Peri-Urban Landscapes of Timișoara: Memory, Identity, and Transitional Regeneration

In the socio-territorial context of post-industrial transitions and uneven development, the peri-urban fringes of Romanian cities such as Timișoara contain fragile, often-abandoned spaces. These interstitial territories—former farmland, brownfields, ecological patches, and degraded heritage zones—are marginalized in planning, yet hold latent cultural, ecological, and symbolic value. This paper examines how memory embedded in material, visual, and ecological fragments can catalyze new spatial practices that contest conventional urban expansion, proposing reinterpretation, occupation, and minimal intervention in line with the European Landscape Convention and the “third landscape”. Through the case of Timișoara’s metropolitan fringe, the study highlights tensions between speculative suburbanization and symbolic re-appropriation, analyzing peri-urban areas as “spaces in motion” shaped by memory and identity. Using a multidisciplinary methodology - spatial analysis, archival mapping, photography, and participatory observation - it proposes strategies to transform overlooked spaces into drivers of resilience, advocating for planning frameworks that value continuity, ordinary heritage, and cultural landscape evolution.