Commuting of rural labor force in Socialist Romania. Spatial mismatch and mixed housing regime

Abstract

Housing production in socialist Romania evolved through a continuous interaction between industrialization and urbanization, in which commuting played a key role. Accelerated industrialization required significantly more labor force than what urbanization rates were able to provide. In this context, commuting emerged as an institutionalized solution to reconciling accelerated industrial expansion with the slower pace of urbanization, enabling daily mobility between rural settlements and urban industrial centers. Commuting was not only a spatial practice, but a core economic development mechanism to sustain socialist production built upon two main elements: first, as a response to a spatial mismatch between workers’ homes and workplaces and, second, on the mixed housing regime characterized by state-built urban housing, self-built rural dwellings, and controlled mobility.

In this paper I analyze commuting during socialism as a product of planned economic priorities and housing production strategy by taking into consideration the spatial mismatch between homes and workplaces and the mixed housing regime. Additionally, I seek to create a conceptual bridge with the practice of commuting in post-socialist Romania, in order to highlight that the temporary solution of the socialist economic model became a permanent tool to ensure workforce availability in the post-socialism era. While commuting persisted, the essence shifted: from a temporary state-mediated economic development strategy to an individualized response to capitalist development strategies. My study draws on sociological studies from socialist era, official statistical data and historical interpretations.