Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
Gypsy housing in Communist times
The policy of the Communist regime towards Gypsies was to integrate them in the
mainstream working class society, which was carried out in two ways. Sedentarization was a
first objective, taken from older traditions going back to the
Aufklaerung
(Ruegg 1991). It is
an obvious measure that has been used by all colonial and neo-colonial powers, in Africa as
well as in Latin America, to civilise and modernise the ‘savages’. This process includes also a
normalization
of the house that consists mainly in imposing the use of solid materials: bricks
for the walls instead of mud, concrete for the floors instead of earth and corrugated iron for
the roof instead of straw or shingle. Under a regime that was keen to civilise Gypsies and
include them in the labour force, one of the solutions was the constructions of the so-called
blocs of three or more storeys, in which any workers would be housed, independently of their
‘nationalities’ or ethnic belonging. The history of soviet type architecture, from the time of
Lenin to Brejnev has been largely described and can still be seen in the main cities of Eastern
Europe as well as in the countryside where factories were newly established.
In Romania, ‘normalisation’ of the housing was a part of Ceausescu’s plan to eradicate
the rural type of dwellings in order to transform (modernise) the design of habitat with the
view of achieving the industrial revolution. However, the planned destruction of hundreds of
villages never came through. What can be generally said about this period is that the forced
assimilation policy helped to integrate Roma people into the general Romanian working
class. As other citizens, they joined the newly created urban spaces and lived in the worker’s
blocs. Having said that, let us try to identify new trends in Roma housing since the opening of
the borders in 1989.
Using other people’s houses: informal settlements
This trend actually pre-dates the opening of the borders in Romania. The massive emigration
of Germans from Transylvania started under the Ceausescu regime as early as the 1960s. The
German government was actually ‘buying’ Germans to be ‘repatriated’. These Germans,
settled during much earlier colonisation initiative from the Middle Ages to the 18
th
Century,
lived mainly in towns and cities of Transylvania and the Banat. They left behind them empty
semi-urban houses. Some were sold, others simply occupied by the Roma/Gypsies. Today
one can still see Roma settlements in the fortified medieval villages of Transylvania,
constructed by the Saxons in the 13
th
Century.
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