Post-Socialist Urban Forms: Notes From Sofia

Abstract

This essay reviews some key processes shaping the transformation of urban forms that have occurred in Sofia, Bulgaria since the end of socialism in 1989. It introduces quantitative and qualitative evidence of five processes of change: growth of the urban periphery, decrease of spatial scale, privatization of space, land-use diversification, and pluralization of styles. Although Sofia's built fabric is generally changing in ways familiar to scholars of spatial restructuring in capitalist cities, there are important local, post-socialist nuances that affect these processes in terms of the pace and intensity with which they proceed.

Keywords:

• Sofia
• post-socialism
• urban form