Chapter 1 of the volume puts the issues addressed in our volume in a comparative frame to establish to what extent we are dealing with a global, a European, a CEE, or a uniquely Romanian story.
The analyzed Romanian cases display a combination of “common trends” (shift to capitalize on land, capital switching to real estate, and entrepreneurial cities) and the rapid shift from socialism to capitalism. In particular, this chapter discusses how financialization, the wall of money, and pension fund capitalism have affected real estate development in Romania. The evolutions of commercial real estate markets in CEE show a finance-supply-driven development, while the shopping centers become not only the face of capitalist transition but also the spatial fix in which institutional capital descends into CEE countries like Romania. The author notes that the “lumpengeography” of deindustrialized land in Romania becomes a reserve space to be redeveloped, a golden opportunity for global pension fund capitalism.