of Romania, uncovering the varieties of the deindustrialization–financialization nexus in real estate, and describing how real estate investments advanced across second- and third-tier cities. Get access The chapter highlights the contributions of the …
Monthly Archives: December 2024
Chapter 10. The political economy of city rebranding. Brașov, from an industrial center to the “El Dorado” of real estate development [Enikő Vincze]
Addressing city branding from a political economy perspective, Chapter 10 of the volume describes the changing role of industry in the economy of Brașov, a second-tier city in central Romania. Get access It also reveals the local and foreign actors and the trends of real estate development as a business that is growing upon the …
Chapter 9. Urban regeneration and transnational capital investments in Reșița brownfields. From the “city of fire” to the “boutique city” [Sorin Gog]
Chapter 9 of the volume explores how brownfields in a third-tier city in the Western Development Region of Romania (Reșița) became an important issue due to both deindustrialization and new investments. Get access The author examines the role of the entrepreneurial local administration in encouraging large residential and retail real estate development in a locality …
Chapter 8. The pressure of inter-urban competition on entrepreneurial governance aspirations. The case of Craiova [Ioana Vlad]
Chapter 8 of the volume analyzes the evolution of urban development aspirations of local actors in a second-tier city from southeast Romania (Craiova) under the influence of inter-urban competition. Get access In the context of the general post-socialist turn toward urban entrepreneurialism, the author describes the pressure for “catching-up” under circumstances of increasing local administrative …
Chapter 7. Challenged by real estate-driven development. The urban growth machine in Cluj [Marina Mironica]
Chapter 7 of the volume takes a close look at the urban growth machine of Cluj-Napoca, emerging as a post-industrial “model city” based on economic restructuring toward high-value-added service sectors and investments in real estate. Get access The local governing structures that unify pluralistic interests in the city under the umbrella of growth politics, the …
Chapter 6. Spatial planning at the fringes. Land fragmentation and sprawling in Bragadiru [Mihail Sandu-Dumitriu]
Chapter 6 completes the volume’s main focus on former industrial platforms in relation to real estate development with an analysis of the dismantlement of socialist agricultural cooperatives and the shift from common (productive) to individual (real estate) land use facilitated by property restitution. Get access The author describes how the changes in the national spatial …
Chapter 5. Coal-based energy urbanization and real estate development patterns in Târgu Jiu [George Iulian Zamfir]
Chapter 5 of the volume focuses on the capital of Gorj County from the South-West Oltenia Development Region, contrasting with the other cities studied in our book. Get access While in most of them, the integration of industrial platforms in real estate development cycles has increased after the financial crisis—and, in some of these localities, …
Chapter 4. Putting “the fix” in the “spatial fix”. Restructuring class alliances and financialized real estate in the city of Bârlad [Ioana Florea, Livia Pancu, Florin Bobu]
Chapter 4 of the volume demonstrates how real estate development advances in a third-tier city in northeastern Romania (Bârlad) as a result of a dialectical move between de-contextualization and re-contextualization. Get access We trace the local histories of privatization, deindustrialization, and restructuring of class dynamics in the decades after 1990, which contributed to the appearance …
Chapter 3. De-risking in a context of uneven development and deindustrialized spaces. The advancement and financialization of real estate as business in Romania [Ioana Florea & Enikő Vincze]
This is an Open Access chapter of the volume Uneven Real Estate Development in Romania at the Intersection of Deindustrialization and Financialization, edited by Enikő Vincze, Ioana Florea, Manuel B. Aalbers (Routledge, first published 2024). The chapter highlights that, in the wake of the 1990 regime change, Romanian state institutions backed up by European Union regulations supported …
Chapter 2. The winding road of privatization. A path for real estate development into former state socialist economies [Enikő Vincze, Ioana Vlad ]
Chapter 2 of the volume analyzes the political economy of privatization in connection with changing industrial relations, showing how these processes acted as the first step in the state’s de-risking of real estate development. Get access The authors examine how, under the pressure of international organizations, the Romanian state facilitated primitive capital accumulation through massive …