The Quality of Housing in the Rural Space Adjacent to the Bucharest-Ploieşti Axis

Florentina ION (BUZĂIANU)1
1 University of Bucharest, Faculty of Geography, Doctoral School “Simion Mehedinţi-Nature and Sustainable Development”, Bucharest, ROMANIA
E-mail: florentina_ionz@yahoo.com
Pages: 101-107

Abstract. When I started studying Romania’s rural areas I was happy to find out among others that “the village” has not lost ground but continues as a topic of interest for specialists. The Romanian village has regained importance due to a change in the mind-set of a population segment that has come to regard the rural environment as an attractive place to live in. Consequently, a new type of migration occurred, i.e. urban-rural migration, which co-existed with the rural exodus up to 1996 and gained momentum after 2002. The new rural residents seek the same extent of housing comfort they enjoyed before moving to permanently live in the country, plus the other advantages of living in less polluted environments, with larger dwelling areas. For a clearer picture of the quality of rural housing we aim to assess the public utility infrastructure quality and the population’s access to utilities by determining the density of the sewerage, drinking water and natural gas networks and by inventorying the dwelling installations (for sewerage and the supply of drinking water, electric power, thermal energy). My second target is to identify the dwellings stock-related issues in terms of the number, structure and space of dwelling units, by analyzing the dwelling space indicators (the number of habitable rooms per house, the number of persons per habitable room/house, the habitable space per person) and by drawing up an inventory of the auxiliary rooms (bathrooms and kitchens).

K e y w o r d s:  housing, rural space, dwellings stock, utility infrastructure