Introduction to the Postsocialist Europe section

Abstract

Unlike the previous sections on China and Russia, where the process of urban shrinkage was analyzed within one country, this section attempts to offer insight into this process for the group of states collectively known as “postsocialist Europe”. 1 The group, which largely consists of eastern European countries, demonstrates a “mosaic” of different pathways of urban development, including the process of shrinkage (Tsenkova and Nedović-Budić 2006; Sykora 2009; Haase et al. 2013). The distinguishing feature of all these countries in the context of the issue discussed in this book is not so much their geographical or cultural proximity as their common path of development after World War II. This path was marked by the prolonged operation of a centrally planned economy, with strong interference of the central government in the process of urbanization and spatial planning. The transition from a centralized command system to a democratic market-oriented one, however, occurred in different countries in different ways and at different speeds (e.g., gradualism vs. “shock therapy”; cf. Bontje 2004; Stryjakiewicz 2013). Moreover, the institutional framework of this process has varied between countries (e.g., membership in the European Union). Some of the states, created after the break-up of Yugoslavia, were still at war from 1992 to 1995. The divergent development paths are reflected in the breadth and depth of research on the process of urban shrinkage in addition to the quality and availability of statistical data and other reference resources (in the case of some countries, online reports are the predominant source).