Which localities in Romania are isolated?

For INS, a UAT is isolated when its geographic centre lies over 20 kilometres, as the crow flies, from the nearest national or European road or motorway. The definition was written for the 2021 census, and the measurements were made on the digital map, with GIS. The result is the list on this page: 34 UATs — 32 communes and two towns, Agnita and Sulina — in 12 counties.

“Dispersed” is something else entirely: it does not measure distance to roads, but how scattered people are inside the UAT. INS uses Albert Demangeon’s index: the population living outside the administrative centre, times the number of villages, divided by the total population. It is an organisational tool — villages are, in practice, the sub-sectors of a single census enumerator. At 5 and above, a UAT is dispersed; that yields 445, from Vidra, in Alba, at 38, down to the threshold.

The two ideas rarely overlap. Sulina is isolated (66.8 km from DN22) but not dispersed; Vidra tops the dispersion ranking but is not isolated. Only two UATs sit on both lists: Stănișești, in Bacău, and Puiești, in Vaslui.

We checked the list with our own means: for each residence we measured the distance to the nearest open national-road, European-road or motorway segment (OpenStreetMap, June 2026), in the Stereo 70 projection. For 26 of the 34, the residence too clears 20 kilometres, and the list order follows these distances. For 8 — Brabova, Verbița, Alțâna, Olteni, Pardina, Merghindeal, Olcea and Ocland — the residence lands at 17.8–19.9 kilometres: INS measures from the polygon centroid, we measure from the mapped residence, and in sprawling communes the two points do not coincide. Motorways under construction or merely drawn (A13, A3) are excluded.

Three things to keep in mind. One: the road network changes — a new stretch can take a commune off the list tomorrow. Two: populations are as of 1 December 2021. Three: the map dots show residences, not geometric centres — so our distances are a check and a ranking, not a new definition. The official list remains the INS one.

One curiosity, for the record: the INS notes say the dispersed set holds 38 towns and 407 communes, but checking the 445 SIRUTA codes gives 19 towns and 426 communes. This page publishes the verified figures.