A suburb of Chisinau, (c) Anatoly Zubanyuk
Previous articles in this series:
Why local elections are more important than they seem: the territory no one is arguing about;
The territory does not start anew after each reform;
Self-government without a self-sustaining economy;
The Road: From the Logic of the Colony to the Logic of Development.
The Mayor as a Deficit Manager
A Depressed Region: A Map Without a Future
The suburbs of Chisinau, a northern village, an industrial city, a border region, and an agricultural zone all operate under different rules. They have different resources, labor markets, histories, and visions for the future. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. A new map without an understanding of a territory’s function is a map of more neatly organized poverty.
Six Types—Six Logics
Chisinau’s suburbs develop within the capital’s gravitational pull: housing, commuter migration, and access to the urban market. Ialoveni and Straseni are part of the capital’s metropolitan logic. For such territories, the main issues are transportation, urban planning, and public infrastructure—not a separate mayor’s office.
The northern village is a different story. Its problem is not an excess of development, but the loss of people and the loss of a reason to stay. It needs employment, cooperation, and roads to markets. Applying the suburban model to it would result in an administrative imitation.
An industrial city with empty factory buildings needs a strategy for repurposing: which sites to bring back into use, which industries are viable, and who could become an investor. This cannot be solved through consolidation.
A border region has transit potential—but the border itself does not guarantee development. It can serve as a gateway for exports, or it can be a corridor for the outflow of raw materials and people.
An agricultural region develops not through talk of “agricultural potential,” but through a value chain: raw materials—storage—processing—packaging—branding—export—revenue. If a region does not control the subsequent links in this chain, it remains merely a supplier of the raw materials for others’ wealth.
A university hub does not develop automatically. A university becomes an anchor only when it is connected to the local labor market and business community. Otherwise, it turns into a drain: it trains professionals for other cities.
Mergers without a plan are just an empty shell
Consolidating city administrations can reduce administrative costs—that’s a real benefit. But it doesn’t create jobs, build up processing industries, or attract investment. Three weak regions without a plan will result in one larger, weak region. The scale, of course, will change—the problem will become larger.
Before discussing boundaries and budgets, we need to answer these questions for each territory: What was its historical function? What has been lost? What assets remain? What specialization can be built upon them? And what tools are needed on the ground to ensure the scenario doesn’t remain merely on paper?
Moldova doesn’t need an administrative map. It needs a scenario-based development map—one where, for each zone, there is an answer to the question of what sustains it.
Case Study: Comrat: The Elements Are There, but the Scenario Is Missing
Comrat is neither Ialoveni nor Ocnita. It is the administrative center of Moldova’s only autonomous region, with a university, an agricultural base, international production contacts, and political status. This is a set of assets that most small Moldovan towns lack.
The question is more pressing: why, despite all this, has Comrat not become a hub for the development of the south? The answer does not lie in a lack of resources. It lies in the absence of a strategy that transforms those resources into a functional system.
KSU graduates agronomists, food technologists, and economists—and most leave because there is no job market for their specializations. It’s not the university’s fault: there is no economic environment that would make these skills in demand locally.
Garment factories with orders from Turkish, Italian, Belgian, and American firms provide real employment, but it’s low-end work. Design, branding, and profit margins—all come from outside. Without targeted efforts, the region remains at the bottom tier.
The agricultural base consists of about 150,000 hectares of farmland, including vineyards, grain, and sunflowers. Gagauzia’s exports total $80–90 million per year, consisting mainly of raw materials. The region produces the foundation of wealth, but that wealth is created elsewhere.
The autonomous region’s political status serves as leverage that ordinary districts lack. But it is used for symbolic conflicts with the central government, rather than for negotiations on a specific economic package: tax incentives for agricultural processing, investment infrastructure, logistics, and certification.
The university is a separate issue. The agricultural sector is a separate issue. Garment factories are a separate issue. Political status is a separate issue. It’s like a warehouse full of unassembled furniture: the parts are there, the instructions are lost, and there’s nothing to sit on.
A realistic scenario for Comrat is a new assembly of existing assets: the agricultural base is linked to processing, Comrat State University trains personnel for this specialization, and political status is used to negotiate an economic package. This is not a fantasy. An attempt to organize what already exists into a system.
The problem is that so far, no one is responsible for putting it all together. It is precisely this question—who is responsible for the assembly—that is key to any reform that aims for development rather than redrawing the map.
A genuine territorial policy does not begin with the question of how many municipalities to retain. It begins with the question of what role each territory should play in the country’s future. Until Moldova answers that question, it will continue to reform the map without reforming the country.
Eugen Perestoronin,
journalist, economic and political analyst
Dmitri Taraburca,
economist, expert in real estate and territorial development
