Hi All, 

 

Apologies for cross-posting. Please see below a cfp for the Cities After Transition conference on emergent processes of space-making and the actors involved in it. Do get in touch if you are interested. 

 

Best wishes, 

Varvara

 

Cities After Transition – 10th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States Conference - CAT-ference 2023

Riga, 18 September – 22 September 2023 

 

Session title: 

Emerging processes of place-making: the production of space and the multiplicity of actors involved in Cities after Transition

 

Session convenors: Varvara Karipidou, University College London (UCL); Armine Bagiyan, University of Oslo

 

The disintegration of the former Soviet Union and the fall of socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe brought a turbulent period of transition that affected all fundamental societal characteristics established before 1989. The transition from the centrally planned economy asked for the dismantling and restructuring of all aspects related to communism. The ‘obvious’ way forward appeared to be the adoption of a free-market economic system that offered the impetus this region seemed to lack. The economic crisis that followed the first years of transition lasted until the early 2000s when most of the countries had achieved some level of institutional stability. However, until today there are vast differences among the post-socialist countries ranging from the levels of economic growth to the extent of democratic pluralism. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist regimes, actors other than the state started to take hold of the urban development scene. Urban planning, which was solely the domain of the state during the socialist and communist periods, became exposed to interventions from multiple actors who started to emerge. The wild waves of privatization of the 1990s advanced the interests of the private sector, while the ambiguity of the urban-related regulation left a lot of space for the action of a wide range of actors with conflicting interests and rationalities. The socioeconomic and political instability of the 1990s, in combination with the efforts of international organisations directed at democracy-building processes shaped a new form of civil society. Civic movements soon started to address various urban issues, making civil society one of the active actors in place-making.   

Countries in Eastern Europe and former member-states of the USSR have been recipients of international aid since the beginning of the 1990s. The paradigm shifts in international aid politics, namely the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) affected the direction of international development. Finally, urban development was acknowledged as an important setting with SDG number 11. SDG 11 advocates for safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities, setting a New Urban Agenda. This meant that international donor organisations would not only be involved in urban development through their support to the governments and civil societies but that donors themselves could initiate place-making projects. The session aims to provide a platform that will help initiate conversations around the wide range of actors involved in place-making through a variety of processes in post-socialist/post-Soviet cities. 

 

We welcome contributions from any empirical or theoretical engagement with urban processes that take as its starting point the interaction between actors that followed the fall of the iron curtain. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to: 

• How place-making processes evolved and came to incorporate a multiplicity of actors other that the state after democratisation. 
• The role and nature of involvement of various actors in urban processes, such as the state, civil society, private sector actors in place-making initiatives.  
• The involvement of ‘distant’ agencies, like international investment agencies, transnational organisations, and NGOs, on place-making initiatives that bring in knowledge and practices from ‘elsewhere’. 
• The connection between the new political order and the way the political sphere eventually affects urban development and planning. 
• How critical juncture events can lead to the emergence of new actors in place-making processes and especially in public spaces. 

 

Those interested should send an abstract of no more than 300 words, including a title and 5 keywords to: [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by the 20th of June.