Abstract
Metropolitan planning is by far a major trend in the worldwide spatial development landscape for decades. Though metropolitan areas have long been considered to reflect the institutional dimension of urban-rural partnerships, in the last 15 years the concept of Functional Urban Area (FUA) has emerged in connection to the degree of urbanization around cities. FUAs illustrate the economic interdependencies between an urban core and its hinterland, typically determined by commuting patterns or accessibility criteria. According to the OECD’s methodology based on population, density and contiguity, FUAs were defined for Romania’s county capitals (40 cities) as territories where urban development projects could be financed from regional development funds in the framework of the 2014-2020 programming period. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between the defined FUAs (considering their total surface, number of Local Administrative Units, percent of the county occupied by the FUA) and the territorial dynamics in both the urban core and the hinterland (with reference to the demographic and economic profile - population size, number of employees, etc, and, most importantly, the spatial pattern of housing and amenities) for one of the fastest growing urban areas in Romania: Cluj-Napoca. By using a comparative analysis of satellite images between the years 2010 and 2019, we identified the areas around Cluj-Napoca where the demographic and economic growth had the biggest impact. In the end, we chose one of these new residential developments around Cluj-Napoca for a more detailed analysis regarding public service provision and housing quality. The results showcase the spatial impact of the economic development around emerging cities, reflected especially through expanding boundaries of the artificial surface and the development of housing units in the functional urban areas. Considering the fragmented territorial organisation configuration, the current administrative boundaries are no longer able to capture the new functional relationships generated by the real estate dynamics in the last decade. Furthermore, the current planning system has proven to be incapable of providing new residential developments in suburban areas an adequate quality of living, with public services and amenities often lacking. Given these arguments, we support the need to introduce a normative territorial plan at Functional Urban Area level in the Romanian planning system, in order to correlate the spatial development vision of functional areas around Romania’s developing cities. 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.
