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Marxist thought and the city
\"One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre first published Marxist Thought and the City in the original French in 1972, marking a pivotal point in his evolution as a thinker and an important precursor to his groundbreaking work of urban sociology, The Production of Space. Marxist Thought and the City--inwhich he reviews the work of Marx and Engels for commentary and analysis on the life and growth of the city--now appears in English translation for the first time. Rooted in orthodox Marxism's analyses of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, with extensive quotes from the work of Marx and Engels, this book describes the city's transition from life under feudalism to modern industrial capitalism. In doing so it highlights the various forces that sought to maintain power in the struggles between the medieval aristocracy and the urban guilds, and amid the growth of banking and capital. Providing vital background and supplementary material to Lefebvre's other books, including The Urban Revolution and Right to the City, Marxist Thought and the City is indispensable for students and scholars of urbanism, Marxism, social geography, early modern history, and the history of economic thought\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Unfinished Utopia
Unfinished Utopiais a social and cultural history of Nowa Huta, dubbed Poland's \"first socialist city\" by Communist propaganda of the 1950s. Work began on the new town, located on the banks of the Vistula River just a few miles from the historic city of Kraków, in 1949. By contrast to its older neighbor, Nowa Huta was intended to model a new kind of socialist modernity and to be peopled with \"new men,\" themselves both the builders and the beneficiaries of this project of socialist construction. Nowa Huta was the largest and politically most significant of the socialist cities built in East Central Europe after World War II; home to the massive Lenin Steelworks, it epitomized the Stalinist program of forced industrialization that opened the cities to rural migrants and sought fundamentally to transform the structures of Polish society.
Focusing on Nowa Huta's construction and steel workers, youth brigade volunteers, housewives, activists, and architects, Katherine Lebow explores their various encounters with the ideology and practice of Stalinist mobilization by seeking out their voices in memoirs, oral history interviews, and archival records, juxtaposing these against both the official and unofficial transcripts of Stalinism. Far from the gray and regimented landscape we imagine Stalinism to have been, the fledgling city was a colorful and anarchic place where the formerly disenfranchised (peasants, youth, women) hastened to assert their leading role in \"building socialism\"-but rarely in ways that authorities had anticipated.
eBook
The policy-making process and social learning in Russia : the case of housing policy
\"In a relevant and cutting edge analysis, this book examines policy-making in Russia as a process of social learning, using the case of housing policy. Centering its study around three explanatory variables - actors, institutions and ideas - it argues that Russia's hybrid institutional environment reduces the competition of policy ideas, both at the stage of policy elaboration by the community of state and non-state policy experts, and also at the stage of policy adoption by parliament. Consequently policies only partially satisfy key societal needs, and require frequent revisions of the paradigmatic basis of policy. The book also highlights the importance of gradual institutional evolution, as a mode of policy development that produces fundamental transformation of policy over time and changes in government which can result in abrupt shift in policy\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Post-Soviet social
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. InPost-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russiabeyondthe Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state.
Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s,Post-Soviet Socialuses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.
eBook
The Rise of the Paris Red Belt
From 1920 until the present, the working-class suburbs of Paris, known as the Red Belt, have constituted the heart of French Communism, providing the Party not only with its most solid electoral base but with much of its cultural identity as well. Focusing on the northeastern suburb of Bobigny, Tyler Stovall explores the nature of working-class life and politicization as he skillfully documents how this unique region and political culture came into being. The Rise of the Paris Red Belt reveals that the very process of urban development in metropolitan Paris and the suburbs provided the most important opportunities for the local establishment of Communist influence. The rapid increase in Paris' suburban population during the early twentieth century outstripped the development of the local urban infrastructure. Consequently, many of these suburbs, often represented to their new residents as charming country villages, soon degenerated into suburban slums. Stovall argues that Communists forged a powerful political block by mobilizing the disillusionment and by improving some of the worst aspects of suburban life. As a social history of twentieth-century France, The Rise of the Paris Red Belt calls into question traditional assumptions about the history of both French Communism and the French working-class. It suggests that those interested in working-class politics should consider the significance of residential and consumer issues as well as those relating to the workplace. It also suggests that urban history and urban development should not be considered autonomous phenomena, but rather expressions of class relations. The Rise of the Paris Red Belt brings to life a world whose citizens, though often overlooked, are nonetheless the history of modern France. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates
University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.
eBook
Multiple Transformations
This paper develops a conceptual framework for interpreting the process of urban change in post-communist cities. The departure from the legacies of the communist past has been effected through multiple transformation dynamics of institutional, social and urban change. While institutional reforms have been largely accomplished, the adjustment of urban land use patterns to new societal conditions is still ongoing. Hence, post-communist cities are still cities in transition. Using this interpretative framework and referring to a wide spectrum of academic work, the paper provides an overview of urban restructuring in post-communist countries over the past two decades with a specific focus on the examples of mutual integration of the three fields of transformation.
Journal Article
Is Chinese urbanisation unique?
The future of cities in China is becoming increasingly important, not just within China but globally. China’s urban population has grown from about 200 million in 1980 to about 800 million or 59% in 2018: that is about twice the total population of the USA and 1.5 times the total population of the EU. China has over 100 cities with over a million people. There are also more and more papers being written about urbanisation in China. However, urban development in China is very unlike urban development in the west or in many other developing countries. Despite the growth of a large, dynamic market sector, China is still a Communist country in terms of the pervasive and leading role of the party and the state. The question posed in this commentary is whether urbanisation in China is unique; or, to be more precise, whether the post-reform Chinese experience of urbanisation since around 1980 is so unusual that it constitutes an entirely unique case which lies outside conventional generalisations about urban change processes. This question links to recent discussions of comparative urbanism in which various scholars have grappled with questions about the generalisability of urban theory and experience. The tentative conclusion is that Chinese urbanisation may be unique and is certainly not easily subsumed into standard discussions about urban development and urban change.
中国城市的未来变得越来越重要，这不仅仅是对中国而言，对全球而言都是如此。中国的城市人口从1980年的2亿左右增长到2018年的8亿左右，即59%，是美国总人口的两倍，也是欧盟总人口的1.5倍。中国有100多个城市的人口超过100万。关于中国城市化的论文也越来越多。然而，中国的城市发展与西方（或许还有许多其他发展中国家）的城市发展非常不同。尽管中国有一个庞大而充满活力的市场部门，但就党和政府的普遍主导作用而言，中国仍然是一个共产主义国家。这篇评论中提出的问题是中国的城市化是否独一无二；或者，更准确地说，中国自1980年左右以来经历的改革后城市化是否如此不寻常，以至于构成了一个完全独特的案例，超出了对城市变革过程的常规概括。这个问题与最近关于比较城市化的讨论有关，在这种讨论中，许多学者都在努力解决关于城市理论和经验的普遍性的问题。我们的初步结论是，中国的城市化或许是独一无二的，肯定不容易被纳入关于城市发展和城市变革的标准讨论。
Journal Article
The kaleidoscope of gentrification in post-socialist cities
Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have transformed from a centrally planned communist system to a market economy and liberal democracy after 1990. The rapidly changing social and power relations have been gradually manifested in the spatial pattern of cities. After the turn of the millennium, a growing number of papers reported that the regeneration of inner-city neighbourhoods intensified, generating population change in certain areas. Authors writing on urban renewal and gentrification in CEE have been inspired by the typology of gentrification elaborated in Western contexts, even though historical legacies and specific local conditions set serious limitations on the use of such concepts. The aim of this paper is to scrutinise the essential features of urban change and gentrification in post-socialist cities, discussing the main pre-conditions for, actors in and the resulting types of this process. Existing literature in the field has been systematically collected, analysed and compared. According to our findings the classic stage model of gentrification cannot be used in post-socialist cities, partly because the process is still in its infancy and partly because several hybrid forms of gentrification-like processes hide the spatial effects of market-based renewal. The variegated forms of urban change are the result of historical legacies, path dependencies and a set of factors embedded in local contexts. The paper highlights some of the research gaps in the field.
1990年后，中欧和东欧 (CEE) 国家从中央计划的共产主义制度转变为市场经济和自由民主。迅速变化的社会和权力关系已经逐渐体现在城市的空间格局中。在世纪之交之后，越来越多的报纸报道，市中心街区的重建力度加大，导致某些地区的人口发生变化。阐述中欧和东欧城市更新和绅士化的作者从西方背景下阐述的绅士化形态汲取灵感，然而，历史遗产和特定的地方条件对这种概念的使用构成了严重的限制。本文的目的是审视后社会主义城市中城市变化和绅士化的基本特征，讨论这一过程的主要先决条件、参与者和结果类型。我们系统收集、分析和比较了该领域的现有文献。根据我们的发现，典型的绅士化阶段模型不能在后社会主义城市中使用，一则这一过程仍处于初级阶段，二则几种混合形式的类绅士化样过程掩盖了基于市场的更新的空间效应。城市变化的多样化形式是历史遗产、路径依赖和当地环境的一系列内置因素的结果。本文强调了该领域的一些研究空白。
Journal Article
Modeling Post-Socialist Urbanization
Der Autor untersucht die Stadtentwicklung von Budapest von 1990 bis 2010. Diese Periode ist durch die signifikante Abnahme einer kommunal gelenkten Stadtplanung gekennzeichnet: Angesichts der strukturellen Vermächtnisse sozialistischer Urbanisierung, der Dezentralisierung von Regierung und Ressourcen und der Auswirkung eines postsozialistischen Kulturkampfes wird ein Trend analysiert, der zu unklaren Kompetenzen und damit zu einem Versagen übergeordneter Planung führt. Die Konsequenz daraus ist eine Zunahme investmentgetriebener privater Großprojekte: diese entziehen sich naturgemäß einer übergeordneten Lenkung, speziell dann, wenn diese zu schwach ausgeprägt ist. Die vorliegende Modellanalyse stellt dieses Phänomen als beispielhaft für die Entwicklung post-sozialistischer Städte dar.
This book examines Budapest’s urban development, planning, and governance between 1990 and 2010. In the face of socialist urbanization’s structural legacies, the recent radical decentralization of government and resources and the impacts of a post-socialist war of ideologies, a trend is analyzed which leads to an urbanization mostly characterized by business-dominated development projects not integrated into any grand urban design. The author claims this outcome to be typical of the development of post-socialist cities and presents it in an abstract model establishing links between particular historical background conditions and the phenomena of Budapest’s recent urbanization. With a conversation between Kees Christiaanse, Ákos Moravánszky, and the author.
eBook
A Socially Resilient Urban Transition? The Contested Landscapes of Apartment Building Extensions in Two Post-communist Cities
Even though social processes across the globe are increasingly being theorised through a resilience lens, this has rarely been the case within the domain of everyday life in the city. The resilience debate also remains highly geographically selective, as regions that have undergone far-reaching systemic change over the past 20 years—including the post-communist states of the former Soviet Union and eastern and central Europe (ECE)—generally remain omitted from it. In order to address such knowledge gaps, an investigation is made of the relationships between social resilience and micro-level socio-spatial change in the built environment of the post-communist city, by focusing on the institutional, spatial and economic underpinnings of apartment building extensions (ABEs) on multistorey residential buildings in the Macedonian capital of Skopje and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Both cities contain a wide variety of ABEs, whose reinforced concrete frame constructions often rival the host buildings in terms of size and function. By exploring the architectural and social landscapes created by the extensions, it is hoped to highlight their embeddedness in a set of policy decisions and coping strategies, as well as their controversial implications on the present and future use of urban space.
Journal Article