Changes in the demographic size and functional structure of Romania’s towns (1966-2002)

Like in the other Central-European countries, Romania’s industrial development model over 1950- 1989, focused on the accelerated and extensive socialist-type industrialisation, explosive urbanisation and the implementation of urban and rural planning schemes. It was a stage in which the national urban system expanded and consolidated. It might be said that the aim of post-war industrialisation and urbanisation was largely attained by a gradual transition from the traditional rural-agrarian society to the urban-industrial society of the 1990s. It was a stagewise evolution that took on different forms, had a dynamics of its own, and developed sociocultural particularities in the course of urbanisation. After 1989, reflected the urban system underwent a deep-going restructuring process that the country’s socio-political changes; urbanisation itself acquring new scope and breadth. This new stage of transition from the industrial to the services town-type mirrored the country’s socio-political transition. The industrial function preserved its importance even more than in the economically developed West European states, modern industry and technology being expected to provide the Romanian urban system a development that would enable it to integrate into the town system of Europe. The urban system is undergoing a process of restructuring now, the urban phenomenon acquiring new characteristics and dimensions. The industrial city – the representative type of urban settlement, is to be gradually replaced by the polifunctional and services town, as part of the country’s economic and social-political development targets for the beginning of the third millennium