Spatial Conflicts and Divisions in Post-socialist Cities

This book presents cross-national insights into spatial fragmentation in post-socialist cities in Europe. Trying to rethink the heritage of the last 30 years of transformation and grasp current processes taking urban units of various categories as examples, the book exemplifies typical or unique causes of political, social and ethnic disintegration of cities in Central and Eastern Europe. Presenting spatial studies into different cases of conflict in a cross-national context, the authors apply concepts of contested and divided cities, urban geopolitics, cultural atavism, contested heritage, etc.

The book is divided into four parts. The first part raises the issue of genesis, development and contemporary discrepancies of cities divided by political and state borders. The second part includes chapters which deal with the impact of ongoing geopolitical divisions, wars, and ideologies on the social and political tensions as well as their polarising effect on urban territory. The third part comprises reflections on controversial relations of ethnic and national culture with urban space. The fourth part deals with socio-economic transformation of post-socialist cities which went through transition of old patterns of spatial planning and attempts to establish more rational and justice spatial order.

Cross-national insights into spatial fragmentation in post-socialist cities in Europe Presents unfamiliar patterns of ethnopolitical conflicts and peace coexisting in urban space Text analyses supplemented by maps, figures and photographs

Résumé
"The intended audience of this book includes several categories: academics ... politicians and local managers, and those from general public interested in or affected by significant spatial conflicts and divisions. ... the merit of the book is to offer an overview about this part of the European continent, which suffered for decades because of totalitarian regimes, and of which some countries/ regions are still captive in a long urban transition and more." (Gabriel Camara, Eurasian Geography and Economics, May 13, 2022)

Contenu
Conflicts and divisions of urban space. Linking post-socialist and global discourses.- Part I: Geopolitical conflicts and divisions in urban space. Between past and present.- The role of the state border in socio-cultural changes of a divided town. Cieszyn / eský Tín in a regional context.- Divided towns on the Polish-German border Dissimilar sisters?- Kosovska Mitrovica as two parallel cities in the twenty-first century.- Part II: Military conflicts and post-war divisions in urban space. Between hard and soft power.- Divided space or divided society? The case of Vukovar.- Ethnoterritorial divisions and urban geopolitics in post-Yugoslav Mostar.- How do state and military borders divide the urban spaces of Donbas? Cases of Milove/Chertkovo and Zolote.