From Urbanization to Metropolization; A Case Study of Romania

The metropolitan areas (MA) in Romania, defined as 'intercommunity development association', are legally constituted in the last decade as voluntary partnership between a city and the neighbouring rural and urban settlements no further than 30 km. They are characterized by a specific development process that involves all the components: economic, social, cultural and, mainly, infrastructure. The interdisciplinary research carried on in the Constanța Metropolitan Area revealed the emergence of many new processes involving all the components of this regional system. An extended research would reveal similar evolutions of all the Romanian MAs. Thus, from the demographic point of view this rural-urban fringe experiences a phenomenon previously observed in western societies, the population turnaround. This new demographic behavior determined the increase of the rural population percentage weight in the area, and, consequently, the economic function of the rural settlements, meaning that the predominant agricultural activities are combined with services and, sometimes, industrial activities. The rural communities are also changing, as the proportion of the middle class is growing, and, in some cases, replacing the lower classes (the rural gentrification process). But there is also the migration of the poor urban population looking for some stable income sources offered by the rural subsistence economy. This growing urban-rural migration flow determines the overcrowding of the rural areas and, implicitly, environmental and landscape degradation.