European Journal of Spatial Development

Activist Architects Toolbox: Challenging the Austere Policies of Urban Governance in European Periphery

Sonja Dragović — 2024-07-29

This paper aims to identify the ways in which socially engaged architectural practices contest the policies of neoliberal urban governance in post-socialist cities, permanently situated at the European periphery due to their economic and political position within global capitalism. The analysis is based on three case studies of practices from the Croatian context, whose work is geographically diverse, demonstrates a variety of approaches to social engagement in architecture, and has been shaped by the conditions of austerity in the aftermath of the post-2008 crisis. Results show a broad range of actions contesting the neoliberal urban governance and a variety of mechanisms through which socially engaged architectural practices problematized the conditions of spatial production and politicized their communities, professional networks, and public spaces. It can be argued that these efforts contributed to changes in the public discourse concerning the relation between social inequalities and spatial conditions, and the importance of articulating public and common interests in the processes of urban governance. As the struggles to protect spatial resources from enclosure and privatisation continue amid the entangled economic, political and climate crises, the slow and relational work of socially engaged architectural practices and its potential political effects continue to grow in importance.

Infrastructural Railway Barriers and Spatial Segregation in Sofia

Pavel Yanchev — 2024-09-02

The history reveals that in the pre-industrial years Sofia plain regional urban metabolism was almost fully circular. This rapid urbanisation processes at the end of 19th and throughout the 20th century have unfolded large industrial and extraction activity and concentrated around one third of the country’s population in the capital city. With the industrialisation and the development of the railways its connection on international level the urban metabolism then turned into linear. The destruction of environmental qualities have affected mostly the poorer neighbourhoods and residents. Infrastructures began to divide the city but as well have implications on the social fabric. Sofia is segregated by its main infrastructural division line – the railway corridor connecting Belgrade and Istanbul – on a poorer northern part and richer southern part. The case of Hristo Botev neighbourhood shows an extreme segregation of a residential zone from its urban environment and welfare infrastructure via total enclosure by linear and spatial infrastructural barriers. The activist mobilisation of the Gradoscope collective, described in the paper, creates a platform for an open-ended process for an expert and civil conversation about the future urban development of the railway corridor as well as for spatial and climate justice.

The Housing Question at the Intersection of Urban Planning and Housing Policies. The Case of Romania

Eniko Vincze — 2024-09-02

In international housing studies literature, housing policies and urban planning are rarely discussed concurrently, and such an approach is absent from the analysis of housing regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. My article, therefore, contributes to this field of study in both senses. It examines the changing relationship between planning and housing as a key pillar of the transformation of state socialism to neoliberal capitalism, concentrating on the role of the state in supporting housing regimes through its (de)planning practices. Two research projects compiled the analysed statistics, legislation, development strategies, and interviews with representatives of city halls and real estate agencies. Following a discussion of the article's contribution to the existing literature on housing studies, I describe the alteration of planning and housing policies in Romania as part of political economy transformations. The third section discusses these changes at the local level, in a regional magnet and competitive city. The theoretical contribution of the article is finetuned in the section discussing three aspects of the housing question and its inbuilt inequalities in capitalism. The conclusion provides a synthetic description of the changing relationship between urban planning and housing policies in the context of regime change in Romania.

Housing financialisation as a tool of managing dependent integration – the case of Hungary between 2008 and 2022

Zsuzsanna Pósfai — 2024-09-02

In this paper, we discuss the post-2008 long decade of housing financialisation in Hungary in the framework of dependent / subordinate financialisation. Our main argument is that in the long decade between 2008 and 2022, a self-reinforcing, synergetic system of housing financialisation had been built up in Hungary which served the interests of a populist government and local economic elite navigating the dependent economic position of the country. During this period, public debt was restructured towards domestic (and individual) creditors, and private debt massively expanded with the support of different programs subsidized by the government – mainly in the field of housing. This all happened in the broader context of a period of historically low interest rates and economic expansion. Currently, at the time of the multiple crises of 2022, this synergetic system of housing financialisation shows its flaws and starts to waver. As a result, a new, reorganised period of housing financialisation will likely emerge in the coming years.

The East European Socialist/Post-socialist City as a Comparative Endeavor

Sonia A Hirt — 2024-09-02

Eastern Europe has been portrayed as the West’s undeveloped “other” since the French Enlightenment. In this brief debate article, I argue that Eastern Europe’s marginalization has only been augmented, even if inadvertently so, in scholarly debates on the “socialist city” and the “post-socialist city.” Explicitly or implicitly, both debates use Western cities as a “natural” point of comparison and as examples of a more advanced type of urbanism. This approach has led to systematic underappreciation of the specific and sometimes very positive aspects of East European urbanism. The article calls for a different approach in which East European cities are studied on their own terms, rather than in perpetual comparative dependency on their Western counterparts.

The Post-socialist City, Between Inequality and Taking (Back the) Power

Pavel Yanchev — 2024-09-02

With the East (the former Second World) having lost much of its scholarly appeal since the end of the Cold War, texts about, let alone special issues on, the post-socialist city in Eastern Europe continue to be relatively sparse in urban studies. Based on the Forum on Urban Inequalities held in the city of Sofia in 2022, this dossier seeks to address this lacuna, from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. The featured articles explore the promises and challenges of socially engaged architecture, the neoliberalisation of housing and the struggles against it, and the difficulties of even defining what a (post)socialist city is or could be within urban studies. The issue makes contributions to ongoing debates on the political economy of the contemporary city, the right to housing and the housing as a common, and comparative and global urbanism.