Assessing urban sprawl-related housing dynamics in the Romanian metropolitan areas

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Currently, in Romania, nearly 7,500,000 inhabitants (34% of the country total population) live in the metropolitan areas. Following the political and socio-economic changes which came after the post-communist period, the metropolitan landscape witnessed significant transformations, mainly related to urban sprawl (suburbanisation), in terms of land use/land cover changes and conversion to residential, commercial or services areas triggering both deconcentration and spatial redistribution of the population. The authors intend to assess the main urban sprawl-related housing dynamics in connection with some triggering driving forces in terms of the spatial transformations of built-up areas, changes in population patterns, residential expansion, etc., while focusing on the most important Romanian metropolitan areas: Bucharest, Oradea, Iaşi and Constanţa. Therefore, using GIS computer mapping techniques, statistical data and field surveys, the current study seeks to provide an insight into the connections between the main patterns of change and the residential development pathways in the Romanian metropolitan areas.