Paper Short Abstract:

Eastern European cities are marked by the radically different property regimes of socialism and neo-liberal capitalism. Temporalities collide and material, political and legal tensions arise. By looking at such tensions, I ask what do these cities tell us about a future liberated from injustice?

Paper Abstract:

Today’s Eastern European city is marked by the tension between neo-liberal urban developments and the material remnants of socialist past. These materialities overlap and produce dramatic cityscapes of rapid gentrification, violent evictions, ruined neighbourhoods and flashy, steel-and-glass skyscrapers. And they also reflect intersections of vastly different property regimes: the socialist one based on public and collective property and the neo-liberal one centred on the sanctity of private property. Temporalities collide and material, political and legal tensions arise constantly from these intersections.

The past of socialist utopian planning and material redistribution is confronted in postsocialism by rapid transformations based on historical reparations through the processes of restitutions that invoke an idealised interwar past. While fighting evictions caused by restitutions, housing justice activists call for more state acquisitions and expropriations of unused private property. However, anti-capitalist movements in the region hesitate to invoke the abolition of property in societies where still over 80% of the urban population are homeowners. While engaged scholars have shown how this is far from an ideal situation, the mass of homeowners still represents the most relevant material obstacle in front of an urban takeover by large private landlords, ushering the dystopian tenant landscape of Western cities. These are but some of the diverse and contrasting temporalities of the Eastern European city.

By critically looking at such intersections, this paper strives to answer what can the postsocialist city teach us about a liberated future from housing injustice?