ABSTRACT
While the differences and similarities between ‘capitalist Western cities’ and cities in ‘socialist’ Central and Eastern Europe were discussed well before the fall of the Berlin Wall, since that time postsocialist urbanity has been considered by increasing numbers of local and international researchers. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example, the institutional background of urban studies disciplines have undergone important shifts and attention has turned to defining the boundaries of urban theoretical and methods agendas. In this context, urban change has become one of the leading topics. Concepts from Anglo-American urban theory have tended to be studied, reviewed and applied in order to understand urban change observed since the early 1990s and to propose hypotheses about the future development of postsocialist cities. In particular, discussion has focused on defining the character of the ‘postsocialist city’ as specific and different from other cities, as well as postsocialist transition(s) and transformation(s) as the main theoretical framework for studying cities in Central and Eastern Europe.
