Cities: Post-socialist

Abstract

The essence of the socialist and post-socialist city might be gained by studying the experience of the former socialist countries in Europe. Berlin, Budapest, and Moscow encapsulate the characteristics of the post-socialist city. Generalizations can be made about such cities in terms of their external, representational, and material form, their economic functions, and the social relationships amongst their populations. The differences between the socialist and post-socialist city are visible in three processes: the gentrification of parts of the central city, the creation of a central business district and more luxurious shopping centers, and an influx and visible presence of foreign migrants. Under socialism the state allocated land free of charge and for use in perpetuity and no value was placed on location. The process of restitution constitutes one of the thorniest problems in these societies and is playing an important role in the stratification and shaping of post-socialist cities. The right to dispose of property on the market has given rise to property booms and the proliferation of real estate agents, phenomena unknown in the socialist city. The market economy of the post-socialist city intensifies any existing tendencies to segregation through the processes of gentrification and suburbanization. Uninhabited, privately constructed, luxury housing on the one hand, and homelessness and squatting on the other, are features of post-socialist cities that were absent from socialist cities.