1st Edition
Post-socialist Cities and the Urban Common Good Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe
Introduction
PART I: Urban common good before and after 1989 in theory and practice
1. The city and the common good: in search of a common ground
Commonality in the city
What makes the urban common good?
The neoliberal imprint: city as a commodity versus city as a commons
Post-socialist geographies of urban common good
2. Transforming conceptions of urban common good in Central and Eastern Europe
Urban common good during and after socialism
City as a communal infrastructure: the rise and demise of the socialist urban utopia
City as a commodity: privatisation and appropriation of the common since 1989
City as a commons: return to the idea(l) of urban common good in the mid-2010s
PART II: Commoning the post-socialist city: evidence from Poland
3. Towards the city as a commons: the changing public discourse in Poland between 1989 and 2019
Discourse analysis as a key to understanding urban change in Poland after socialism
Occasional and unassuming: legal notions of urban common good
Unravelling of the urban common good in the print media
Embracement of the urban common(s) in academic research
4. Interpretations of common good by urban actors in Gdańsk, Kraków and Łódź
Selection and overview of the case-study cities
Interviewing urban stakeholders in Gdańsk, Kraków and Łódź
The post-socialist urban common good unpacked
Going back to the obvious’?: the forging of urban common good in concrete narratives
5. (Re)making of the urban common good in a post-socialist city
Biography
Maja Grabkowska is a human geographer and Assistant Professor at the Department of Socio-Economic Geography, University of Gdańsk, Poland. She authored and co-authored research publications on post-socialist urban regeneration, gentrification, and grassroot initiatives, including a book titled Regeneration of the Post-socialist Inner City: Social Change and Bottom-up Transformations in Gdańsk (2012). She is also a co-founder of Sopocka Inicjatywa Rozwojowa, an informal citizen group in Sopot, Poland, advocating participatory democracy and sustainable development at the local level.
