Uneven and divergent spatial figurations: A five-pronged typology of urban and peri-urban formations in Romania

This paper introduces a five-pronged typology to conceptualize the variegated and dynamic spatial figurations of urban and peri-urban areas in Romania, addressing a gap in the current literature on planetary urbanization by elucidating the differentiation between and within peri-urban spaces. Through analyses incorporating principal components, cluster analyses, association and analysis of variance this study delineates the distinctive patterns of demographic, economic, and spatial transformations across Romania's urban landscape. The typology not only highlights the complexities of peri-urban development, but also provides a critical framework for examining the socio-economic forces shaping these areas. We show that peri-urban spaces exhibit considerable heterogeneity; their processes of formation, dynamics, relationships with core cities, and trajectories vary significantly and are contingent upon specific contexts. This is what we synthetically call uneven and divergent spatial figurations that peri-urban development produces. We enlarge the “spatial figuration” framework that springs from the Lefebvrian trialectic of spatial production to challenge the urban-rural dichotomies and highlight the inter-scalar dynamics of change in the discontinuous and historically rooted peri-urban areas. The text contributes to emergent scholarship in the field that has shifted focus from examining the emergence of peri-urban spaces to addressing the diverse typologies of these spatial formations and their internal variation.