Reclaiming Socialist Space, Caricaturing Socialism? Urban Interventions and the Cleansing of Political Content in State‐Socialist Public Housing After 2008

Abstract

AbstractThis article introduces the concept of retro‐utopian urbanism to analyse post‐2008 urban interventions in three state‐socialist public housing neighbourhoods in Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study of Petržalka (Bratislava, Slovakia), Lasnamäe (Tallinn, Estonia) and Bródno (Warsaw, Poland), I examine different approaches to combating the stigma associated with socialist housing. It is shown that these urban interventions are a double‐edged sword, in that they challenge the widespread notion that socialist urbanism is totalitarian by weakening the significance of socialist ideas. The article argues that urban interventions contribute to foreclosing socialist alternatives in the present when they normalise “postsocialism”, a term I use to refer to neoliberal capitalism’s ideological framework that sees socialism as obsolete. The concept of retro‐utopian urbanism provides a lens through which to reflect on the limitations and challenges of urban interventionism, and to rethink the debate on, and the persistence of, postsocialism in and beyond Eastern Europe.