The Urban Mosaic Of Post Socialist Europe

This book explores urban dynamics in Europe fifteen years after the fall of communism. The ‘urban mosaic’ of the title expresses the complexity and diversity of the processes and spatial outcomes in post-socialist cities. Emerging urban phenomena are illustrated with case studies, focusing on historical themes, cultural issues and the socialist legacy. Among the cities analyzed are Kazan, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Komarno, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia and Tirana.

This book focuses on the spatial transformations in the most dynamically evolving urban areas of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. It links the restructuring of the built environment with the underlying processes and the forces of socio-economic reforms. The detailed accounts of the spatial transformations in a key moment of urban history in the region enhance our understanding of the linkages between society and space.

This book focuses on the spatial transformations in the most dynamically evolving urban areas of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. It links the restructuring of the built environment with the underlying processes and the forces of socio-economic reforms. The detailed accounts of the spatial transformations in a key moment of urban history in the region enhance our understanding of the linkages between society and space.

Cities After Socialism is the first substantial and authoritative analysis of the role of cities in the transition to capitalism that is occurring in the former communist states of Easter Europe and the Soviet Union. It will be of equal value to urban specialists and to those who have a more general interest in the most dramatic socio-political event of the contemporary era - the collapse of state socialism. Written by an international group of leading experts in the field, Cities after socialism asks and answers some crucial questions about the nature of the emergent post-socialist urban system and the conflicts and inequalities which are being generated by the processes of change now occurring.

The cultural landscapes of Central European cities reflect over half a century of socialism and are marked by the Marxists' vision of a utopian landscape. Architecture, urban planning and the visual arts were considered to be powerful means of expressing the 'people's power'. However, since the velvet revolutions of 1989, this urban scenery has been radically transformed by new forces and trends, infused by the free market, democracy and liberalization. This has led to 'landscape cleansing' and 'recycling', as these former communist nations used new architectural, functional and social forms to transform their urbanscapes, their meanings and uses. Comparing case studies from different post-socialist cities, this book examines the culturally conditional variations between local powers and structures despite the similarities in the general processes and systems. It considers the contemporary cultural landscapes of these post-socialist cities as a dynamic fusion of the old communist forms and new free-market meanings, features and democratic practices, of global influences and local icons. The book assesses whether these urbanscapes clearly reflect the social, cultural and political conditions and aspirations of these transitional countries and so a critical analysis of them provides important insights.

Explores the current and future trajectories of the paradigm of postsocialism. If socialism did not end as abruptly as is sometimes perceived, what remnants of it linger today and will continue to linger? Moreover, if postsocialism is an umbrella term for the uncertain times of various transitions that followed in socialism’s wake, how might the “post” be rendered complicated by the notion that the unfinished business of socialism continues to influence the trajectory of the future? The Future of (Post)Socialism examines this unfinished business through various disciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that seek to illuminate the postsocialist future as a cultural and social fact. Drawn from the fields of history, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, education, linguistics, literature, and cultural studies, contributors analyze various cultural forms and practices of the formerly socialist cultural spaces of Eastern Europe. In so doing, they question the teleology of linear transitional narratives and of assumptions about postsocialist linear progress, concluding that things operate more as continued interruptions of a perpetually liminal state rather than as neat endings and new beginnings. John Frederick Bailyn is Professor of Linguistics at Stony Brook University, State University of New York, and the author of The Syntax of Russian. Dijana Jelača teaches in the Film Department at Brooklyn College and is the author of Dislocated Screen Memory: Narrating Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Cinema. Danijela Lugarić is Assistant Professor of East-Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the coeditor (with Jelača and Maša Kolanović) of The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia: (Post)Socialism and Its Other.

Iron Curtains has been awarded Honorable Mention for the 2013 ASEEES Harvard Davis Center Book Prize! The prize is sponsored by Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and is awarded annually by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography. Utilizing research conducted primarily with residents of Sofia, Bulgaria, Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs, and Privatization of Space in the Post-socialist City explores the human dimension of new city-building that has emerged in East Europe. Features original data, illustrations, and theory on the process of privatization of resources in societies undergoing fundamental socio-economic transformations, such as those in Eastern Europe Represents the sole in-depth monograph on contemporary urbanism in Southeast Europe Makes a broader statement on issues of urbanism in Europe and other parts of the world while highlighting the complex connections between cultures and cities