Neoliberal Post-Socialist Urban Transformation and the Emergence of Urban Social Movements in Poland

Abstract

Since the collapse of state socialism in 1989, the transformation processes of Poland in the fields of economy and politics have been characterized by a clear ‘turn to the market’, deregulation, decentralization and withdrawal of the state. The process, also called shock therapy, has moreover been quite rapid and dramatic, causing abrupt changes in the social structures and everyday practices of Poles. Tosics (2005) has listed the most important changes in urban development in post-socialist societies, and, although not using the term neoliberal, stresses the role of market forces, along with the diminished role of the public sector in development, being limited to ‘making private investment possible’ (2005, p. 60). The introduction of property rights was dramatic in these societies, as the majority of the population lived in state-owned housing before 1989, and the situation has shifted radically to what has been called 'nations of owner-occupiers’ (Dimitrovska-Andrews, 2005; Hirt, 2012; Lux, 2003). In her analysis of physical planning and regional and housing-policy practices, Dimitrovska-Andrews (2005) shows how they were characterized by ad-hoc decisions and tendencies to use economic tools as drivers of local development. In my own work (Polanska, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014a), I have underlined the shortcomings of urban policy in Poland, running in parallel with quickly spreading processes of consumerism, competitiveness, pro-investment policies, individualization, privatization, gentrification, decline and gating in the urban sphere. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.