- Major Trends in the Evolution of Towns and Cities of in a Post Communist Competitive Environment    1434 kb by    Pascariu, Gabriel & Elisei, Pietro | gabi@urbaplan.ro    Short Outline The paper deals with the design of plans and policies and decision making processes in territorial and urban questions of post-socialist Romania. Abstract During the 4.5 decades of communism and centralised economy, the Romanian urban system has been reshaped according to some principles inspired by the ideology of the time: fast industrialisation, egalitarian development, containment of the built-up areas and collective housing in high density residential areas, building of a new social class of industrial workers. The application of such principles on a very short period of time led to significant disturbances at territorial level and artificial developments, which did not consider the market forces, the social relations, the environmental issues or the role of cultural heritage. During the last two decades of transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one, Romanian towns and cities have suffered significant once more important structural changes. During this last interval the main forces that reshaped the Romanian urban network have been diverse, contradictory and sometime opposed to the previous period: from industrial restructuring to reversed migration from shrinking to chaotic sprawl, accompanied by radical changes of the demographic and behavioural patterns and new forms of urban culture. During this transition process, some urban areas have decayed, others had an oscillatory evolution, whereas some - not many – developed. The European integration and the use of pre-accession and later on of Structural Funds have also played an important role in the transformation of the Romanian urban landscape. After more than two decades, the Romanian towns and cities have winners and losers. The resilience of the Romanian urban structure has been challenged as a whole as well as individually. The paper is focused on describing, analysing and commenting this changes and assessing the perspectives for the short, medium and long term evolution of the urban Romania, emphasising threats but also possible opportunities. Keywords urban network, urban structure, resilience, shrinking, restructuring Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper