Chasing Warsaw

Der urbane Wandel seit 1990 macht Warschau zu einer der dynamischsten Metropolen Europas. Die AutorInnen nehmen Architektur und Städtebau, soziale Praktiken sowie lokale Wissensbestände und urbane Vorstellungswelten in den Blick. Die Analyse von Veränderungen und Kontinuitäten veranschaulicht die Neuordnung von Stadt und Stadtgesellschaft im Postsozialismus und Neoliberalismus.Warsaw is an accelerated city, one of the most dynamically developing cities in Europe. But Warsaw is also a junction of different modes of urbanism: European, Tzarist, modernist, socialist and - in the last two decades - aggressively neoliberal. The book analyzes the interplay of these urban forms under intense urban change after 1990. The interdisciplinary perspective allows the tracking of continuities and breaks, showing how social and material transformations are intertwined, how conflicts emerge and how Warsaw is at the heart of the changing geographies of centrality and marginality in contemporary Poland. The volume departs from typical narratives of the post-socialist city by showing and discussing how Warsaw's transformation can be read in the terms of global urban change.

ContentsAcknowledgements7Introduction: Chasing WarsawMonika Grubbauer and Joanna Kusiak9Theses on Post-Socialist Urban TransformationKarl Schlögel25I: Post-Socialism and the Dynamics of Urban ChangeToward a More Comprehensive Notion of Urban Change:Linking Post-Socialist Urbanism and Urban TheoryMonika Grubbauer35Comeback or Revolution of the Cities?Regina Bittner61II: Urban Form and RepresentationContinuity of Change vs. Change of Continuity:A Diagnosis and Evaluation of Warsaw's Urban TransformationMagdalena Staniszkis81Gating Warsaw: Enclosed Housing Estatesand the Aesthetics of LuxuryJacek G?decki109The Liminal Cityscape: Post-Communist Warsaw asCollective RepresentationDominik Bartma?ski133III: Social Practices and the CitySanitation and Disorder in Warsaw's Urban Space:Cultural Determinants of Waste ManagementW?odzimierz Karol Pessel163Visible and Invisible Ethnic Others in Warsaw:Spaces of Encounter and Places of ExclusionAneta Piekut189Kiosks with Vodka and Democracy: Civic Cafés betweenNew Urban Movements and Old Social DivisionsJoanna Kusiak and Wojciech Kacperski213IV: MetropolitanismThe Laboratory of Polish Postmodernity:An Ethnographic Report from the Stadium-BazaarRoch Sulima241Space, Class and the Geography of Poland'sChampagne (Post-)SocialismKacper Pob?ocki269The Cunning of Chaos and Its Orders: A Taxonomy ofUrban Chaos in Post-Socialist Warsaw and BeyondJoanna Kusiak291List of Figures321Contributors325Index329