HOPE AND THE CITY: THOUGHTS ON ROMANIA’S URBAN SPACES IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
HOPE AND THE CITY: THOUGHTS ON ROMANIA’S URBAN SPACES IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the changing nature of Romania's small cities, particularly since 2000, and their potential, from an experiential standpoint, as spaces of hope and hopelessness for struggling Romanians. Considering “hope” as a key analytic through which one can make sense of the experience of late, post-state socialism, I argue that the meaning of “the city” has evolved and changed over the last several decades in the lives of Romania's working class, downwardly mobile, and unemployed. The changing meaning of cities in the lives of many Romanians reflects not only the political economic upheaval that has increasingly placed the possibility of relocating within/to a more “hopeful” city out of reach for many people, but it also reflects the increasingly exploitative experiences that have faced (former) working class and well-educated Romanians who have aspired to become full participants in the workings of a broadly-imagined European Union. I suggest that certain “regressive” political trends in Romanian politics reflect the growing loss of hope felt by many Romanians who have experienced cities – both within Romania and in Western Europe, more broadly – as spaces in which hope for a modern, European identity have been eroded by the harsh realities of life in these cities. This article concludes by suggesting that, to understand small cities in Romania, one must eschew traditional spatial analyses and look, instead, inward – to the spaces of individual homes (apartments) rather than to broader spacial structures like neighborhoods, regions, etc.

• Details
• Contents