A Socially Resilient Urban Transition? The Contested Landscapes of Apartment Building Extensions in Two Post-communist Cities

Abstract

Even though social processes across the globe are increasingly being theorised through a resilience lens, this has rarely been the case within the domain of everyday life in the city. The resilience debate also remains highly geographically selective, as regions that have undergone far-reaching systemic change over the past 20 years-including the post-communist states of the former Soviet Union and eastern and central Europe (ECE)-generally remain omitted from it. In order to address such knowledge gaps, an investigation is made of the relationships between social resilience and micro-level socio-spatial change in the built environment of the post-communist city, by focusing on the institutional, spatial and economic underpinnings of apartment building extensions (ABEs) on multistorey residential buildings in the Macedonian capital of Skopje and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Both cities contain a wide variety of ABEs, whose reinforced concrete frame constructions often rival the host buildings in terms of size and function. By exploring the architectural and social landscapes created by the extensions, it is hoped to highlight their embeddedness in a set of policy decisions and coping strategies, as well as their controversial implications on the present and future use of urban space.

Urban Geographies of Hesitant Transition: Tracing Socioeconomic Segregation in Post‐Ceauşescu Bucharest

“…Second, research on CEE cities tends to be geographically selective, as it was during socialist times, being primarily confined to the largest metropolitan regions of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and, more recently, Estonia and Russia (Borén and Gentile, ; Marcińczak and Sagan, ), whereas cities in Southeastern Europe attracted sporadic and more recent attention (Sýkora and Bouzarovski, ). Providing valuable commentary on contemporary social and spatial urban change in the Balkans, the existing studies (Chelcea, 2003; 2006; Dawidson, ; Deda and Tsenkova, ; Mišetić and Mišetić, ; Hirt and Kovachev, ; Hirt, ; Brade et al ., ; Speveć and Klempić‐Bogadi, ; Nase and Okaçki, ; Vöckler, ; Bouzarovski, ; Bouzarovski et al ., ; Petrovici, ; Rufat, ) do not, in fact, illustrate actual segregation patterns . Some of these studies describe processes of socio‐spatial restructuring, but most studies on the SEE city's spatial changes target singular spatial expressions of socioeconomic decompression (e.g.…”

A Transformative Turn towards Sustainability in the Context of Urban-Related Studies? A Systematic Review from 1957 to 2016

“…Even though urban transformations and also urban transitions "have quickly become widely shared normative catch phrases in science and policy that evoke (radical) change for urban sustainability" [11] (p. 18), it is still a matter of discussion what is actually meant by these terms beyond a general understanding of transformation as change [11]. Nevertheless, this definitional blurriness reaches beyond the currently predominating urban transformations to sustainability debate: In other studies on urban areas, which do not have a focus on sustainability but on issues such as migration, the built environment, urban culture or urban economy, the term urban transformations is used with a variety of different meanings by different scientific disciplines and even within the same scientific communities (see for example the differences regarding the use of the terms urban transformation/transition between [12][13][14][15]). This indicates that urban transformations can be considered as a buzz word which is used in multiple ways in very different contexts and does not have a clear definition.…”

Multiple transformations: theorizing energy vulnerability as a socio-spatial phenomenon

“…Overall, this process has been easier in countries with a longer tradition and higher prevalence of co-operative dwellings, and instances where the privatization process did not lead to a fragmentation of housing tenure. Also of relevance have been incentives from municipalities during privatization, as well as 'do-it-yourself' upgrading by home-owners (Bouzarovski, Gentile, and Salukvadze 2010). Economic factors also have matter: a member of a Polish energy efficiency foundation pointed out that even though such 'programmes have supported all stakeholders', the main beneficiaries have been 'housing co-operatives, recently also housing associations -organizations that have creditworthiness ' (personal communication, 19 December 2014).…”