Multiple transformations of post-socialist cities: Multiple outcomes?

Abstract

After the collapse of the socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, urban environment began to change and the term post-socialist city appeared in urban theories. The post-socialist urban transition has been broadly examined in order to understand the processes transforming previously socialist cities. Although the essential differences between capitalist and post-socialist cities are described, there is a gap in understanding and interpreting the various trajectories of urban development among individual post-socialist cities. By using the conceptual framework of multiple transformations and methodical approaches of urban ecology, this paper reveals specifics of urban and socio-demographic changes of Brno and Bratislava and points to the limitations of the framework when evaluating divergent paths of post-socialist transformation. The spatio-temporal analysis provides an empirical evidence of distinct patterns of post-socialist transformations, which are related to the heterogeneity of socialist legacies, residential policy, and institutional factors with the capital status in particular, and shows that multiple outcomes of transformation are produced even in similar-sized cities with a common history of the same socialist state.