摘要：The centralized planning of the economic development transposed
in the territory through forced industrialization and urbanization policies
was one of the most powerful transformative processes of the communist
Romania space, triggering sudden changes in the traditional lifestyle of the
inhabitants and causing territorial disturbances with long term effects.
These policies have profiled a specific urban typology, represented by
collective buildings with small surfaces, neighborhoods with high urban
density, built in the close vicinity of the industrial centers. In most cases, the
decision of selecting the rural settlements seen as "having high possibilities
of development" to gain the urban status through forced industrialization,
was conditioned by the presence of resources (especially the subsoil
resources). The fall of the communist regime and the transition to market
economy have initiated a metamorphosis of the Romanian urban spaces.
Thus, with the disappearance of some industrial branches, imbalances
shaped up at urban scale between the working-class neighborhoods lacking
investments and the rest of the urban tissue. In the southern part of Bihor
County the presence of mineral resources, especially uranium, subsequently
represented both the chance of explosive development on the one hand, and
the decline and total collapse of these communities, on the other hand. The
changes brought by the uranium exploitation (the largest uranium deposit
on the surface in the world) in the region were multiple and fast. The most
important ones were related to the intake of manpower for whose
accommodation there had been built new towns, like Dr. Petru Groza
(currently Stei, built from scratch and attached to the namesake village) and
Nucet (dormitory town for miners, also built from scratch). This study
proposes to analyze the urban regeneration of Stei (named Dr. Petru Groza
during the communist era after one of the most important Romanian
communist leaders) in the context of current policies of urban development in Romania. The aim is to emphasize the need for urban regeneration
measures in the industrial towns built during the communist regime, which
are in a demographic, economic, social and derelict urban structures from
the communist period, with outdated infrastructure, degraded built
environment and an overall poor quality of the urban life.
