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Abstract

Since the death of Islam Karimov in 2016, Uzbekistan has embarked on a series of pro-market reforms under

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, accompanied by rapid urban redevelopment, privatization initiatives, and efforts

to attract foreign investment. These reforms are frequently presented by the state as part of the construction of a

“New Uzbekistan,” yet they unfold within institutional structures inherited from the Soviet period and under

conditions of continued authoritarian governance. This paper examines how market-oriented reforms reshape

urban landscapes in the capital of Uzbekistan and how these processes intersect with path-dependent governance

practices.

The paper analyses how neoliberal policies are selectively implemented through presidential decrees, institutional

enforcement, and everyday practices. Empirically, it focuses on urban restructuring in Tashkent, where large-scale

redevelopment projects and real estate expansion have led to widespread demolitions, evictions, and new forms

of commodification of urban space. The state extracts value from land and infrastructure through: demolition,

redevelopment, and investment projects. While these transformations are framed as modernization, they often

reproduce hybrid arrangements in which market logics coexist with coercive governance, informal mediation,

and patronage networks.

By tracing the trajectory from policy formulation to lived experience, the paper highlights the tensions between

formal reform narratives and the realities of everyday governance.

It contributes to debates on (post)industrial transformation in the post-Soviet region by showing how neoliberal

reforms are layered onto socialist-era institutions, producing distinctive hybrid regimes of urban development.

The Uzbek case demonstrates how post-industrial restructuring in post-Soviet contexts must be analysed through

the interaction of inherited socialist structures, authoritarian governance, and global economic pressures.