Shrinking Cities in Romania
Vol. 1: Research and Analysis
Vol. 2: Responses and Interventions
DOM publishers, Berlin & Editura MNAC, Bucharest, 2019
In English and Romanian and internationally distributed, the two 800 pages volumes discuss the shrinkage of Romanian cities, as a widespread phenomenon. The publication follows the structure of the exhibition presented at the MNAC in 2016, a pioneering initiative to raise awareness about an acute and pervasive, yet too little discussed matter, and substantially complements its contents through extensive articles by distinguished researchers.
The unique achievement of this work is to have brought together research, theory, and action for the first time to deal with the issue of Romanian shrinking cities. The format of the publication is ambivalent, being at the same time an edited volume and an authored book. Built as a repertoire of arguments and authors that talk to each other at the intersection of disciplines, perspectives, and conventional and unconventional intervention tools, it reads like an edited volume. But then the theoretical confidence with which Ilinca Păun Constantinescu leads the dialogue and her significant auctorial presence point to an authored book. Further, this fusion between the rigor of scientific research, the quirkiness of artistic restlessness, and the selflessness of social activism reveals a multi-targeted approach, which makes the book the more difficult to fit into one of the usual disciplinary categories of contemporary Romania.
—Ana Maria Zahariade
This book looks at Romania as a case study nearly thirty years after the collapse of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact. In a very short time, political and economic conditions across Eastern Europe changed drastically, with affected countries being confronted with a globalized capitalist market economy. The current globalization model succeeds in stimulating overall economic growth in most nations, but does so at the cost of social and spatial division. The very substantial and precise study of Ilinca Păun Constantinescu and her team and partners provides a deep understanding of these issues by analyzing the shrinking cities phenomenon. And they even go one important step further, by daring to formulate and initiate constructive ways to address these issues and envisioning perspectives for these marginalized places.
—Philipp Oswalt
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Concept: IDEILAGRAM
Editor: Ilinca Păun Constantinescu
Editorial Assistant: Laura Popa-Florea
MNAC Press Coordinator: Daniela Calciu
DOM publishers coordinator: Philipp Meuser
Graphic design grafic: Raymond Bobar
Infographics: Gabriela Belcineanu
Inside cover illustration: Romanian Forms of Urban Shrinkage, Alexandru Păun
Translator: Ioana Miruna Voiculescu
Copyediting (Ro): Iulia Păun, Gabriela Belcineanu, Simona Necula, Larissa Luică
Copyediting (En): Miron Huhulea, Liliana Iuga, Iulia Păun, Gabriela Belcineanu
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