Paper abstract:

Since 2015, Dushanbe has been experiencing one of the largest and fastest urban transformations in Central Asia. In a matter of a few years, Tajikistan’s capital has become almost unrecognizable not only for returning visitors but also for its local inhabitants. Established initially as the capital of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, Dushanbe is increasingly losing its Soviet identity as Soviet architecture and spaces are being actively demolished both by the state and private developers for the construction of new commercial high-rises and monumental administrative buildings - a process that reflects a strive for a new national identity and a more contemporary globalized urban image. This paper tracks several significant milestones of Dushanbe’s urban transformation and situates it in the context of global, regional, and local urban processes.

In 2022, countries of the former USSR are going through tectonic transformations of unprecedented magnitude due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Issues of post-socialism, sovereignty, power relations, identity and national borders once again resurfaced in academic discussions around the region. At first glance, urban space seems like a dimension of less importance for academic inquiry during such a turbulent time. However, this paper argues, that understanding urban space and the trajectory of its transformation serves as a crucial lens to study emerging social, economic, and cultural transformations in the region, and can not only provide us with knowledge about the Soviet history of this region but to understand political, economic, social, and cultural processes that have been taking place in regions such as Central Asia in the past 30 years since the collapse of USSR, as well as to better understand changing identities and complex power relations in Tajikistan and the region. This discussion contributes to a gap in the literature that explores the relationship between urban space, nationalism, neoliberalism, decolonization, and identity in the context of Central Asia.