Suburbanization processes in the hinterland of Bratislava represent one of the most significant socio-spatial transformations in the post-socialist history of Slovakia. The trend of settlement ...decentralisation within the dynamically growing metropolitan region contrasts in many ways with the settlement development of the period of state socialism, during which centrally controlled and planned settlement transformation and industrial urbanisation brought about the most intensive urban development and settlement transformation on the territory of the Slovak Republic to date. The aim of the present paper is to examine the main ideological underpinnings and implemented public policies that have influenced, and continue to influence the processes of settlement development, urban growth and decentralisation tendencies within urban regions.
•The paper reinvigorates post-socialism as a conceptual tool for addressing relational geographies of Europe.•It proposes a dialogic approach, based on contingency, ontological openness and rejection ...of teleology and essentialism.•This is illustrated in a critical discourse analysis of urban activism in Bratislava, Slovakia.•The notion of community has been absent in Eastern European politics but begins to be deployed through a myriad of relations.•The analysis warns against essentialising the emerging discourses between Eastern and Western Europe.
After the collapse of the socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, urban environment began to change and the term post-socialist city appeared in urban theories. The post-socialist urban ...transition has been broadly examined in order to understand the processes transforming previously socialist cities. Although the essential differences between capitalist and post-socialist cities are described, there is a gap in understanding and interpreting the various trajectories of urban development among individual post-socialist cities. By using the conceptual framework of multiple transformations and methodical approaches of urban ecology, this paper reveals specifics of urban and socio-demographic changes of Brno and Bratislava and points to the limitations of the framework when evaluating divergent paths of post-socialist transformation. The spatio-temporal analysis provides an empirical evidence of distinct patterns of post-socialist transformations, which are related to the heterogeneity of socialist legacies, residential policy, and institutional factors with the capital status in particular, and shows that multiple outcomes of transformation are produced even in similar-sized cities with a common history of the same socialist state.
•Multiple transformations of the post-socialist cities produce multiple outcomes.•Housing market differentiation affects the ‘wealth-selective’ migration.•The capital status is essential in urban renewal.•Heterogeneous socialist-era path dependencies strongly influence the resulting social structure.
Mobile phone data are considered one of the most promising information sources for monitoring and measuring the spatio-temporal activities of the population. Today, large-volume mobile phone datasets ...are widely applied to monitor the daily life of the urban population and to examine the structuring of the urban environment. In this paper, we discuss and develop a methodological procedure that uses such data to observe temporal differences of human presence in Bratislava, Slovakia. The study is based on a large-scale dataset of hourly records of signalling exchanges (VLR data) from all major mobile network operators in Slovakia. The records of the mobile network infrastructure are used as a suitable proxy variable for complex human activity at the city level, in the sense that they capture various kinds of spatial practices, and not only some specific activities (work cycle of a given locale, shopping, and similar events). Such an approach allows the classification of urban space using diurnal logs activity curves of mobile network cells. Six temporality types in Bratislava were identified, which may be designated as examples of an urban chronopolis. The results show the potential of the proposed method for measuring place temporality in cities and monitoring the urban environment with geo-referenced mobile phone data.
The last two decades have brought significant changes into pre-fabricated housing estates built during the era of state-socialism. In the 1990´s an active discussion about “humanisation“ of the ...biggest pre-fabricated housing estate – Petržalka in the city of Bratislava – started. Petržalka´s monofunctionality, its dependency on the city centre and at the same time its segregation from other parts of the city were heavily criticised. In our paper certain aspects of the housing estate´s post-socialist transformation are analysed in the context of wider intra-urban changes triggered by the new production of built environment. This transformation is manifested mainly in the construction of new residential and commercial real estates. The dynamics of that is highly influenced by the political and economic changes taking place at state level. In case of new residential investments, the densification of the existing built-up structure took place. In contrast, heavy concentration of commercial buildings can be observed along the key transport corridors of supra-local (regional and international) importance.
Political and Discursive Opportunities of Local Environmental Activism: The Case of Environmental Protectionism Transformation in Bratislava. Years after 1989, built environment is among the aspects ...of Central and Eastern European cities most significantly affected by the post-socialist transitions. Although this might seem inevitable as the social settings producing urban forms changed dramatically, the political context of the urban built environment transformation provides an interesting area for a geographical inquiry. The city of Bratislava gives an example of how the 1989 agenda of democracy and participation have been just scarcely met in particular areas. This paper gives a relational analysis of urban governance focusing particularly on informal groups and NGOs in Bratislava advocating the conservation agenda by promoting the symbolical value of place and opposing large-scale development initiatives. It explores how during the last two decades, these preservationists acted in and affected local political opportunity structure, and thus participated in governance shiftings.
Sociológia 2014, Vol. 46 (No. 1: 60-87)
Neoliberalism represents a key word for thinking about the dynamics of capitalism since the 70´s and can be used as an analytical tool that allows linking discussions of global economic changes to ...transformations at local scales. The key tenets of neoliberal ideology are discussed in the present study, including the fundamental reconceptualization of the position and the role of the state, as well as general aspects of actual executions of ideologically inspired and legitimized institutional and regulatory restructuring (neoliberalization). Important political-economic and socio-spatial implications of this transformation include "rescaling" of the geographies of governance. The empirical part of the study analyses the changing role and capacity of the Bratislava government. The fundamental fiscal problem of the local government is caused by limited possibilities of obtaining revenues. Needed resources are then in practice acquired by substantial privatization of publicly owned real estate. Apart from the obvious long-term unsustainability of the fiscal structure, depending on inheritance sell-out, an important adverse comes with reducing strategic capacities in the urban development. In the environment of underdeveloped planning and building regulation institutions, this leads to a shift to an "opportunity-led planning" which represents a change in planning practice away from the original goal of comprehensive control and management of urban development to (often opaque) procedures allowing a partial implementation of development initiatives. The result is a specific form of „entrepreneurial city", based on a symbiotic relationship between real estate capital and the local political elite, leaving other stakeholders only poorly empowered.
Value Change in the Hinterland of Bratislava as a Consequence of Suburban Development: Analysis of Electoral Behavior. Urban and rural environments are often perceived as different social worlds with ...their own economic, social and cultural relations. One of the encounters of such worlds would then be a suburbanization process that turns the countryside into the hinterland of our cities. In this paper, we will focus on changes in the political behavior of the population in connection with this process, in which not only the physical environment of the conurbations is transformed, but also the social and cultural characteristics of the local population significantly change. Using the data from the elections to the National Council of the Slovak Republic in the years 1998 – 2016, we will mainly monitor changes in support of the urbanest parties, which to a certain extent reflect the changing social structure in this area. Although the paper deals with only one specific aspect of suburbanization, we believe that understanding and interpreting changes in electoral behavior is part of the mosaic of complex social and cultural transformation of the urban hinterland.Sociológia 2018, Vol. 50 (No. 5: 609-631)
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