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Housing inequalities in Bucharest: shallow changes in hesitant transition

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Abstract

Much has been said, yet little remains known, about the impacts of the changes associated with post-socialist transition on housing inequalities in metropolitan Central and Eastern Europe. To some extent, this depends on the scarcity of ‘hard evidence’ about the socialist epoch against which the subsequent developments may be gauged. Based on a case study of Bucharest, the Romanian capital and one of the region’s major cities, this study investigates various lines of housing inequality using data from a 20 % sample of the national censuses of 1992 and 2002. With only minor changes having taken place since the revolutionary events of late 1989, the year 1992 provides an accurate picture of the housing inequalities inherited from the socialist epoch, whereas the new societal order had largely been established by 2002. We use linear regression and binary logistic regression modeling to identify the factors that predict living space and level of facilities. The results suggest that the first decade of transition did not exert any major influences on the housing inequalities inherited from socialism, with the exception of notable improvements at the very top of the social pyramid. This finding is at odds with the literature that highlights the (suggested) effects of socio-economic polarization on the residential structure of cities after socialism. However, the results from 1992 indicate that housing was segmented along socio-economic lines already under socialism, and perhaps more so than one would have expected in the light of the literature on housing inequalities during this period.

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Notes

  1. Because of the similarities between the Romanian and Soviet housing systems under socialism, this literature review pays particular attention to the Soviet experience.

  2. These data are freely obtainable from the Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International: Version 6.2 (Machine-readable database). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2013.

  3. The denomination used in the census materials is ‘Gypsies’; we prefer using ‘Roma’ because of the pejorative tint associated with the former term.

  4. The values of the dependent variable in the OLS models are expressed as the natural logarithm of the original value (ln). The reason for this transformation is that the dependent variable in OLS models should approximate normal distribution. In our case, the distribution of the original values of the dependent variable was skewed. The standard interpretation of coefficients in a regression analysis is that a one-unit change in the independent variable results in a respective regression coefficient change in the expected value of the dependent variable while all the predictors are held constant. Interpreting a log-transformed variable can be done this way; however, for greater clarity, such coefficients are routinely interpreted in terms of percentage change. In models where the dependent variable has been log-transformed and the predictors have not, the format for interpretation is that the dependent variable changes by 100*(coefficient) percent for a one-unit increase in the independent variable, all other variables being held constant.

  5. The most common variable employed in studies on housing inequalities in the Western city is the value and/or costs of a housing unit (cf. Krivo and Kaufman 2004). Unfortunately, the Romanian censuses do not include such information. As fully equipped apartment blocks are the most common residential building type in Bucharest, we set a somewhat high threshold in our housing facilities index in order to distinguish between high and low quality housing.

  6. The relationship between age and floor space per capita was not linear. We thus included age as a quadratic function, following what appears to be a standard procedure in predicting housing equity in the former socialist city (Bodnár and Böröcz 1998; Logan et al. 1999; Huang and Jiang 2009).

  7. Housing completed between 1990 and 2002 constitutes 8.7 % of the total number of dwellings in the city. With the exception of some low-quality structures built in peripheral areas, most of these 'new' buildings are probably socialist structures completed after 1990 (such as many of the apartment blocks present in Ceauşescu’s monumental complex surrounding the Palace of the People. In other words, little had changed in the early years of transition.

  8. According to the census data, in 1992, 67 percent of Roma households consisted of five or more members, whereas this figure was only 21 % for Romanians. In 2002, the values were of 65 and 16 %, respectively.

  9. Rather than reflecting true increases in available housing, this increase probably reflects the city’s ongoing population shrinkage.

  10. Elsewhere where such policies were implemented, such as in Albania (Sjöberg 1992), this ‘success’ was shadowed by the deviation of migrant flows to the rural surroundings of cities, where living conditions were significantly inferior to those found within urban areas they enclosed.

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Acknowledgments

Michael Gentile thanks Umeå University for supporting this research with a Young Scholar’s Award (karriärbidrag), and Szymon Marcińczak thanks the Łódź University Foundation (Fundacja Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego) for funding in the form of a Young Scholar Award (Nagroda Naukowa Fundacji Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego). We also are grateful for the useful comments provided by two reviewers and by the theme issue’s guest editors.

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Gentile, M., Marcińczak, S. Housing inequalities in Bucharest: shallow changes in hesitant transition. GeoJournal 79, 449–465 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-014-9530-5

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