Iasi, capital of Moldova – what role did the rivers, mountains and plains in the area play in the history of the region? – The Iasi newspaper

As I stated in previous texts fundamental characteristic of a territory, centrality is not an exclusive product of geometry. As a landmark and as a structuring element, centrality is a rather cultural construct, a product, both social, economic and political. Centrality is not unique; depending on the benchmarks and the scale of analysis, we are rather talking about a sequence of centralities, intuited and explained by the geographer W. Christaller and the economist A. Lösch in the the model of central places. The centralities are ordered transscalar: the local ones tend to aggregate in clusters, subordinating themselves to urban localities of a larger size and better located in relation to the geometry of spatial relations. The latter can generate superior centralities, which have the ability to insert the small spatial organizations obtained up to a global scale.

In reality, territorial systems do not have such a simple and orderly structure as in the case of the model of central places, a model that is built on numerous spatial constraints (homogeneous, isotropic space and which generate regular forms of organization – isomorph). Some force lines of space (wide river valleys or areas of geographical contact) can generate true urban axes whose territorial incidence can reach higher scalar levels – sometimes transnational. A good part of the European regions base their operating logic on urban axes: in the eastern part of the EU, which we set out to analyze, there are examples of several regional territorial structures of Poland (Pomerania, Kujawy-Pomerania, Subcarpathia), and In Romania, we have the example of Moldova, whose logic of evolution and territorial functioning was based on several axes. The most important were the Siret axis and the one that connected the north of the Black Sea, through Iași, to Chernivtsi and, further, to Lvov, which were part of the circulation system overlapping the Ponto-Baltic isthmus. They are still active today, but losing their transcontinental importance, as a result of the less favorable geopolitical tectonics.

From a territorial perspective, a plain or a network of valleys converging to a large internal depression facilitates political and military control or the centralized administration of socio-economic resources without great energy expenditure, while a naturally fragmented territory will considerably complicate the functioning of a centralized structure and lead, most of the time, to a regionalized or even federal administrative system. Are the urban systems of the eastern EU states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia) compliant from this perspective?

If we look at a physical map of Central and Eastern Europe, we will notice that the northern third of the space discussed is relatively flat and devoid of natural barriers that would complicate the relationship between the territorial substructures. The Vistula, the main river of this area, not only did not act as a barrier to the development of relations, but even became an ordering axis of the territorial systems located in the northern and central part of present-day Poland. In this northern area, the territorial structures of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the largest part of present-day Poland evolved.

The more we advance to the south, the space becomes more fragmented, the mountains often acting as barriers to inter-territorial relations, but not insurmountable, especially due to the technologies developed in the modern and contemporary period. In the central area of ​​this second area, we also have a large depressed area – the Pannonian Plain, which does not pose any major problems from the perspective of accessibility. As a result, the territorial structures created can be effective even if they are controlled by a single major urban pole – the case of Hungary, for example.

Let’s focus first on the northern states of the range. I will start with Estonia and Latvia, two small states (Estonia – 1.3 million inhabitants, and Latvia – 1.9), which also have in common an important characteristic of their territorial development – they functioned during better for 100 years in configurations very close to the current political boundaries, including the period of their membership in the USSR. This period of evolution led to the maturation of the relations between the components of the territorial structures. Under these conditions, centralization does not represent an impediment to national territorial efficiency.

In Estonia and Latvia, the capitals Tallinn (437 thousand inhabitants in December 2021, approximately 500 thousand inhabitants in the urban agglomeration), respectively Riga (621 thousand inhabitants in the municipality proper and over 700 thousand in the urban agglomeration) clearly dominate the systems national urban. In the case of Estonia, the next city in the hierarchy (Tartu – 95.2 thousand inhabitants) is 4.6 times less populated than the Capital, and as for Latvia, the ratio between the Capital and the second city (Daugavpils – 81 ,1 thousand inhabitants) reaches 7.7. The secondary urban level of both states is completed by 3-4 other medium-sized cities with a population between 33 and 60 thousand inhabitants, which have a modest territorial impact. (On next week)

George Țurcănașu is a doctoral lecturer at the Department of Geography within the Faculty of Geography and Geology, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi