Contested Heritage: Property Rights on Urban Land in Transition in Post-Socialist Warsaw

Abstract

For more than thirty years after the end of the Polish People’s Republic, both public and academic debates on property reprivatization in Warsaw has been shaped by the false assumption that the Bierut Decree and the consequent communalization of urban land in post-WWII Warsaw were informed by the hostile Soviet ideology. Based on archival evidence, we argue that the Bierut Decree was to a significant extent shaped by the Swiss urban planner Hans Bernoulli and is deeply rooted in the European land-reform movements of the early 20th century. Furthermore, taking several case studies as examples, we illustrate how the unregulated process of property reprivatization, ongoing in Warsaw since 1989, has reshaped architecture and urban space. We show that land reprivatization reintroduced the problems of urban development that the communalization of land was supposed to cure. We argue that in light of present global challenges formulated in the 2015 UN Goals for Sustainable Development and despite the ideological debate surrounding the Bierut Decree, the common land of Warsaw is a unique policy achievement and a heritage in need of protection.