ACCESS TO WRITTEN CULTURE AS INDICATOR OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE URBAN-RURAL INTERFACE OF BUCHAREST, ROMANIA

Abstract

Written culture was always considered an indicator of civilisation. The aim of this paper is to analyse the distribution of development and of accessibility to written culture in the urban-rural interface (U-RI) of Bucharest, Romania, to assess their correlation and the impact of the current pandemic crisis. Based on the population’s perception regarding their accessibility to written culture through the application of over 200 questionnaires, the analysis showed that bookstores and libraries are mostly competitors. The number of readers and read books is decreasing in the U-RI due to the lack of prioritization of these services by the local authorities, as reflected in a general decreasing trend of the number of written culture users. The consumption of literature in new formats contributes to less place-dependent cultural services, especially in the high-income areas, while the Principal Component Analysis of cultural data demonstrates a clustering of localities in the U-RI that is strongly correlated with the economic and demographic characteristics of those areas. However, despite the increased accessibility to online, non-place-dependent written culture, the numbers of books read and bought in both physical and digital format had a generally decreasing trend during the pandemic.