Adrian-Mihai CIMPU, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi, Romania, Romania
Lucian Ionut ROSU, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi, Romania, Romania
Corneliu IATU, "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi, Romania, Romania
Small and medium-sized towns have always been indispensable in the structure of a national urban system, being the best binder between urban and rural settlements, their main role being to assure the equal distribution of services in the surrounding territories. In the second half of the XX century, Romania's urbanization was best described by forced industrialization and rural exodus, around 30 new cities emerging from strongly rural areas.
The fall of socialism brought Romania and all the economic activity on the verge of collapse, the mammoth industries being the first that were shut down. All of the factors combined made the already-fragile small and medium sized cities began losing not only their territorial influence, but a large number of inhabitants.
Nowadays, the emerging debate about the role of smaller cities in the urban hierarchy bought the focus back on our towns, no less than 278 in Romania, so it is paramount to find out what are the actual particularities of each of them. Like so, our paper focuses on highlighting the demographic, economic and accesibility component of each city that defines it in order to have a clear understanding of the problem.
The main finding of our paper is a multi-criterial classification that divides our cities in distinct classes, each of them having a particular set of roles that they satisfy in regional and local contexts. The results can be later used both in local or national policies to have a tailored scenario for every town given.
Mots clés : cities|small and medium sized|Romania
A105440AC