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World Bank Report: Magnet cities : migration and commuting in Romania
Romania is the fastest growing economy in the European Union (EU), and Bucharest and Romania’s secondary cities have been its main growth engines.
However, while Bucharest has reached productivity levels comparable to those of other EU capitals, secondary cities in Romania still have some ways to go before competing on equal footing with secondary cities in the EU. Without strengthening these secondary cities, the Romanian economy cannot sustain growth in the coming years. The most competitive secondary cities are those that are most astute at attracting people, investments, and tourists.
This report looks at the cities that have been most successful at attracting migrants and commuters, and proposes a number of recommendations aimed at making secondary cities more attractive and competitive. The report is primarily addressed to policy makers and to a lay audience interested in urban development issues.
This report is structured along four main sections: 1) An analysis of development dynamics, with a particular focus on the importance of cities in driving growth and development; 2) An analysis of migration and commuter patterns in Romania; 3) An analysis of the cities and areas that have been most successful at attracting people, and an analysis of the urban areas that will likely attract most people in the future. 4) Recommendations on how EU, national, and local policies and investments can help make secondary cities more competitive.
While not all Romanian cities are dynamic economic hubs, most have witnessed a development dynamic in the past years that goes beyond their administrative boundaries – they are basically part of functional urban areas. It is these functional urban areas where most of the population growth has happened in Romania in the past years.
The functional urban zones (FUAs) of Bucharest and the 40 county capitals in Romania generate 90% of national firm revenues, amass 80% of the people with higher education, have attracted 67% of commuters in 2011, and 66% of migrants between 2001 and 2011, amass 61% of overall employment and 58% of the total population of the country.
The most dynamic cities attracted labor force from quite a distance, and the localities with a more mobile population tended to be more developed than the localities with a less mobile population. In essence, development spills over from the most dynamic cities to the surrounding areas, and this is a key dynamic of the development process.
Without strong cities, one cannot have strong regions and a strong national economy. The FUAs of the county capitals, generate between 69% and 89% of firm output in their respective regions, and they register an average Local Human Development Index score that is between 10% and 24% higher than the regional average.
In 2011, only 31% of the stable population in Romania (around 6.2 million people) changed their residence inside the country at least once during their life time. However, Romania has one of the highest emigration rates in the EU.
Key features of in-country migrants to the FUAs of Bucharest and the 40 county capitals include: 1) 57% are female; 2) 51% came from a different county, although not from a very distant one; 3) 67.5% moved to an urban area; 4) 50% moved from rural to urban areas, but there is a growing share of urban to urban migration; 5) 60% of migrants are over 45 years of age; 6) 58% moved for personal reasons (e.g. marriage), 21% moved for work, and 13% moved for studies; 7) 23% have tertiary studies and 34% have upper secondary studies; 8) 47% are employed, while 33% are retired; 9) 55% are qualified workers, generally requiring secondary education, while 28% are managers and professionals with higher education; 10) 58% work in the services sector, 23% in industry, 12% in agriculture.
Overall, 1.8 million Romanians were commuting for work to another locality in 2011, countrywide. Of those, 1.2 million commuted to the FUAs of Bucharest and the 40 county capitals.
Key features of commuters to the FUAs of Bucharest and the 40 county capitals include: 1) 61% are male; 2) young people (less than 35 years) are more mobile and are willing to travel longer distances; 3) 62% come from rural areas; 4) 26% have tertiary education, although only 18% of jobs commuters occupy require tertiary education; 5) 58% have completed a form of secondary education; 6) 56% are working in services sectors; 7) the share of blue-collar commuters had decreased from 45% in 2002 to 15% in 2011; 8) the automotive industry is most dependent on commuters (46% of the total labor force).
Large industrial centers, such as Ploie?ti and Pite?ti receive more commuters, while service driven economies, such as Cluj-Napoca and Ia?i, receive more migrants. This is a dynamic that makes intuitive sense, and a dynamic that has important implications for local administrations. Basically, manufacturing centers will sooner or later face limits to growth, as salary growth in these sectors cannot outpace the growth in the cost of living in these cities.
On the other hand, high valueadded services sectors can sustain salary growth more easily and they encourage salary growth in all other sectors too1 . That is why cities with a strong high value-added services base (usually the larger university centers) are more attractive to migrants. Nonetheless, it seems there is a strong link between the growth in the number of jobs and a growth in commuting, indicating that urban economic growth is inherently metropolitan economic growth, requiring the proper interventions and assistance from the local, county, national, and EU level.
Overall, one can say that migration and commuting are probably the most accurate indicators of territorial competitiveness. The reasons that people chose to move to a city are varied and multifaceted, varying from job and education opportunities, to personal reasons (e.g. for marriage), and to reasons that have to do with quality of life, shopping options, cultural and arts scene, the presence of like-minded people, or the proper climate.
The cities, or rather the functional urban areas that manage to attract the most people, are usually those that have managed to offer the widest menu of things people are looking for. Thus, the number of people that willingly migrate and commute to a certain area, represent one of the most important measures of success for that particular area.
Migration to major cities in Romania has been a few orders of magnitude higher between 2001 and 2011 (a decade of fast economic growth) than in all the previous decades. In dynamic functional urban zones such as Cluj-Napoca, Timi?oara, or Ia?i, over 35% of all migrants made the move between 2001 and 2011. This hints to a reshuffling of urban dynamics, after years of central planning, and empirical data does indeed show that these three cities are widening their area of influence (see map below), and are the most likely candidates for strongest secondary cities in Romania.
(Please read more : http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/327451497949480572/pdf/116400-WP-P158178-PUBLIC-MagneticCities-Jun18-v4.pdf and The Rethinking Lagging Regions report http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/739811525697535701/RLR-FULL-online-2018-05-01.pdf)