City Region Building and Socio-Spatial Polarization in Romania

In the last two decades, there has been an increasing interest in regional policy research and practice towards the concept of city region building. The idea of forming and promoting metropolitan regions is only partly based on empirical observations. This process of concentration along with the idea of supporting the formation of internationally renowned competitive regions can also be regarded as a form of regulation, part of national and European policy agendas and thus reflects changing paradigms of spatial policy. Although the conceptual debate about such regions started relatively late, it has gained an important role in spatial planning and research. The main processes that have brought about these new priorities in spatial planning are seen in structural economic changes, the change towards a flexible network economy, processes of globalization and internationalization. The present paper aims to deal with the effects of metropolitan regions on the process of centralization and peripheralization in Romania analyzing at the same time the existing regional disparities. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.