In Search of Postmodern City. Urban Changes and Continuities in East Central Europe between Late Socialism and Capitalism (1970–2000)

0582423 - ÚSD 2024 RIV SK eng J - Journal Article
Spurný, Matěj - Roubal, Petr - Moravčíková, H. - Szalay, P.
In Search of Postmodern City. Urban Changes and Continuities in East Central Europe between Late Socialism and Capitalism (1970–2000).
Architektúra a urbanizmus. Roč. 57, 3/4 (2023), s. 158-161. ISSN 0044-8680
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA22-17295S
Institutional support: RVO:68378114
Keywords : post-socialist urban transformation * postmodern city * Central East Europe * privatisation
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Impact factor: 0.4, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.architektura-urbanizmus.sk/wp-content/uploads/AU_3-4_2023_editorial.pdf

How is it possible to relate the dramatic story of the metropolises of Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 20th century? Perhaps the path of these cities from late socialism into restored capitalism could be framed as a tale of emancipation from the dead hand of rigid central planning, highlighting the potential of a deregulated market and the polyphony of democratic participation. Or conversely, as the search for an escape from the failure of modernist utopias, bringing in its wake the daring architectural experiments and the chaotic urbanistic reality of postmodernism. Yet no less justifiably, we could also speak of the self-destruction of urban-planning expertise, a narrative of the gradually weakening position of architects and even more so planners as they relinquished the field to spontaneous development, lay actors, political compromises, and primarily neoliberal commodification as the chief factor shaping the growth of cities in the wild 1990s. An unleashing of creative potential – or a new hegemony grounded in “creative destruction” and deregulation of public planning?
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0350487