Open letter for Emil Boc: Cluj mayor under fire for “neglecting promises” over EUR 2 bln-worth real estate project at Pata Rât ghetto
The Transylvania Smart City is an ambitious project worth over EUR 2 billion developed close to the Pata Rât ghetto of Cluj-Napoca. Consisting of over 12,000 apartments alongside dozens of commercial, medical, and educational services, and…
Rafly · Journalist
· Updated · 4 min read
The Transylvania Smart City is an ambitious project worth over EUR 2 billion developed close to the Pata Rât ghetto of Cluj-Napoca. Consisting of over 12,000 apartments alongside dozens of commercial, medical, and educational services, and even a 100.000 sqm shopping center, the smart city is a dreamy utopian project that further propels the image of Cluj, the Romanian city that equates itself to a lot of western capitals out there. The highest technology with the highest standard of living.
However, what seems like a next-level city for its future inhabitants is a juxtaposition of what the current residents are facing. It started in 2015 in the city’s outskirts at Pata Rât, in the vicinity of the massive garbage dump where also over 1,500residents (per National Legal Resource Center’s 2019 data), mostly from Roma ethnicity, were segregated in a social bubble in one of the country’s largest ghettos. They live under poor condition of sanitary and are in constant danger of diseases due to being located near the toxic waste landfill.
In an open letter dated December 15 and signed by the Association of Sustainable Organized Society, the Community Association of Roma, Căși sociale ACUM!, and more, the Cluj society demands transparency from mayor Emil Boc and all the real estate investors of the project. They also ask, among other things, for a concrete strategy related to the people who live in Pata Rât.
They further call for a protest action this Saturday (December 17) at 19.30 at the corner of St. Barițiu with Emil Isac and then march to the City Hall.
The open letter reads:
“We, the signatories of this open letter, believe that the design of a future neighborhood of EUR 2 billion with thousands of apartments, hospitals, university campus, mall, etc. cannot fail to take into account the realities existing in the marginalized urban area of Pata Rât and the situation of its current inhabitants.
Unfortunately, Cluj-Napoca increasingly resembles an advertising brochure, with promises and illusions that take the place of a coherent urban development and put at the service of the interests of the many. It is difficult to imagine the level of imbalance in which Austrian citizens will come to be treated in the new hospital in Pata Rât, as proposed in an advertising clip by real estate developers, while the current residents do not even have a sanitary point in the area.
Before projects that "will" be done in Cluj, such as the metro, the metropolitan belt, the navigable Someș, etc., the reality of the marginalization and precariousness faced by the residents of the Pata Rât ghetto, the need to desegregate the area and ensure living conditions should be addressed decently for disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens. And there are not a few...
