The Impact of Creative Destruction of the Romanian Railways on the Urban–Rural Divide

Pursuing Schumpeter’s framework of creative destruction, the paper examines the long-term changes of rail systems in a former communist country to grasp the recurrent waves of (dis)/investments that have engendered socio-spatial outcomes. Drawing on the scholarship, policy reports, media articles, independent professional organizations’ analyses, as well as data from the Ministry of Transport and National Institute of Statistics (NIS), our approach aims at analyzing the effects of rail dismantling vs. modernization on the urban–rural nexus by highlighting the population and job patterns, accessibility shifts and territorial interactions. The empirical analysis covers 213 localities affected by railway closures and 45 localities with modernized railway stations. We found that dismantling and modernization of rail are grounded on different rationales likely to change the spatial structure of the economy. The observed correspondence between railway restructuring and population and employment dynamics suggests a mutually reinforcing relationship between transport accessibility and territorial development, rather than a straightforward causal link between railway closures and population decline. Losing/gaining rail centrality within the urban–rural continuum reconfigures spatial inter-relations with theoretical and policy insights into how transport corridors act as drivers of growing disparities or axes of development. Future research should further address the role of the rail system for social wellbeing, territorial integration and environmental sustainability through balancing the jobs market, reducing road congestion and pollution, and responding to unpredicted rail demand of external events.