What is it about?
study contributes to the literature on territorial stigmatization and post-communist urban regeneration in place-based stigma neighbourhoods. This paper advances knowledge in this field by examining current residents' perception on an urban heritage neighbourhood that has been characterized in recent decades by territorial stigma. By taking the Fabric area of Timişoara as a case study and given the existing context of the lack of statistical data at neighbourhood level in Romanian cities, a mixed methods approach based on a survey and interviews applied to local people and to local government was conducted. We aim to grasp what needs to be changed in order for such heritage neighbourhoods to be more inclusive for marginal people and for their punitive heritage buildings and places.
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Why is it important?
This study is important because the territorial stigmatization of people and places occurs in areas whose inhabitants live in poverty and in dilapidated buildings. Such run-down areas generally involve marginalized city-dwellers in post-communist societies. However, little scholarly attention has so far been paid to stigmatized neighbourhoods of this kind in relatively central heritage areas of cities.
Perspectives
The results of our study suggest that there is tension between the stigmatized/those living in poverty in Fabric and the younger middle-class people who have settled there. Our findings also highlight a lack of trust in local authorities due to politicization of urban regeneration planning in the area. We conclude that local authorities need to commit to taking a more inclusive approach towards the stigmatized people and to make greater efforts to follow a bottom-up initiative by including the needs of the marginalized people and to attract resources to reintegrate the heritage buildings of Fabric into the urban development of the city so that territorial-based stigma to be eradicated.
Dr Remus Cretan
west university of Timisoara
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Towards a more inclusive perception of a territorially stigmatized area? Evidence from an East-Central European city, Cities, March 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2024.105658.
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