Urban Governance, Public Funding, and Recession in Postsocialist Bucharest (Research Brief)

Since 2007 Bucharest has witnessed a resurgence of state-led urban development on a scale not seen since the socialist period. EU Structural Funding and public funding have financed many of these projects, transforming the dynamics of central and local governance in the process. This project examines the emergence of a new regime of urban governance that relies critically on EU and public funding, and the procurement of public projects. This project analyzes how this allocative mode of urban governance differs from urban entrepreneurialism, which recent scholarship views as the dominant form of governance shaping urban transformations in postsocialist cities.

Elena Ion, of the University of California-Berkeley,was a 2012-2013 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.