The Housing Question at the Intersection of Urban Planning and Housing Policies. The Case of Romania

Abstract

In international housing studies literature, housing policies and urban planning are rarely discussed concurrently, and such an approach is absent from the analysis of housing regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. My article, therefore, contributes to this field of study in both senses. It examines the changing relationship between planning and housing as a key pillar of the transformation of state socialism to neoliberal capitalism, concentrating on the role of the state in supporting housing regimes through its (de)planning practices. Two research projects compiled the analysed statistics, legislation, development strategies, and interviews with representatives of city halls and real estate agencies. Following a discussion of the article's contribution to the existing literature on housing studies, I describe the alteration of planning and housing policies in Romania as part of political economy transformations. The third section discusses these changes at the local level, in a regional magnet and competitive city. The theoretical contribution of the article is finetuned in the section discussing three aspects of the housing question and its inbuilt inequalities in capitalism. The conclusion provides a synthetic description of the changing relationship between urban planning and housing policies in the context of regime change in Romania.