Târgu Mureș / Marosvásárhely

Present-day Târgu Mureș is the “city of two majorities.” This designation reflects not only the demographic balance between the two ethnic groups, but also their shared attitude toward each other’s culture and toward Târgu Mureș itself. Current perspectives point toward two communities moving along parallel trajectories and toward a divided, fragmented public sphere in which certain issues are heavily charged with symbolic and ideological meaning. 

The local social melting pot is further enriched by the Roma community, which also has its own distinct history: although very much present, it appears invisible. In practice, Roma people exist only within urban folklore, in keeping with the “good” tradition of Romanian and Central-Eastern European racism. The old traditions of Roma musicians and brickmakers in the city have disappeared, while the local administration has neither had nor developed any strategy for integrating the Roma community. For example, the “Valea Rece” district, inhabited by disadvantaged Roma families living in difficult conditions, was “hidden” by the former city administration behind huge roadside banners, in a form of ghettoization.

Another characteristic symptom of society in Târgu Mureș is a certain “freezing” of public space — a dialogue of the deaf — from which the city is only now beginning to awaken.