The data provided by the National Statistics Institute are neutral but harsh. Has this country not made any progress in the last twenty years?
Sociologists and economists have all sorts of explanations as to why the statistical data. Every single one of them, though, agrees on one thing: the urbanization is directly connected to the wealth of the people.
Whereas the ‘forced industrialization’ several decades ago, which brought along an increase in urbanization by ten percent per decade is history, is going back to normal stagnation?
An increase in urbanization of less than 1% in twenty years in a country where rural areas’ main feature is poverty.
“That’s not the big issue here (living in a rural area i.e.). The issue here is that people who live in rural areas hardly get any running water, have no centralized heating, no bathrooms. Everything reflects in the living standards, in the health level,” says Professor Marian Preda, PhD, and Dean of the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Bucharest.
Things have changed somewhat in the last twenty years, even though they are not showing in statistics, says Professor Ioan Ianos with the Human and Economic Geography Department with the Faculty of Geography of the University of Bucharest.
The changes are the increase in the number of modern buildings with city-like amenities – access to the sewer system and bathrooms, especially around cities.
At the same time, political whims are to blame in most cases for localities turned into cities without possessing any of the qualities pertaining to a city in the past two decades, Professor Ianos says.
Hence the illusion that urbanization has expanded, even though a little (statistics record people as living in rural or urban areas depending on the territorial administrative division where they live and not the amenities they have available to go into one category or another).
‘Civilization’ has been historically associated with cities. The term ‘civilization’ (now understood to mean a collection of human experiences) comes from the Latin ‘civis’ – citizen, dweller of a ‘civitas’ – a city. ‘Urban’ (from Latin ‘urbanus’) means of, relating to, characteristic to a city.
Whereas the French Revolution gave new meaning to the ‘citizen’ term, the history of economy cannot ignore the fact that the wealth and development of a specific country or region have progressed around urban centers even stronger since the industrial revolution.
Can one ignore the general rule looking at the National Statistics Institute data?
“This [connection between urbanization and wealth] is correct to a certain extent. Yet we need to take a few more things into account here. Romania has not created jobs in the industry since 1990, on the contrary many were lost,” explains Professor Bogdan Murgescu with the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, who specializes in economic history.
“This did not encourage migration to urban centers but a migration to return (to rural areas i.e.), though this is only part of the story. The second part of the story is that people somewhat well off built homes outside urban areas and are now registered as living in rural areas.”
Can this particular type of somewhat well off people who built homes in rural areas have kept the urban to rural ratio unchanged since 1990?
Not completely, says Professor Murgescu.
“Population aging and mortality should have reversed this ratio and put rural areas in the lead. This is not happening, which is surprising to me. We need to go over it with a fine-toothed comb, which takes a lot of work and should show us what is actually going on.”
The almost unchanged urban/rural ratio, at least in statistics, is because of several causes, believes Professor Marian Preda and one of them is the home ownership, the so-called ‘domicile’ (permanent home) of a citizen.
In Romania, 90% of homes are owned by the people who live there, which is one of the highest percentages in Europe (after 1990, the state-owned apartments in cities were sold to their tenants and the homes in rural areas were already owned by those who lived there).
This means population hardly appears to be moving in statistics. As people are poor, it is hard for them to leave behind a home they own, wherever that might be, and rent a place in a different city. Their reluctance is also due to the scarcity of well-paying jobs in cities that would allow them to pay the rent and still have some money left to spend.
After 1990, the industry declined and people who had come from rural areas to cities went back home, either because they retired and left their homes to the children or because they lost their jobs and living in a village is less expensive.
There are also those who work in cities especially in the construction industry but their permanent home is in the villages they came from.
Then there are also those who left to work abroad (from both cities and villages in almost equal proportion) and no one removed them from records, where they still show as living in rural or urban areas, lending weight, apparently, to the idea that the population is hardly mobile.
Moreover, the cities have not expanded so as to encompass the surrounding areas, even though many residential complexes built there are no different from those in a city, but are still registered as being in rural areas.
Therefore, says Professor Preda, the cities are no longer offering as many jobs as they used to and there is not much space left for construction. It would not be such a big thing if everything were a matter of statistics.
The serious issue here is that what is called rural in Romania disguises a harsh reality: the chronic poverty. Difficult living conditions especially in southern and eastern Romania. Bran-Moeciu (central Romania, a holiday destination) and Mogosoaia (north of Bucharest) are rural areas but most rural communities are struggling with poverty.
“A country develops starting from industrial districts. Industrial districts in urban agglomerations attract people, attract workforce and contribute to development. There haven’t been any such conditions in Romania after 1990, and many people left especially from cities relying on a single industry,” Preda explains.
“It is almost impossible to keep living in a city if you don’t have a job or own a home. You can do it in a rural area despite the subsistence economy. Which is why the poor part of Romania found greater support in rural areas.”
If that is how things are, it is clear why Romania is poor and will continue to be: there are no urban agglomerations with powerful industry to attract rural workforce. And urban agglomerations cannot benefit from the contribution of the rural workforce that would help them expand, build, develop and thrive. The high percentage of people living in rural areas only shows the extent of poverty with little chance of being defeated.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)