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Socialist and Post-Socialist Urbanisms

Socialist and Post-Socialist Urbanisms

Critical Reflections from a Global Perspective

by Lisa B W. Drummond and Douglas Young

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

34 b&w illustrations, 14 b&w maps, 2 b&w tables

Digital download
9781442632844
Published: February 2020

Digital download
9781442632851
Published: February 2020

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise
Awards

Socialist cities have special qualities which endure in particular, subtle, and often under-theorized ways. This book engages with socialism on a global scale, as well as the variety of socialist urbanisms and post-socialist urbanisms, and the range of ways in which globalization intersects with changes in socialist and post-socialist cities.

Offering a unique international comparative focus, the book’s fourteen case studies from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa are grouped under three main themes: housing experiences and life trajectories, planning and architecture, and governance and social order. Featuring contributors from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and research foci, Socialist and Post-Socialist Urbanisms brings together a collection of essays on cities that are often overlooked in mainstream urban studies.

Introduction: Socialist and Post-Socialist Urbanisms
Lisa B. Welch Drummond and Douglas Young

Part 1: Housing Experiences and Life Trajectories

1. From Socialist Moderns to Urban Poor: Gender and the Housing Question in Post-Reform Vinh City
Christina Schwenkel

2. From ABC to Post-Industrial Suburb: Living in a Vision
Bo Larsson (Translated from Swedish by Aidan Allen)

3. The Rise and Fall of Collective Housing: Hanoi between Vision and Decision
Lisa B. Welch Drummond and Nguyen Thanh Binh

4. Wrestling with the Soviet State: A Life History of Housing in Leningrad
Thomas Borén and Michael Gentile

Part 2: Planning and Architecture: Designing Socialist and Post-Socialist Urbanisms

5. Only Visions: The Case of South City, Prague
Steven Logan

6. Phnom Penh During and after Socialism: Permanence and Reshaping of the Urban Centrality
Gabriel Fauveaud

7. Planning for “Renaissance”: Vanguard Urbanism in Addis Ababa
Jesse McClelland

8. Recuperate, Recycle, Reuse: Adaptive Solutions for the Socialist Architecture of Bucharest
Laura Visan

9. The Paradox of Preserving Modernism: Heritage Debates at Alexanderplatz, Berlin
Markus Kip and Douglas Young

Part 3: Governance and Social Order

10. China’s “New” Socialist City: From Red Aesthetics to Standard Urban Governance
Carolyn Cartier

11. Property Relations and the Politics of the Suburban Living Place in the Post-Communist City: Transition Stories from Tirana, Albania
Marcela Mele and Andrew E.G. Jonas

12. Urban Natures in Managua, Nicaragua
Laura Shillington

13. The Reshaping of Post-Socialist Hồ Chí Minh City: Leisure Practices and Social Control
Marie Gibert and Emmanuelle Peyvel

14. Mapping Khujand: The Governance of Spatial Representation in Post-Socialist Tajikistan
Wladimir Sgibnev

Conclusion
Douglas Young and Lisa B. Welch Drummond

Contributors

Lisa B.W. Drummond is an associate professor in the Urban Studies Program In the Department of Social Science at York University.

Douglas Young is an associate professor in the Urban Studies Program in the Department of Social Science at York University.

"What this volume does at its best is break the unifying banner of socialist modernity by uncovering how socialist and post-socialist modes of dwelling, planning, and governing unfold through everyday experiences, where "deeply rooted codes rather than formal rules" prevail. And it is exactly that balance between the global reach and at the same time local stories that one should be eager to discover when starting this exciting journey into socialist and post-socialist urbanisms."
~Vera Smirnova, Journal of Eurasian Geography and Economics

"Socialist urban legacies are an integral and vital part of the modern world, without which it would look different. Furthermore, these legacies are still in effect and reveal their traces in various spheres, sometimes the most unexpected ones. The authors’ efforts to analyse those influences ‘from around the socialist world’ (p. 3) is thus meaningful, timely, and promising."
~Mikhail Ilchenko, Antipode

"This book contributes original research on socialist and post-socialist urbanisms, which is necessary for anyone who strives to understand how past decisions still and very much influence present production of space and of spatial imaginations, within either a socialist or post-socialist context."
~Oana-Ramona Ilovan, Babes-Bolyai University, Connections: A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists

International Planning History Society Book Prize 2022 - Third Prize (2022) - Winner