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Abstract
This paper discusses recent housing developments in Cluj, a secondary city in Romania. The city is at a point in its development where it is being affected by forces initiated by Romania's accession to the EU. While new housing provision is largely dominated by the private sector, public housing policies are also taking advantage of the new opportunities provided by membership of the EU.
Notes
1. A division based on historical regions would necessarily have been based on ethnic divisions, and ethnic separatism was always considered a major threat; thus this was carefully avoided. Nor does the regional division represent a new territorial cut; it is merely the insertion of an intermediary administrative level between the strong national centralised administration and the (too small and too many, in European terms) local counties (judete). The north-west region merges six such counties.
2. Until 2005, about 50% of the foreign capital invested in Cluj came from Hungary (Chamber of Commerce and Industry Cluj Citation2005).
3. In terms of banking, Cluj is the second ‘bank-city’ in Romania, with over 30 banks represented, and contains the only Romanian bank that has its headquarters based outside Bucharest. In a list of the top 15 most dynamic Romanian cities made by the economic review Capital for the year October 2006 to September 2007, Cluj was placed second, after Bucharest (Amariei Citation2007).
4. The latest ‘Strategy of Development’ posted on the web site of the City Hall (dated 6 December 2006) comes up with the figure of ‘over 100,000 students in the academic year 2006–2007’. The first three priorities stated by this city strategy for the future are: 1) higher education; 2) software and IT; 3) research (Cluj-Napoca City Hall 2006).
5. Students established 1157 new firms in Cluj between 2003 and 2007, with a total turnover of 17.7 million lei (about Ä5.5 million). In terms of student business, Cluj is second in Romania after Bucharest, but Bucharest has only 1217 student firms – according to Dorin Deac, the director of ORC – Oficiul Registrului Comertului Cluj/Chamber of Commerce, cited by Radu (Citation2007).
6. There were 192,810 students enrolled in Romania in 1990–1991 and 716,464 (3.71 times more) in 2005–2006 (INS Citation2006).
7. Personal communication (interview) with A. Iancu, former chief architect of Cluj (2005–2007), November 2007.
8. In 1948, there were 47,321 Romanians and 67,977 Hungarians in Cluj; in 1992, there were 248,572 Romanians and 74,871 Hungarians (i.e. Romanians comprised 40% of the population in 1948 and 75% in 1992); by 1970, 40% of employees were industrial workers (Brubaker et al. Citation2006, table 31 and pp. 111–113).
9. The programme was launched at the beginning of 2006. Government funds cover the entire cost of the project and one-third of the construction costs. The local council covers one-third, and the owners must provide another third themselves. The costs are estimated at about Ä500–1500 for each owners’ association. About 1700 socialist collective housing buildings are the target in Cluj. Of these, 110 joined the programme by the end of 2007; the works are planned to begin in 2008 (author interview with Urbanism Department, Cluj‐Napoca City Hall, December 2007).
10. Between 1992 and 2003, in the entire county (judet) of Cluj, there were only 6091 new residential units built (compared with 358,298 in Romania); about 80% of these were self-build family houses.
11. The number of permits for family houses, for instance, increased from 199 in 2004 to 694 in 2006; the Urbanism Department of the city hall is overwhelmed. It has about 5000 unanswered applications for construction permits: 3000 from 2006 and 2000 from 2007. There were only 25–30 new applications per month in 2004, compared with 120–130 in 2007 (author interview with Urbanism Department, Cluj-Napoca City Hall, December 2007).
12. The absolute figures show more new apartments than new houses; for instance, in 2006 the city hall authorised 694 new family houses and 142 blocks of flats comprising 1458 apartments; in the first five months of 2007, the figures were 152 non-collective residential units, 55 collective blocks comprising 714 apartments (author interview with Urbanism Department, Cluj City Hall, December 2007).
13. The east side, where the airport is also located, is traditionally the least valued side of the city, with predominantly industrial land; but even here, Apahida has reached a tipping point where land is already too expensive for new industrial developments, and began attracting residential developments instead. The industrial pole has now been pushed further eastward, to Jucu, a village 18 km north-east from Cluj, where the Nokia Village has been under development since 2007. Land was sold at Ä5–7/m2 in Jucu before Nokia began its development; subsequent to that, it increased to Ä40/m2.
14. According to the Romanian law of housing (no. 114/1999), social housing is strictly defined as being that allocated with subsidised rents to ‘social cases’.
15. The ANL project in Floresti (‘Cetatea Fetei’) was initially planned for 500 apartments to rent and 500 houses to be sold on mortgage credit. The first 200 apartments were finished in 2005 (ANL Citation2007).
16. In the whole of Romania, the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Housing reported only about 3000 units in 2007: 2703 for young people and 385 social housing units; in 2005–2006, 6208 apartments for young people and 1069 social housing units were built; a new programme for the tenants evacuated from the nationalised houses that were returned to their previous owners began in 2007, with projects for 2452 apartments – according to a press conference of the minister Laszlo Borbely (MIE Citation2007a).
17. The government decision to sell the ANL rented apartments, at the inventory price (adjusted to the current day prices), to the sitting tenants, was taken in August 2007; in Romania, this concerns a little more than 2000 apartments (MIE Citation2007b).
18. 15,000 m2 in the area named ‘Oser/Oszer’ (the place of the old flea market), str. Timisului/Blajului/Rodnei; it includes education facilities (playgrounds and kindergarten) and green spaces along the river Somes (see note 7).
19. The Ministry of Transportation, Constructions and Tourism displayed on its former internet site the figure of only 921 social housing units built in the period 2001–2005 (MT Citation2005).
20. The US-based ‘Habitat for Humanity’; the apartments are allocated to families with no more than three members; the selection criteria include, beside urgent need of a decent home, number of hours of volunteer work and a reliable income; finally, as cheap as it is – with leasehold land, donated materials, volunteer work and no-interest mortgage loans – the house itself is not actually ‘subsidised’ (Habitat for Humanity Cluj Citation2007).
21. In Borhanci, about 4 km from the city limit; the contract was first signed in 1999, but the administration at that time also promised to pay the costs of the infrastructure on the 500,000 m2 (50 ha) from its own budget (this would have been the entire city hall budget for a year); the contract was renegotiated in 2006 by the new administration, and the private developer now has to provide all infrastructure, including the 14 ha that are for the council's benefit. The development on the rest of 36-ha site will comprise 1000–1200 units, apartments and houses. Of these units, 10% will be given to the city council.
22. The first to be finished will be 384 council apartments. The land is 203 ha. The complex will accommodate about 16,000 inhabitants. The density will be of 78 inhabitants per hectare (for comparison, Manastur has 370 inhabitants per hectare).
23. About 2500 apartments and 3200 houses are planned (the figure is not yet final). The council provides 267 ha land and the private developer finances the infrastructure.