Post-Socialist City

The paper critically analyses post-socialist city in the perspective of social production of space. The main argument is that ideology is decisive in the processes of urban transformation. However, the term ideology must be used for the description of mediation between actors, their practices and space. Provided examples show that ideological transformation of post-socialist cities should be analyzed as a political issue concerning not only systemic shift, but also spatial changes and everyday life of urban dwellers.

Na początku tej książki jest chaos. Chaos jako sama Warszawa, czyli pełna problemów przestrzeń miejska, oraz „chaos” jako słowo-klucz, którego używamy, by ją krytykować. Demaskując pojęcie „chaosu” jako ideologiczny wytrych, a nawet rodzaj teorii spiskowej, autorka analizuje systemowe porządki, które skrywają się za pozornym chaosem Warszawy: od logiki przestrzennej globalizacji po nieudane projekty reform, od upadku kooperatyw ogrodniczych na Białołęce po kredyty we frankach i lokalny szowinizm, od przedwojennej „akcji terenowej” Starzyńskiego po legalistyczne fikcje reprywatyzacji. Czy warszawski chaos przestrzenny jest rzeczywiście „ustawowo zaprogramowany”? Co miało pierwotnie powstać w miejscu osiedla Derby na Białołęce? Kto nam ukradł konflikt o własność? Książka ta jest nie tylko systemową analizą najistotniejszych procesów, które ukształtowały przestrzeń Warszawy po 1990 roku. Jest również autoanalizą nas samych jako miejskiej wspólnoty, która – żyjąc w mieście – interpretuje jego przemiany.

Voilà plus de treize ans qu'Auchan, fleuron de la grande distribution alimentaire française, est implantée en Russie. En 2002, lors de l'ouverture de son premier hypermarché dans la banlieue de Moscou, tous les spécialistes étaient d'accord : la Russie, avec sa classe moyenne dépensière et sa croissance annuelle à deux chiffres, représentait le 'nouvel Eldorado' pour les enseignes étrangères. En effet, le pays semble avoir particulièrement réussi à Auchan, qui y emploie aujourd'hui plus de 37000 personnes dans 78 hypermarchés, 122 supermarchés Atac et 34 centres commerciaux. Toutefois, le climat politique actuel, avec notamment la crise ukrainienne et l'embargo russe des produits alimentaires occidentaux, a sérieusement changé la donne pour le groupe nordiste, qui commence à regarder la Russie d'un autre oeil.  Dans notre intervention, nous tenterons d'expliquer les raisons du succès d'Auchan en Russie, avant de nous interroger sur ses perspectives d'avenir dans le pays.

Бойм, Светлана. Будущее ностальгии. М.: Новое литературное обозрение, 2019. 680 с. ISBN 978-5-4448-1130-6. Ксения Роббе, Университет Гронингена (Нидерланды). Адрес для переписки: Faculty of Arts, Chair of European Literature and Culture, Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK Groningen, The Netherlands. k.robbe@rug.nl. «Будущее ностальгии» Светланы Бойм 1-одна из самых известных работ в области исследований памяти, оказавшая со времени ее публикации в 2001 году огромное влияние на изучение форм и практик переживания и выражения тоски, желания вернуть прошлое (или вернуться в него) и ощущения неадекватности настоящего. Написанная на английском языке и получившая признание во всем мире, книга «вернулась» к российскому читателю в переводе Александра Стругача только в прошлом году. С чем бы ни была связана такая задержка (во многом отражающая логику глобального неравенства языков), доступность этой книги широкой рус-скоязычной публике-важное событие, которое в то же время требует осмысле-ния значимости исследований ностальгии сегодня и вопросов, которые они могут вызывать. «Будущее ностальгии»-далеко не первая монография о ностальгии; она во-брала в себя и переработала исследования о времени и ностальгической оглядке на прошлое в эпоху модерна Райнхарта Козеллека (Koselleck 2004), Андреаса Хейссена (Huyssen 1995), Питера Фрицше (Fritzsche 2002), Сьюзан Стюарт (Stuart 1993) и других ученых. Вместе с тем она породила еще большее количество работ об этом противоречивом явлении и стала одной из концептуальных основ целого поля исследований. Оценивая ту работу, которую книга Бойм проделала в плане оформления этого поля, следует отметить два главных аспекта: во-первых, суще-ственное нюансирование понятия ностальгии на основании объяснения двойст-венности этого явления (ностальгия может как «отключать», так и «включать» добавочную рефлексию) и рассмотрения ностальгии как исторической и социаль-ной эмоции, фундаментальной для времени модерна; во-вторых, транскультур-ный взгляд на ностальгию, который включает разбор процессов в посткоммуни-стических обществах Восточной Европы и в то же время представляет в новой перспективе вопросы памяти в контексте миграции и диаспоры и разрабатывает 1 Светлана Бойм (1959-2015)-филолог, писатель, медиахудожник и теоретик искусства. В течение многих лет была профессором славянского и сравнительного литературоведения Гар-вардского университета. Автор четырех монографий («Смерть в кавычках: культурная мифоло-гия современного поэта», 1991; «Общие места: мифология и повседневность в России», 1995; «Будущее ностальгии», 2001; «Другая свобода: альтернативная история идеи», 2010) и множе-ства статей по литературе и культуре. Как художник Бойм принимала участие в международных выставках и выступила куратором выставок «Территории террора: воспоминания и мифология ГУЛАГа в современном искусстве» (Бостон, 2006) и «Offmodern: руины будущего» (Московская биеннале, 2013).

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century, as well as confronting long-standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas. This Companion provides cutting-edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 72 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six parts, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging econceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space;
housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda. This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state-of-the-art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

This paper looks into the post-1989 transformation of Podgorica by analysing the ways in which two distinct urban neighbourhoods, Blok 5 and City Kvart, have emerged from their respective socio-economic contexts at the beginning of the 1980s and 2010s. The comparison
reveals how the changes in every sequence of the housing development mechanism - funding, planning, designing, building, owning - created vastly different cityscapes of the contemporary capital city, along with different, at times even opposing standards for what it means to live in an urban environment today. The analysis also shows the ways in which the practices of everyday life transcend the original rules, plans and designs and help reinvent the space in both of these neighbourhoods, while highlighting their differences in the process. By existing almost side by side, Blok 5 and City Kvart showcase some of the most important points in urban development history of Podgorica, and create a perfect stage from which current urban development policies, laws, choices and strategies should be examined, criticized and reimagined.

The article discusses the concept of urban change and illustrates some models and types of urban transformations in the case of the postsocialist city. It addresses some architectural, material, symbolic and socio-cultural aspects of recent urban changes in postsocialist Eastern Europe and Romania, in a double comparison: against the socialist urbanization (and the socialist city), and against the modern Western and American city, arguing in favor of a specific, ‘postsocialist’, evolution, that has to be assessed in its own terms. It is then proposed an analysis on the key issues of privatization and access to the city, following particular evolutions of legal, economic, and cultural postsocialist formations, in the broader context of global neoliberalism. The critical interpretation of some aspects regarding the relationship between public and private in the city and the issue of urban accessibility, seen in the case of various postsocialist urban changes (public spaces and institutions, suburbanization, infrastructure, urban renewal, segregation, livability etc.), suggests thus a re-evaluation of what seem to be the dominant logic of the postsocialist city, privatization. Forms derived from this logic, such as the commodification, the touristification and the virtualization of cities are regarded as specific results of both development projects and social approaches of the urban realm, in the same time limiting and generating urban potentialities.

„Cercetarea vieții de zi cu zi” este mai mult decât o sintagmă metodologică (standard, normativizată, a terenului antropologic), ea este o formulă teoretică care poate exprima (inclusiv reflexiv, deci critic) practica și analiza construcțiilor sociale ale spațiilor, relațiilor și formelor culturale ale modernității urbane. Antropologia urbană, ca „specializare” recentă a antropologiei culturale, poate produce critica acestei normativizări și, implicit, a perspectivei metodologice antropologice clasice/tradiționale în cadrul studierii unor forme și evoluții urbane, precum cele cunoscute de orașul postsocialist.

This paper focuses on large-scale housing estates in Łódź as an example of post-socialist city. The aim of the article is to describe the large housing estates in Łódź in the light of statistical data and to identify and clarify the social, spatial and functional changes which have occurred in transformation period in these estates. The study is based on the results of National Censuses (1988 and 2002) and on the data of unpublished materials of the Municipality of Łódź. The article consists of four parts. First part presents general information on LHE in Poland. The second describes the development of LHE in Łódź and its current situation in the light of statistical data. The third part presents the results of an analysis of social, spatial and functional changes that have been taking place in LHE in Łódź in transformation period. The fourth is a conclusion providing an answer to the question why LHE in post-socialist Łódź still seem to offer fairly satisfactory conditions (physically and socially) and why they are still attractive in comparison with other areas of the city.

This paper explores the spatial transformations of Durrës waterfront – focusing only on the seaside promenade – within a predefined timeframe: late socialist & post socialist era, covering mainly the period of transition from the centralized state socialism to a liberalized, free-market, capitalist economy, a transition phase which lasted for over two decades in Albania. Within this framework, a special concern of the paper is
the examination of the impact of political, social and economic actors, the legal and institutional situation in Architecture and planning disciplines as well as the geography and landscape conditions, which have an important role in the space production and transformation process.
Claiming that Durrës City waterfront - its seaside promenade – constitutes one of the most important public spaces and elements of the city structure, this study aims to understand how the urban public space is used, (re)produced and transformed in a post-socialist political system, where the ownership and property relations highly influence the public / private use of space, as well as its unwelcoming or user-friendly features.
Furthermore, the phenomenon of “space appropriation” (taking possession or jurisdiction of space and domains such as land, sea, and air; buildings, objects, etc, either temporarily or for a long term) occurring on
the public space – mainly on the seaside promenade, will be elaborated from a social, economical, political
and spatial perspective.
Finally, by affirming the water-edge as a place, a city asset that continuously calls for users and grabs the
attention of developers, the last section of the paper will focus on recent urban interventions and
developments on the waterfront aiming its re-structuring and revitalization; and initiatives to enhance the
public character of the seaside promenade, and to claim its identity as a public place.
Keywords: Waterfront, Post - Socialist City, Space Appropriation, Public vs. Private

Starting from the premises that there is a negative perception of the Balkans in the West, with it being perceived as the Europe’s Other (Goldsworthy, Todorova) and that every literary field (Bordieu) and literary market require the immigrant writers to represent their culture in a predetermined fashion (Huggan, Pisac), I shall examine in my thesis the  images of cities in the prose of post-Yugoslav immigrant writers (Tasić, Obreht, Goldsworthy, Slapštak,  Mimica, Hemon, Štiks, Nović). The decision to focus on the representation of cities is justified by the fact that the city "records the attitudes of a culture and an era in front of the fundamental events of its existence" and is one of the "man’s greatest work of art" (Mumford). Since the city is a complex phenomenon, for analysis of its representations in the works of these writers, born mainly after 1960 and emigrated from ex-Yugoslavia around the beginning of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, I used a multidisciplinary approach, including: orientalism / balcanism, reflexive and restorative nostalgia, human geography, everyday life studies, anthropological studies of space. The thesis consists of two parts, each corresponding to one of the adjectives in the title: the first and the principal part concerns the cities left behind, irrevocably lost, even when they are subsequently rediscovered, while in the second part the focus is on the representation of the cities where future authors have found the refuge and where they had to recreate their lives in a new context, that was often not deliberately chosen but (randomly) "found". The dynamics between the representation of each of the cities considered and its pre-existing perception shall be further explored. In the case of the (post)Yugoslav cities, the image created in the selected analyzed works, shall be compared to the one existing in the West, created mostly through western media and literature, and occasionally even through the self-orientalisation processes. On the other hand, the analysis of the cities where the emigrated authors found new home, focuses on the demystification of these places, perceived by the public in their countries of origin, or elsewhere, as some kind of the earthly paradise.

This thesis looks at the construction of New Belgrade as an urban history narrative for the history of Yugoslavia. This is a study of the history of place and space, in conjunction with the history of Tito's Yugoslavia.

Beginning with the foundation for the new city, during the interwar period, the first chapter establishes an understanding of the purpose of the place during the Kingdom era. It then looks at the effect of the Second World War, and the establishment of the communist/socialist era under Josip Broz Tito. The following chapter looks at the Tito era from the split from the Cominform. It is an analysis of the creation of New Belgrade under Tito, and how it is representative of Yugoslavia’s differentiation from the Soviet Bloc. The final chapter examines New Belgrade following the Tito era, the impact of the collapse of Yugoslavia, NATO intervention and the rebuilding of New Belgrade in the 21st century.

NOTE: This is only a preview. Full thesis is available on my profile.

Der Beitrag analysiert die städtebauliche Strategie und insbesondere den Masterplan für die russische Industriestadt Perm. Folgende Fragestellungen werden behandelt: Inwieweit baut der Masterplan auf vorhandene Strukturen und lokale Ressourcen auf? Welche Rolle spielt das städtebauliche Erbe der sowjetischen Moderne - wird es als Potential oder als Last für die zukünftige Entwicklung begriffen? Schließlich soll die Frage beantwortet werden, welche Rolle dem städtischen Umfeld und der städtebaulichen Konzeption bei der Konstruktion neuer städtischer Images zukommt.

Dealing with the socialist urban legacy proved to become one of main challenges for the cities of Eastern Europe in the last decades. The fall of socialism found most of the socialist urban areas either as "rejected" heritage or as a sort of "devastated" spaces which had lost their functional meaning, symbolic significance, and any clear narratives. In such conditions, it is particularly important to watch out for those processes, which enable socialist urban legacy to acquire new languages and symbols in order to be included into the current social dynamics. This article explores the potential of the world modernist heritage discourse in giving a new approach to interpreting urban legacy of socialist era. Over the past decade, the sharp increase in the activities around rethinking and revitalization of modernist heritage turned into a global trend. For Eastern Europe modernist legacy appeared to become a certain lens, through which it is possible to explore various visions of the Eastern European urban past within different contexts. The article seeks to reveal how the global discourse of modernist heritage influences current perceptions and attitudes towards the socialist urban legacy in the Eastern European countries, and aims to find out to what extent it facilitates integration of this legacy into changing symbolic contexts.

The war in Ukraine may be redrawing the contours of our world, after the exhaustion not only of the Cold War, but also of the post-Cold War period (not cold anymore, if it ever was) from 1989 till now. Putin's onslaught on the former Soviet republic that once had, like Belarus, a seat in the UN during the socialist period, is motivated by nationalism and is expansionist, denying among other things the rule of law and international law – like any “illiberal democracy.” But a war is a war, and no war can be good. Defensive wars are understandable, though no war is clean. To plead for a just war means being already within the war logic. Wars paradoxically need to be prevented in anticipation and in principle, they cannot be stopped, or if they are, it is within the same logic and  excessive of violence. They are part of a masculinist militarist "culture" that needs to be deconstructed and prevented.

The 1989 fall of the Iron Curtain marked the beginning of new economic, socio-cultural and political realities for the former socialist states in Central and Eastern Europe. Along with the economic restructuring from statecentralised to market economy, democratisation and liberalisation initiated a transformation of the socialist urban space, which was characterised by the changing role of its iconic landmarks.

This conceptual paper examines these post-1989 changes, which range between the removal of these landmarks and their transition into market led iconic and flagship attractions. The paper identifies the changing role of tourism from a topbottom orchestrated to a market led activity, which explains the transformation of some of these landmarks. It introduces a new framework for studying this process by suggesting that iconisation, de-iconisation and re-iconisation processes are interrelated to other strategies and approaches to the transition of the socialist
urban landscape into a western market economy. The paper identifies avenues for further research and provides some recommendations for improving the management of similar processes.

Since the 80s, there have been a number of changes in the world economy which manifested, in a very fundamental way, in cities. In this regard, American geographer Neil Smith used the term „new urban strategy". There have changed the relationship between capital and state, social reproduction and social control in cities. Under these circumstances, punitive urbanism, have emerged as common tool of urban policy. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the democratisation of society and the integration in the global economy, punitive urbanism began to manifest in the post-socialist cities too. The aim of this paper is to conceptualise the nature of punitive urbanism in post-socialist cities. The chapter argues that the revanchism typical for the Western cities had never established in Czech cities. However, it shares some features mentioned by Smith, but the timing, circumstances and nature are specific, based on the specific post-socialist historical experience. In particular, Czech punitive urbanism is typical for (1) its specific coexistence of punitiveness and the welfare state, (2) that emerged in a time of economic boom, not a recession, (3) its use as an instrumental populist tool in the struggle for voters rather from lower classes, (4) it reflects the post-socialist „ethos of privatism" which accelerates and intensifies some urban processes.

“Production of Jewish Space in Pre-Modern and Modern Poland” is a critical analysis of the processes of development and modernisation of Poland’s urban spaces. It is a study of these processes’ integral components, i.e. the symbolic and physical exclusion aimed against the Jewish communities that inhabited Polish cities. It is also a study of urban and cultural spaces that became attributed to these communities as a result of modernisation. Based in the field of cultural studies, this book employs Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space as its theoretical framework, and contains an analysis of the antisemitic violence perpetrated throughout the history of Poland’s urban spaces by the country’s ethnic-religious majority group. Consequently, this publication offers a reading of the historical context explaining contemporary Poland’s rise of racism and xenophobia which are employed today as sources of national unity and collective imagination characteristic for national modernity.

Polish Jews, who since the early history of Poland were subject to religiously, ethnically and racially motivated exclusion and violence, were given the role of the “Other” in the course of Poland’s urban history, thus becoming a negative object of reference, imagined as an obstacle towards the majority group’s urban and cultural growth. Consequently, Poland’s “Jewish spaces”, which are the focus of this analysis, have been imagined as a cultural and physical threat to what was envisaged and designed as a “Polish city”. The category of the “Jewish space”, as employed in this work, becomes a tool of critical analysis allowing an insight into the racist and anti-emancipatory background of the transformations that took place in Polish pre-modern and modern urban environments.

The history of the pre-modern “Jewish spaces” is analyzed with recourse to the environment of the medieval Krakow ghetto (1257–1495), discussed in the context of the emergence of the key cultural concepts that spatially and linguistically structured the early Polish cities, i.e. the concepts of the “host”, the “guest”; of “hospitality”, “gratitude”, “debt” and others. These cultural notions are examined alongside the practice of “subtenancy” which is defined as a cultural mechanism that allows for relegating the symbolic and material costs of segregation and subordination of a minority group to that minority. The history of the modern and post-Holocaust “Jewish spaces” is examined through the urban environments of the Grzybowski Square and the Próżna Street in Warsaw as scenes and objects of the Polish urban modernisation. These two connected urban interiors are analysed in the context of their role as what is nowadays imagined as Poland’s “Jewish heritage”, a function attributed to them between 1983 and 2013, yet culturally rooted in the earlier practices of antisemitism such as appropriation, dehumanisation, and denying the minority’s right to a physical space.

This paper outlines some preliminary findings of a larger, ongoing study of the changing housing regime during Bulgaria's transition from socialism to post-socialism, with a special focus on the Bulgarian Roma minority and the city of Sofia. Starting from the current era and working my way back, I discuss some of the socialist government’s policies toward housing for people in need, and trace the legacy of these policies after the end of state socialism.

Urban regeneration has become a key issue in the development of contemporary cities. The paper discusses bottom-up regeneration practices performed by inhabitants of a decaying inner-city neighbourhood under post-socialist conditions, which differ notably from the widely researched Western European context. Results of a qualitative study in Wrzeszcz Dolny, Gdańsk, have indicated the leading role of newcomers to the area in animating bottom-up regeneration efforts, which in turn translate into an activation and integration of the local community. Thus, it is argued that an in-migration into the inner city, usually interpreted as gentrification, does not necessarily generate losses for the indigenous inhabitants but can also bring a desired social change and significantly contribute to the building of inclusive civil society. The presented case study therefore signals the need for a careful investigation and precise labelling of the post-socialist inner-city transformation processes, as well as demonstrates how increasing participation might be employed as the potential antidote to ills associated with gentrification.

This paper analyses the role and effects of housing policies on residential differentiation in the city of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The focus is on contemporary ‘post-privatization' housing-policy measures and their effects, although the transformation from socialism to a market economy during the 1990s is also covered. A distinct contrast was found between housing policies in Estonia and western Europe, where the welfare role is often to mitigate the detrimental effects of economic restructuring and to prevent segregation. Estonian housing policies at state and local levels do not even aim to reduce, prevent or slow down the harmful effects of the considerable income disparities that manifest in housing inequality and increasing residential differentiation. One of the main mechanisms driving residential differentiation is the relocation of people according to their ability to pay in connection with the increasing amount of renovation being undertaken. It is increasingly evident not only between neighbourhoods but also between tenure segments: poor people seem to be concentrated in poor housing in all categories.

This book focuses on urban grassroots movements in post-socialist Czechia and their struggle against unprofessional and nondemocratic urban processes in their cities. It shows that in the context of neoliberal urban restructuring, weakly consolidated democracy, and corporate capture of the local state, urban activists often resort to entering electoral competition as the only efficient way of improving the situation in their cities. The book is based on four case studies from different Czech cities, narrating stories of activists struggling against a controversial flood protection project, the demolition of public buildings, an unhealthy land-use plan, arrogant development, and overpriced city halls. It offers valuable insight into the obstacles created by institutionalized forms of power abuse which urban activists must deal with and discusses the pro-democratic potential of urban grassroot movements’ efforts to overcome their limited ability to influence political processes via standard means of civic engagement and protest activities.

Built heritage conservation and sustainable urban regeneration of historic towns are influenced by the specific cultural context affecting built urban environment. For historical cities in Central and Eastern Europe, consequences of the totalitarian regime's urban interventions on the collective mentality and built environment are part of the urban cultural context in which the built heritage evolved and must be preserved. Modern technology, specifically related to reinforced concrete structures and architectural form, has reshaped urban space since the beginning of the century. In Central and Eastern Europe, the influence of the totalitarian regime over the built environment is an important element of the identity of space and urban post-socialist society and a defining component of the specific cultural context that surrounds and influences evolution of built cultural heritage. In these countries, the use of reinforced concrete and modernist architecture during a difficult political period affected the society's perception of modern architecture. Is it possible to redeem the meaning of modernist architecture? How can post-socialist society redesign urban space considering the values and the flaws of the modernist architecture to meet the requirements of sustainable design specific to the preservation of built heritage? Based on the specific post-socialist cultural context, this paper proposes a different approach to the regeneration of the central area of various historic towns in Romania based on the integrated rehabilitation and recovery of the two kernels/cores of the central area-civic centre area and historic centre-through culture-led regeneration. Rezumat Conservarea patrimoniului construit și regenerarea urbană sustenabilă a orașelor istorice sunt influențate de modul in care contextul cultural specific afectează mediul urban construit. In orașele istorice din Europa Centrală și de Est efectele intervențiilor regimului totalitar asupra mediului construit și asupra mentalității colective constituie o componentă a contextului cultural în care s-a dezvoltat și în care trebuie conservat patrimoniul construit.Tehnologia modernă, structuri și forme arhitecturale din beton armat, a modelat spațiul urban încă de la începutul secolului 20. În Europa Centrală și de Est, influența regimului totalitar asupra mediului construit este un element important al identității spațiului și societății post-socialiste și reprezintă o componentă definitorie a contextului cultural specific ce înconjoară și afectează evoluția patrimoniului cultural construit. În aceste țări, folosirea betonului armat și a arhitecturii moderniste în timpul unei perioade politice

The changes of urban forms inside of post-socialist cities (during the last 25 years) had transformed the life-style of the city and created a more adaptable and resilient city. The core of the city, the historical city centre represent the object of the present study, whereby evidences and assessments of transformations that occurred had been highlighted. Using a GIS analysis, the socialist relicts inside of historical city centre are analysed from the economic, social and built-up area point of view. The historical transformations of the city are presented in order to understand the local context that the city (and historical centre) faced. The analysis concentrates upon the present state of the study area, aiming to reveal patterns of economic, social, demographic and morphologic features of urban transformations. The results emphasis a heterogeneous construction of the city centre, with a lack of cultural and urban identity, where social processes of gentrification, stratification, poverty and social exclusion cannot hide the process of rebranding that the city is trying to achieve.