Talk on post-1989 urban changes
On Friday 1 February, Dr Gwen Jones discussed some features of urban transformation and change since 1989. Beginning with an overview of the assumption that the Soviet-style system originated and ended in cities, according to which state socialism (re-)created and shaped urban structures in its own image, she summarised the features of the socialist city, the shortcomings of ideal-type models, changes in city autonomy and organisation, and presented the proliferation of shopping malls and worsening segregation as two facets of the post-socialist transformation.
Discussion included socialist ideals of beauty and civilisation (see, for instance, Bee Flowers’s photographs of the Moscow metro system), under-urbanisation, elite continuity, nouveaux riches lifestyles, gentrification, post-socialist nostalgia, notions of ‘Americanisation’, and various appropriations of urban space.