Analysis by Radu Limpede

PREAMBLE: We will very soon have the third round of elections for the Mayor General of Bucharest in only five years.

Disclaimer (author – Radu Limpede): I do not engage in partisan politics, but for the past 20 years I have been involved in politics in the original sense of polis—participation in the life of the City (and the country) and in the defense of the Market Economy, Capitalism, and Entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this analysis is not to recommend a vote and not to lecture the candidates. Especially since, as a former president rightly said, this time we truly have at least three serious contenders—not TV celebrities as in past elections—each with some administrative experience, and two of them, I would add, with solid, proven accomplishments.

My goal is to examine Bucharest both as a CITY and as the CAPITAL of Romania, and not merely in the sense of hosting political or administrative institutions, but in its ECONOMIC sense. Economic, but also social and cultural—because the role of large metropolitan areas in generating and concentrating new ideas is essential.

Like it or not, Bucharest—as the only major metropolis in Romania (though fortunately we also have a few regional ones)—is by far the main economic engine of the country. Even if it cannot and should not concentrate all economic sectors, the success or failure of those industries—especially knowledge-based service sectors—determines whether Romania remains stuck in, or ideally escapes from, the well-known “Middle-Income Trap” (the “Second World Trap”) where we have landed. And yes, countries like the Czech Republic and Poland are in the same situation.

Moreover, the management of many sectors that depend on the country’s territory and resources (agriculture, energy, heavy industries that cannot operate inside large cities, etc.) is carried out largely from Bucharest.

So, let us begin. This analysis is divided into three parts:

1. MACROECONOMY & POPULATION
2. ECONOMIC SECTORS, including the high-end ones that give the city its VIBRATION (term from https://www.iov.ro
3. QUALITY OF LIFE, which—after clean air, green space, education, and health—still ends up depending on that same “vibration” of urban life.

Although you will see many charts, rankings, and statistics, almost all of them are taken from published studies (cited where appropriate): Eurostat, national statistics offices, private platforms such as Numbeo, Wikipedia, etc.
However, the vision of this analysis—which I offer to you, the reader, and to the mayoral candidates—is personal. The charts and statistics serve only to confirm, contradict, or nuance the conclusions I have reached after decades of reading studies and thousands of articles.
My perspective is shaped not only by the 32 years in which I have lived in Bucharest, but by over 40 years of observing, studying, and being passionate about the Romanian economy and its urbanization (still painfully behind).
Yes, at age 10 I knew by heart the populations of the largest cities in the country and all the towns nearing 100,000 inhabitants.
It’s true that I like statistics, but not in a “laboratory precision” sense. I care about TRENDS—especially in a century as turbulent as ours, where what is true today might no longer be true tomorrow, next month, or next year. For this reason, several indicators—especially those concerning the real population of Bucharest—will be challenged from the outset. Some statistics and rankings will be marked with an asterisk.

PART 1

ECONOMY – GDP of 100 billion euros & GDP per capita & GDP (PPS) per capita – likely real convergence with the EU average and an evolution broadly aligned with other major capitals and metropolitan areas

POPULATION – over 3.6 million & Purchasing Power & Cost of Living & Housing Affordability – The need for a Metropolitan Area approaching 5–6 million people in the next 20 years

Bucharest* has surpassed 100 billion euros in annual GDP—more than neighboring countries Bulgaria and Serbia, each with 6–7 million inhabitants. It also exceeds the broader NUTS2 region of Budapest and is on par with Prague (which has a smaller population). Only Warsaw clearly surpasses Bucharest in the Central & South-East European region.
However, sensational news headlines claiming that Bucharest residents already live better than those in Paris or Hamburg are ridiculous. In my view, the real population of Bucharest–Ilfov is over 3.6 million, not the 2.23 million reported by the National Statistics Institute.

Thus, Bucharest–Ilfov has become the first region in Romania to surpass the EU average standard of living—but most likely by around +18%, not +90%, as incorrectly circulated in the Romanian press based on misread Eurostat data.
Moreover, the Bucharest Metropolitan Area should include additional peri-urban communes and satellite towns currently in Dâmbovița (Crevedia), Giurgiu (Mihăilești, Bolintin), even parts of Călărași and Ialomița.
Here I refer to the macro-region defined as EU NUTS2: Bucharest + Ilfov.

Regarding the debate from spring 2025—my previous analysis (which caused some “waves”) was unfortunately misrepresented in the press, and critics on forums and social media challenged the concept of the capital’s GDP without understanding the methodology.

GDP is not calculated based on what large companies “report to the center”. That is not how the National Statistics Institute or Eurostat measure it. GDP has two methods that must converge, and one of them—Consumption/Use—tells us that 2.3 million people cannot possibly spend almost 30% of everything produced in the country. But if we consider my estimate, approx. 19% of Romania’s population living in the Bucharest–Ilfov region, then the numbers make sense—statistically and from anecdotal evidenc.

Where does the 3.6 million figure come from? In my view, it’s already a conservative estimate. It is based on a personal calculation I made five years ago (before the pandemic and around the time of the official census), which added together: the number of employees, the unemployed, pensioners, school pupils, university students, plus a probable share of inactive population (lower than the national average, but aligned with the situations in Cluj and Timiș).

Since then, I know that some corporate workers temporarily moved back to their hometowns during lockdown, but the vast majority have returned. A smaller group found a quieter life in rural “paradises”, small farms at some distance from Bucharest, in Dâmbovița or Prahova (for example, Valea Doftanei).

Despite this outflow, we must also consider that Bucharest–Ilfov has added over 100,000 new housing units (mostly apartments) in the last five years, about 20,000 per year. This alone represents roughly 250,000 people, considering the average household size in Romania.

What I propose to the three mayoral candidates—and especially to the one who will win—is to begin thinking ahead:

→ Short Term (1 year):
An unofficial census* that provides the REAL population figure of Bucharest + Ilfov + the surrounding towns and communes whose economic, social, and cultural life is clearly integrated with the Capital.

Of course, an official census would be ideal, but the National Statistics Institute (INS) has already demonstrated its ineffectiveness. Perhaps the number of active SIM cards? Or other high-frequency data methods that could indicate the real population? Should we give SRI something to do?

And when I say INS is “ineffective”, I do not refer to the statistical procedures themselves, which follow Eurostat standards and recently passed the OECD review (Romania closed the 16th negotiation chapter). I refer to my personal experience with the three census-takers I encountered in three decades in Bucharest, and the experiences of client companies sampled by INS, who explained how the work is actually done—“Dorel-style”, “it’ll do”.

Another argument: Bucharest–Ilfov reportedly decreased by 9% between two censuses, yet the school-age population increased by 15–20%.

→ Medium Term (5 years):
The legal foundation and operational implementation of a FUNCTIONAL METROPOLITAN AREA, including all the surrounding localities mentioned earlier, capable of accommodating without collapse the approximately four million current residents. A Metropolitan Law is needed (the current referendum-based model is unworkable—see the failed attempt in the commune next to the Municipality of Buzău).

Transport infrastructure – road, rail, and multi-modal:
– Acceleration of the A0 motorway project and the 10–12 radial roads.
– Starting regional railway lines (as widely used in Western Europe, e.g., the RER in Paris).
– Alternatively, surface extensions of the metro (already begun with M2 toward Popești-Leordeni, with plans for Pipera–Petricani and M4 toward Mogoșoaia).
– Or tram-train systems: Oradea already has such a project underway.

→ Long Term (10 years):
Developing a strategy, a set of objectives, and concrete projects that will allow a high quality of life for the 5 or 6 — perhaps even 7(!) — million people who will live here in the next 10–15–20 years.

And this is not only about transport infrastructure. It is also about the Green Belt promoted by my good friend, the mountaineer Alex Găvan, as well as an urban zoning approach that allows for new housing and new satellite neighborhoods without damaging nature or the clean air we depend on, but rather integrating them harmoniously.

(See the current situation, discussed extensively in Part 3, focused on Quality of Life.)

Housing affordability has gradually improved since the Global Crisis / the financial bubble / real estate bubble of 2008–2010. According to the dedicated SVN Romania index, a Bucharest resident can now purchase an apartment with less than 7 years of income (83 months) — a record in the European Union. In Western Europe, the figures are many decades of income.

As for the boundaries of Bucharest — artificially and anachronistically drawn by the communist regime more than 50 years ago — it is better to read the very lucid intellectual and analyst Sorin Ioniță:
https://www.contributors.ro/de-ce-e-bucurestiul-altfel/

“Romania’s capital is the smallest (spatially) major metropolis in the region: the city ends immediately after the apartment blocks.
 This extreme limitation creates major urban management problems.
 Moreover, it makes many statistical indicators reported blindly to Eurostat irrelevant — and people then pick them up and place them in comparative tables without understanding the differences in territorial organization.
 But statistics are the least of Bucharest’s problems.
 The truly important issue is the impossibility of the elected local authorities to legally manage a territory that functionally belongs to the city but formally lies in neighboring localities that are politically completely autonomous.”

“We find that there are at least five major administrative absurdities (Fig. 4 – annex), consisting of unnecessary political autonomies attached to the inner edge of Bucharest, inside the old ring road (the national road). These are:
(1) the city of Voluntari;
(2) the communes Dobroești–Pantelimon;
(3) the city of Popești-Leordeni;
(4) the Bragadiru–Măgurele area (part inside the ring road);
(5) the commune Chiajna (including the village Roșu).”

The scenario of 7 million or more inhabitants honestly frightens me as well, but it is not impossible, considering Romania’s remarkable economic success over the last 25 years (and the success of the Capital). And if Romania’s current demographics — with a clearly negative natural population growth — do not yet support such concentrations, it is possible that many immigrants will come. I’m not referring only to temporary workers from South Asia, but also to expats and digital nomads.

Just as London and Paris have each reached 12–13 million inhabitants — of whom only a portion are still ethnically English or French — in 20 years we may see, alongside 5–6 million Romanians, another one million new residents in Bucharest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_GDP

If, in the 35 years since the Revolution, the population of the Capital has doubled (while Romania’s total population decreased by 17.5%, from 23.16 million to 19.1 million), and if most of this growth occurred after the announcement of EU & NATO accession (2000–2025), then — considering the new satellite districts of over 50,000 people like Militari Residence and Popești-Leordeni, or Cosmopolis, or the urban redevelopments on former industrial platforms — it is clear that in the next 20 years at least another 1 million, and most likely 2 million people can be added: Romanian citizens or repatriated members of the diaspora.

Why do I insist so strongly on the need for URBANIZATION, and especially for large cities, which I often call metaphorically the economic “ENGINES”?
Before we even enter the statistics on environment, health, or education?

For at least three reasons:

1) IDEAS.
Humanity’s greatest achievements happened overwhelmingly in cities — especially in large cities or metropolises (whose size varied greatly from one era to another; London 400 years ago was about the size of my hometown Sibiu today).

Moreover, certain cities concentrated an enormous cultural and trendsetting power in particular eras, not only due to political leadership or accumulated wealth (imperial or not), but thanks to the brains — the philosophers, artists, scientists, innovators, great entrepreneurs — who gathered there from all directions:

Babylon / Persepolis / Ancient Athens / Jerusalem / Ancient Rome / Thebes and then Alexandria of ancient Egypt / Constantinople / Florence / Venice / Beijing / Paris / London / Tokyo / New York / San Francisco–Berkeley–San Jose in the modern era.

https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/global-cities-index/#top-cities

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