Extended suburbanisation and land cover dynamics in post-socialist metropolitan areas

In post-socialist countries, suburbanisation of metropolitan areas has been the main pattern of urbanisation since 1990, especially under the form of urban sprawl by residential development. Privatisation processes, deregulation of the real estate market and greater sovereignty of local administrative units have led to specific challenges for post-socialist countries when managing suburbanisation. While specific case studies have been used to highlight the dynamics of urban areas in these countries after 1990, there has been little research done at a national level focusing on urbanisation patterns in post-socialist metropolitan areas. Using Romanian metropolitan areas as a case study, this paper proposes a ranking of metropolitan areas based on the dynamics of artificial surfaces and housing units. An analysis of 1990- 2018 CORINE Land Cover and Use Change data was carried out nationwide using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst tools, along with an analysis of ancillary data from the National Institute of Statistics regarding housing. The results illustrated that suburban development is concentrated around the largest Romanian cities, declared National Growth Poles during the programming period 2007-2013, also highlighting some limits in using CORINE data for 1990 and 2000. The proposed ranking of metropolitan areas could aid the design of tailored development policies and planning instruments for the most dynamic urban areas. Such analyses have the potential to be replicated in other post-socialist countries, as well as in countries experiencing metropolitan suburbanisation irrespective of their recent political history.