Comparative Debates in Post-Socialist Urban Studies

Abstract

Recent urban research on post-socialist cities includes a wide range of empirical studies dealing with processes of sociospatial change since 1990. Despite this accumulated knowledge, studies that explicitly question the underlying comparative assumptions involving post-socialist cities are rare. Against that backdrop, this study seeks to contribute to a self-reflective debate on understanding post-socialist cities vis-à-vis wider debates on comparative methods in urban studies. The starting point is the new interest in comparisons as a way to stimulate critical thinking in urban research in the wake of postcolonial studies. The main intention is to transfer some parts of this debate to the context of post-socialist urban studies, and to raise awareness of the often implicit comparative assumptions that underpin such research. Drawing on an extensive comparative study of sociospatial differentiation in Budapest, Vilnius, Sofia, Leipzig, and St. Petersburg, this article focuses on the challenge of explaining the diversity of post-socialist urban forms in relation to an increasingly interconnected globalized world. The argument here is for the need to widen the research agenda on post-socialist cities in order to raise consciousness for implicit comparisons with Western experiences, to address the global interconnectedness of the urban experience, and to call the reification of the post-socialist city as the basic entity for comparison into question.

Keywords:

• comparative urbanism
• post-socialist urban development
• entangled modernities
• socio-spatial differentiation