Housing dynamics around Romania’s developing cities: the high demand for specific planning instruments in functional urban areas

Miruna Drăghia, Radu-Matei Cocheci and Bogdan Olariu

European Planning Studies, 2024, vol. 32, issue 4, 695-719

Abstract: Metropolitan planning has been a dominant trend in spatial development for decades. In this context, Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) have emerged as a concept to illustrate the economic interdependencies between an urban core and its hinterland, being typically determined by commuting patterns or accessibility criteria. In Romania, FUAs were defined for the county capitals (40 cities) as areas where urban development projects could be financed from regional development funds. This paper analyzes the territorial dynamics in one of Romania's fastest-growing functional urban areas, Cluj-Napoca, using a comparative analysis of satellite images and selected indicators. The results demonstrate the spatial impact of economic development in the past 20 years, revealing expanding boundaries of artificial surface and housing units in FUAs. Unfortunately, the current fragmented territorial configuration is unable to manage the new functional relationships generated by real estate dynamics. Therefore, we support the need to introduce a normative territorial plan at the intercommunity level to correlate the spatial development vision between the main city and its fast-growing suburban areas. Such an instrument will not only support an efficient land-use management and enhanced living conditions, but it will also provide a framework to systematically integrate territorial investments around major cities.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654313.2023.2195886 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:32:y:2024:i:4:p:695-719

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEPS20

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2023.2195886

Access Statistics for this article

European Planning Studies is currently edited by Philip Cooke and Louis Albrechts

More articles in European Planning Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().