Vertical segregation of apartment building dwellers during late state socialism in Bucharest, Romania

This article examines patterns of within-building vertical segregation in Bucharest, Romania under late socialism using micro-data (individual/household level information) from the 1992 Romanian national census. The data allows examination of separation of households according to the floor on which a household is located and according to the residential sector/district of Bucharest. Findings suggest that common social and demographic factors are related to the location of households in both horizontal and vertical dimensions of urban space. We also find that a freely functioning real estate market is not necessary to produce vertical segregation. Consequently, since vertical segregation existed in early and modern capitalist cities–and bearing in mind that the phenomenon existed under socialism too–we conclude that, like horizontal socio-spatial separation, vertical segregation is an intrinsic characteristic of modern cities and a feature of urban space that did not diminish when pre-industrial cities disappeared.