Discussion
In the past seven years, during the economic revival of Cluj in a post-crisis period when the financialization of housing was globally strengthened, almost all of the former industrial platforms of the city were transformed into sites of new real estate development of different kinds, residential and/or commercial. In 2023, when the zonal urbanistic plan developed by a foreign architect for the most prosperous real estate investor with Romanian capital, Iulius Group, was put on the agenda of local public authorities for approval, there were several civil society initiatives raising environmental, architectural and housing-related concerns regarding this project. The latter reflected a longer critical activist trend in Cluj against the problematic aspects of local urbanism sustained by a growth coalition composed of capital, state authorities, and professionals of different domains related to urban development.
Due to the importance of these issues in the 2023 city of TransEuropa Festival, the housing justice movement Căși sociale ACUM!/ Social housing NOW! invited to debate them at a public workshop with the participation of environmental activists Adrian Dohotaru (SOS, Societate Organizată Sustenabil) and Adriana Măgerușan (architect, Someș Delivery), housing activists professor Enikő Vincze and George Iulian Zamfir (sociologists), Oana Mateescu (sociologist, university lecturer) and István Szakáts (cultural manager, administrator of FB group Clujul Civic).