POST-strongSOCIALISTstrong URBAN FORMS NOTES FROM SOFIA.pdfVIP

POST-SOCIALIST URBAN FORMS: NOTES FROM SOFIA1 Sonia Hirt2 School of Public and International Affairs College of Architecture and Urban Studies Virginia Polytechnic and State University Abstract: This essay reviews some key processes shaping the transformation of urban forms that have occurred in Sofia, Bulgaria since the end of socialism in 1989. It introduces quantita- tive and qualitative evidence of five processes of change: growth of the urban periphery, decrease of spatial scale, privatization of space, land-use diversification, and pluralization of styles. Although Sofia’s built fabric is generally changing in ways familiar to scholars of spatial restructuring in capitalist cities, there are important local, post-socialist nuances that affect these processes in terms of the pace and intensity with which they proceed. [Key words: Sofia, post- socialism, urban form.] The urban environment is typically resistant to change. In the absence of destructive events such as wars or natural disasters, 15 years rarely alter the face of a city in a radical fashion. Yet the recent transformations of the landscape of East European cities have been remarkable. Even the lay observer who has walked the streets of Budapest or Bucharest, Belgrade or Bratislava, in the 1980s and today can detect the clear signs of change. This essay strives to articulate the ways in which post-socialist urban forms differ from their socialist predecessors. It also endeavors to place post-socialist changes in a broader context by comparing them with processes of change in the cities of the developed capitalist world. Specifically, I argue that while some transformations of the built fabric are peculiar