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Recent urban research on post-socialist cities includes a wide range of empirical studies dealing with processes of sociospatial change since 1990. Despite this accumulated knowledge, studies that explicitly question the underlying comparative assumptions involving post-socialist cities are rare. Against that backdrop, this study seeks to contribute to a selfreflective debate on understanding post-socialist cities vis-à-vis wider debates on comparative methods in urban studies. The starting point is the new interest in comparisons as a way to stimulate critical thinking in urban research in the wake of postcolonial studies. The main intention is to transfer some parts of this debate to the context of post-socialist urban studies, and to raise awareness of the often implicit comparative assumptions that underpin such research. Drawing on an extensive comparative study of sociospatial differentiation in Budapest, Vilnius, Sofia, Leipzig, and St. Petersburg, this article focuses on the challenge of explaining the diversity of post-socialist urban forms in relation to an increasingly interconnected globalized world. The argument here is for the need to widen the research agenda on post-socialist cities in order to raise consciousness for implicit comparisons with Western experiences, to address the global interconnectedness of the urban experience, and to call the reification of the post-socialist city as the basic entity for comparison into question. [Key words: comparative urbanism, post-socialist urban development, entangled modernities, socio-spatial differentiation.]

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The main purpose of this paper has been to identify ongoing changes in post-socialist large housing estates and to clarify the main factors underpinning them. The transformations in question were analysed in two dimensions: a social dimension encompassing structural socio-demographic and socio-economic changes among inhabitants, and a spatial dimension relating to socio-spatial, functional and physical (morphological and physiognomic) changes. The main question concerned the ways in which large housing estates built during the communist era have changed under the new socio-demographic, political and economic conditions emerging following the collapse of communism. The study was thus based on a review of the available literature.

Kurzfassung Das Jahr 1997 markiert einen Wendepunkt in der Entwicklung der ostdeutschen Cityrandgebiete: viele Altbauquartiere können nach einer Phase des Exodus wieder deutliche Einwohnerzuwächse verbuchen. Der Zeitpunkt der Trendumkehr fällt zusammen mit der Ausbildung eines Überangebots an Wohnraum und sinkenden Mietpreisen, welche die Situation auf den ostdeutschen Wohnungsmärkten bis heute bestimmen und eine relativ große Wahlfreiheit bei der Wohnungssuche ermöglichen. Unter diesen Bedingungen verstärken sich die sozialen Gegensätze zwischen Entleerungs- und Zuwanderungsgebieten. Gleichzeitig zeichnet sich eine kulturelle Differenzierung zwischen einzelnen städtischen Teilräumen durch die Ausbildung charakteristischer Milieus ab. Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ist es einen tieferen Einblick in die Entwicklungen in den citynahen Altbaugebieten seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre zu vermitteln. Den jüngsten Tendenzen wird am Beispiel des sozialen Wandels in gründerzeitlichen Innenstadtrandgebieten der Stadt Leipzig über einen Zeitraum von acht Jahren nachgegangen.