Article | Open Access
Totalitarian Flower Pavilion: The Dubious Post-Socialist Legacy of Contemporary Eastern European Cities
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Abstract: More than three decades after the collapse of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, local urban processes are still very often associated with that historic period or post-socialist transformation. This article aims to undermine the concept of the post-socialist city itself as reductionist, given the crucial importance of factors that differ from the influence of the pre-1989/91 times. The article confronts the discussion on the applicability of the post-socialist framework with field research conducted in selected Polish and Ukrainian cities, in particular the examples of the Kvity Ukrainy (Flowers of Ukraine) protest movement in Kyiv, Ukraine, and the 2003 spatial planning reform’s results in Krakow, Poland. The analysis is based on interviews with representatives of different actors involved in the policymaking process, such as local government representatives, policy advisors, urban planners, journalists, business circles, and members of grassroots initiatives.
Keywords: CEE; Krakow; Kvity Ukrainy; Kyiv; policymaking; spatial planning; state socialism; urban policy
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© Łukasz Drozda. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.