Document [original]

Jakub Galuszka

Transcending path dependencies: Why the study

of post-socialist cities needs to capitalise on the

discussion on urbanisation in the South (and vice

versa)

Open Access via institutional repository of Technische Universität Berlin

Document type

Journal article | Accepted version

(i. e. final author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the version accepted for

publication; also known as: Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM), Final Draft, Postprint)

This version is available at

https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-12503

Citation details

Galuszka, J. (2021). Transcending path dependencies: Why the study of post-socialist cities needs to

capitalise on the discussion on urbanisation in the South (and vice versa). In Urban Studies (p.

004209802110471). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211047182.

This work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this work in any way permitted by

the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your usage. For other uses, you must obtain

permission from the rights-holder(s).

Transcending path dependencies - why the study of ‘post-socialist’ cities needs to

capitalise on the discussion on urbanisation in the South (and vice-versa)

Abstract

Recently the theoretical relevance and utility of the regionalised notion of post-socialist cities

have been questioned. The ensuing debate has resulted in several positions, including

suggestions to drop the term entirely or to create a distinctive narrative based on the concept

of a Global East, in order to position the knowledge as equal vis. avis. discourses originating

from Western power centres. This article responds to this call through efforts to transcend the

dominant frames of research on post-socialist cities. However, Iargue that the first step in

overcoming the subaltern positioning of local knowledge is to refocus attention on previously

marginalised urban phenomena, and to link the post-socialist research agenda to existing

empowering discourses. The importance of creating linkages with the research originating

from the South, and the potential for such joint engagements to contribute to global theory-

making are discussed in the context of the study of urban informality.

Introduction

One of the most influential contemporary events with relevance to planning and urban studies

- the Habitat III conference - was held in Quito in October 2016. It provided an opportunity

for a global community of practitioners and researchers to discuss the challenges faced by the

contemporary cities and launch the New Urban Agenda. The participation in the event was,

however, not as international as one might expect. The ‘post-socialist’ contexts were scarcely

represented, particularly when it came to academic and non-governmental organisations. A

quick glance at the side events reveals that out of over 200 events only two had a lead

organisation based in a post-Soviet or CEE country. Only four events were explicitly

concerned with development issues in these contexts. This is hardly any news – the absence

of post-socialist contexts from international discussions is well acknowledged by now

(Müller, 2021) and the core reasons for this detachment have been observed within the

scholarship on post-socialist cities.

Specifically, the field has been criticised for its utilization of limiting spatiotemporal frames

(Tuvikene, 2016), inward-looking orientation,and limited connection to global theory-making

(Ferenčuhová, 2012). The ensuing debate has resulted in several positions. These include the

proposed de-territorialisation of the notion of ‘post-socialism’ (Tuvikene, 2016; Wiest, 2012);

the questioning of whether the notion has any contemporary relevance at all (Ferenčuhová,

2012; Gentile, 2018; Tsenkova, 2014) and arguments in favour of creating distinctive

narratives,such as those of the ‘Global East’ (Chan et al., 2018; Müller, 2020; Trubina et al,

2020) or simply reflecting on the ordinariness of local cities (Gentlie, 2018).

Building on these lines of thought, this article attempts to transcend the dominant

analytical frameworks of research on CEE and post-socialist cities towards a stronger

contribution to global theory making and presence in international discussion on urban

development. I suggest here that engagement with the debate on urbanisation in the South is

both apowerful heuristic device and apragmatic measure that may help us come closer to the

outlined goal. This assumption stems from the fact that, for decades, both contexts (or what

we could rather call ‘epistemic constructs’i) were positioned at the backstage of international

urban studies. However, with a specific focus on decoloniality embedded in efforts of looking

for alternatives to Western modernity (Hanchard, 1999), disentanglement from best-practice

solutions (Watson, 2009), and recognition of ordinary everyday (Bayat, 2000) and informal

practices (Roy, 2005) as an own logic of development, conceptualisations from the South

have been achieved to influence global circuits of theory making. Taking clue from this

approach, I argue that the first step towards overcoming the subaltern positioning of local

knowledge in ‘post-socialist’ contexts is to refocus attention on previously marginalised local

urban phenomena, and contextualise this theoretical debate via reflection on the state of

planning practice. I argue that this approach is an essential step in substantiating any new

discourses that wish to make their own true contribution (Trubina, 2020) and amove towards

creating unexpected research coalitions,which may further complicate stereotypical divisions

across the North, South, and East.

This exercise requires taking a step back to understand how the strong experience of

marginality has been reworked in both the South and the East. This is, naturally, a risky

endeavour with no ambition for universal generalisation (after all, each of the epistemic

territories of the North, South, and East is an endless combination of urban realities).

However, following the methodological outlook on experiencing the cites elsewhere

(Robinson, 2016), I wish to reflect on an approach that enables breaking path dependencies in

knowledge creation and taking a constructive stance on unique local phenomena.While

taking acritical stance in discussing some of the main urban development trends and

transitioning efforts post-1989, the purpose of the article is not to systematically review the

impacts of these solutions, nor provide a ‘judgement’ on their positive or negative impact. In

fact, many of those efforts have had clear benefits, with numerous primary cities in the CEE

and post-soviet context being more liveable nowadays than before. The purpose of the article

is rather to scrutinise the ways in which some research and planning agendas became

marginalised as issues of secondary relevance in mainstream research on ‘post-socialist cities’

and to propose an approach to revisit these issues.

Considering multiply potential layers of analysis of marginalised areas in theory

creation, Iwill concentrate mainly on informality in urban development as one of the most

prominent theoretical contribution from the South, but also a phenomenon which is pervasive

across post-socialist contexts. Beyond its analytical value for research on governance, agency,

sovereignty and power (Haid and Hilbrandt, 2019; Banks et al., 2019; Polese et al., 2016) – it

enables the possibility of entering into policy and scientific discourses regardless of the

regional or academic niche (McFarlane, 2012; Watson, 2009). While traditionally linked with

the discussion on urbanisation in the South, the validity of this approach has also been tested

in Europe, the United States (Lombard, 2019; Potts, 2020), and across various contexts

(including the post-socialist one) (Hilbrand, et al. 2017).

The paper is structured as follows. First, I review the positioning of urban informality

as a theme across the South, East, and North, with an attention to knowledge flows within

planning and urban studies. Second, after establishing the status quo, I take a step back to

present practical examples of how some developmental and research agendas were selectively

mainstreamed while others were marginalised. More precisely, in the sub-section ‘planning

practice and perceptions of development’, Iscrutinise two intertwined processes, which, I

argue, have impacted this status: the uncritical and selective replication of planning trends

from the power centres, as well as the process of orientalisation and dismantling urban

informality. While concentrating on examples from CEE, Ijuxtapose these with an insight

from related phenomena and planning responses in the South. The paper finalises by linking

back to the theory and summarising the kind of learning, in terms of heuristics, analytical, and

practical approaches, from the South that may be informative for academia in the East and

vice-versa. This encompasses a proposal on potential areas of interest within the study of

‘marginalised urban phenomena’.

State of the art: Informality research in urban studies and the global circulation of

knowledge

The phenomena that Iutilise to illustrate the issue in question relates to the notion of

informality (or the informality-formality continuum) as adriving force of urbanisation

processes and one of the ‘themes’ relevant for theory creation beyond the hegemonic Anglo-

American centres of knowledge (Watson, 2008; Roy, 2009).

The term has been used across multiply fields. Historically, it gained momentum in economic

discourse (Hart, 1973), where ‘informal economy’ was discussed as a creative manner of

urban population to sustain their needs in a situation of poverty. It was strongly linked with

the phenomenon of illegality, with some of the interpretations reinforcing informality as an

issue of the ‘developing world’ (Boanada-Fuchs and Boanada-Fuchs, 2018). Although the

idea of engaging with informality resonates in the planning and urban studies discourse within

self-help housing solutions (Turner, 1977) or flexible tenure (Payne et al., 2009), the term has

only gradually sunk into the developmental literature. Many of its interpretations pushed for

the recognition of formalisation as synonymous with development and reinforced various

dichotomies in the understanding of informality. For instance, a divide has been observed

within spatial categorisation (‘slum’ vs. the formal city), organisational form (rules and

regulations vs. lack of organisation) (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012). This simplicity in

understanding urban informalities and the associated vision of modernity raised concerns

about reviving colonial hierarchies (Varley, 2013).

A thorough reconceptualisation of the concept followed in connection with abroader turn in

Southern urban and planning studies. While vast in its scope and contextual variations, a

connecting factor of these contributions was the outlook on subaltern and everyday practices

of ordinary population (Bayat 2004; Simone, 2004; Pieterse, 2008; Roy, 2009; Robinson

2013). Informality was positioned in this discussion as an urban logic and a process of

structuration determining forms of institutional and individual relationships in an urban realm

(Roy and AlSayyad, 2004) and an urban practice (McFarlane, 2012), where issues of power,

resistance, and sovereignty are recognised. This debate entered into planning education

(Odendaal, 2012) and urban practice, albeit the risk of romanticising upgrading approaches

depending on informal solutions (Roy, 2005) and pushing service delivery obligationsaway

from the state (Burgess, 1978) has been raised. Much of this theoretical framing was then

traced back to the North, where awider realisation of the scale of urban informality occurred.

The debate on informality in Eastern Europe has mainly been conducted outside of urban

studies. It has concentrated on informality in relation to modernity as a form of social relation,

economic practice, and alivelihood strategy (Misztal, 2000; Morris and Polese, 2013; Aliyev,

2015). This perspective involved, forinstance, the representation of potential positive impacts

of informality as away of getting by in times of economic hardship and retrieval of state

offered social services (Polese et al., 2014). Notso differently from Simone’s (2004)

conceptualisation of ‘people as infrastructure’ or the notion of ‘hustle economies’ (Thieme,

2018), it reflected on mixed practices of exchanging favours and navigating the official

system, often in a non-strictly legal manner (the practices so prevalent they gained adedicated

and commonly used names such as blat in Russian or załatwianie in Polish) (Ledeneva et al.,

2018). However, as identified by Böröcz (2000), majority of local research on informality is

characterised by a teleological-modernisationist approach, seeing these practices and

economic activities as a synonym of backwardness and a characteristic of a ‘second

economy’. Amore nuanced perspective visible in local scholarship, identified as a

comparative–relativist approach, points out the existence of the same process in the West. The

nature of criticism has therefore been similar to scholarship in the South, yet without tangible

links forged between these contexts at this point.

Mainstream scholarship in urban studies, which is the main concern here, represents similar

conceptual flows. The post 1989 transitions were described in a one-directional manner

towards the achievement of Western-style ‘healthy’ market-based economic systems

(Ferenčuhová, 2012, Wiest, 2012) and ignoring the multidimensional nature and often

unachieved characteristic of this process (Gentile, 2018). This directionality is seen in some

of the most influential conceptualisations of post-socialist transition, such as Sykora’s and

Bouzarovski’s work (2012), which describe the institutional transformations as completed

while positioning social practices and structures as ‘still’ retaining some socialist features

(thus seeing the said practices as lagging behind the new formal setting). Big bulk of studies

took this deterministic view on transformation, which ‘reproduced the image of local urban

studies as ‘lagging behind’ international research, being the ‘object’ rather than subject of

studies, as well as lacking the ambition to contribute to urban theoretical debates’

(Ferenčuhová, 2012: 65-66). Consequently, informality was not of major concern or was

predominantly seen as an unwelcomed offset of a transformation process and post-communist

deregulation. Some investigations which took place included aperspective on: street vending

(Bromley, 2000; Rekhviashvili, 2015) adaptations of garages and basements for commercial

purposes (Vasilevska et al., 2015), increase in self-built habitats and informal settlements in

the former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus and Central Asia (Tsenkova, 2009), self-built extensions

in large housing estates in Georgia (Bouzarovski et al., 2011; Salukvadze and Golubchikov,

2016), land invasionsin Kyrgyzstan (Hatcher 2015) and the development of semi-regularised

transport networks in cities such as Bishkek (Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev 2018). The most

recent contributions engage with literature in the South more frequently and take a

perspective on the issues of governance and power (Polese and Rekhviashvili, 2017).

However, in spite of the similarity with some urban phenomena in the South (Grubbauer and

Kusiak, 2012; Robinson, 2016b) and historic connectivity between these contexts (Stanek,

2020), efforts to link across the East and the South (and sometimes the North) are still nascent

(see: Hilbrandt et al., 2017; Kębłowski and Rekhviashvili,2020; Grashoff, 2020).

Unsurprisingly, more intensive collaborations and knowledge flows exist across the North and

the South, where long-established channels of communication are in place (Trubina et al.

2020). It is, however, significant to note the reversed nature of these theoretical flows

(Yiftachel, 2006) and the true capacity to inform Northern theoretical thought. The study of

informality is recognised as highly relevant for the understanding of hidden dimensions of

local urban development and the dismantling of the artificial dichotomies that permeate the

urban development discourse (McFarlane, 2012; Acuto et al., 2019; Marx and Kelling, 2019).

These include perspectives from Europe, North America, and Australia (Devlin, 2018; Durst

and Wegmann, 2017; Lombard, 2019; Esposito and Chiodelli, 2020; Gurran et al., 2020).

What we are left with is avoid of contributions emanating from ‘post-socialist’

contexts in spite of their liminal positioning (Müller, 2018; Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev, 2018;

Sayınet al., 2020) as ‘mediating sites of neocapitalism between the Global Northand the

South’ (Polese et al. 2016: 181). In the following part of the paper, I will move on to discuss

the main reasons for and practical manifestations of this dislocation.

Planning practice and perceptions of development

As trivial as it may sound, the fall of socialist regimes in CEE in the early 1990s brought a

major change in the way local cities evolved. The formerly socialist countries almost

immediately jumped to the category of transition economies, shifting towards capitalism and

the establishment (initially at least) of liberal socio-political systems. This re-positioning was

soon reflected in the academic debate. Issues such as growing socio-spatial polarisation,

suburbanisation, ghettoization, weak institutions,and the role of private sector in shaping

spatial structure of the cities (Kovács,1999; Kok and Kovács, 1999; Sýkora and Bouzarovski

2012;Tammaru et al., 2015; Hirt, 2013) became the leitmotifs of post-socialist studies. This

brought with it a thorough but selective framework for the investigation of urban phenomena

with relatively little input from post-soviet states.Even though with time the debate has

become increasingly contextualised and infused with cross-disciplinary perspectives, the post-

socialist terminology remains in use to this day (Gentile, 2018). This one-directional

understanding of urban development have also had profound effects on urban practice. I will

discuss manifestations of this problematic through an insight into two interlinked processes –

replication of planning trends from power centres and dismantling of urban informality

across selected contexts in the East and South.

Uncritical and selective replication of planning trends from the power centres

Probably the most reflective strains of the research, which recognised the impacts of the

‘catching up with the West’ process, was the cleansing of the semiotic landscape of cityfrom

the symbols of the communist period (Czepczyński, 2008) and the creation of new ones that

fit with the imaginaries of the West.While typically still operating within a post-socialist

framework, this type of analysis illustrates very well how the narratives of transitions affected

local planning practices.

The most basic manifestation of this can be seen with the creation of mega projects

andextravagant architecture celebrating modernity or historic imaginaries (Mojanchevska,

2020), and viewed ‘as aquick fix in achieving a modernised and globalised image for the

capital and, by implication, in linking the whole nation to the ‘European civilisation’

(Salukvadze and Golubchikov, 2016: 49). The spread of iconic buildings in CEE and the

Caucasus, rather than being a manifestation solely of the ambition and power of specific city

governments (often executed by the private sector), should also be understood as a

manifestation of a broader policy focus guided by an uncritical and selective replication of

planning trends from the power centres. This, in the same way as in various African cities

(Watson, 2014), meant that broader systemic solutions were applied without reflecting on the

fact that just because something worksin one context (e.g.the West) does not necessarily

mean it will succeed in another (Kunzmann, 2004).

Culture let regeneration, creation of iconic buildings with an intention of creating

Bilbao effect and attracting creative classes into cities can be identified as one of such ‘copy

paste’ planning approaches. This is an approach that, despite decades infiltrating urban

planning thought across the globe (including CEE)(Boren and Young, 2016), has had at best

only limited success,and more commonly either ambiguous effects or no effects at all (yet in

each case cannibalising the public resources and international grants).

The example of city of Łódźin Poland and the way its urban policies evolved over time

illustrates this point well. The city suffered from the very hardest transformation after the fall

of the USSR,becoming aclassic example of a mono-functional, shrinking city. With its rich

industrial heritage, the city emerged from its socialist past as a perfect laboratory for the

implementation of mainstream solutions originating in the UK (Zysiak, 2014). It took around

20 years for city authorities to shift away from afocus on creative classes, culture-led

development, iconic buildings and the Bilbao effect, to acceptance of the need to truly commit

to the regeneration of the seriously deteriorating inner city characterised by near ‘slum’-like

conditions and social deprivation issues (Warzywoda-Kruszynska and Jankowski, 2013).

Today the balance between different urban regeneration approaches is arguably more

reflective of sustainability and equity principles. However, the earlier urban renewal efforts

was atypical example of post-socialist city administrations’ desireto distance themselves

from the socialist period,and to underscore their belonging to Europe through the reference to

‘golden pre-socialist times’ (Young and Kaczmarek, 2008).

City authorities’ selectiveness in prioritising specific aspects of the urban development

process remains a key point here. Through tracing the phenomenon of ‘zombie-socialism’

(Chelcea and Druţǎ, 2016) (meaning the orthodox separation from whatever approaches were

considered as ‘socialist’) it becomes clearer why Western-originated solutions,occurring in

conjunction with the roll-out of neo-liberalism, were treated as a mantra in local urban

development practice (Benda-Beckmann et al., 2009). Ironically,this orientation ledto the

dismantling of many solutions that were gaining popularity at the same time in the West but

did not fit into the imagined, ideal model of a Western city. This includes,for example,the

growth in co-housing and rental housing,which were largely dismantled in the CEE after the

1990s (Coudroy de Lille, 2015) and which have started to be reintroduced across the region

only recently.In these cases,ideologies involving beliefs in the need to create market

economies and redress theharms of the past (Lux and Mikeszova,2012) were key factors in

making decisions about cities’ development trajectories. The same approach left its mark in

contexts where self-made settlements were more common and private ownership was

positioned as the principal form of land and housing rights. Beyond the CEE context, this was

supported by the roll-out of an enabling approach promoted by the World Bank, as well as

influential economist Hernando De Soto, whose works advocated for the transfer of property

titles to the urban poor as away for them to accumulate capital and lift them out of poverty.

However, by the time the roll-out of the approach started in countries like Kyrgyzstan

(Hatcher, 2015), Albania and the former Yugoslavia (Tsenkova, 2009), it was strongly

criticised as an approach that failed to reach its objectives (Gilbert, 2002; Payne et al., 2009).

Furthermore, a rich portfolio of alternative tenure solutions that better reflected the ways the

urban poor organised land ownership matters, based on experiences from Latin America was

documented by this time. Nevertheless, in contrast to the clear rallying of parts of the

academic sector in ‘the South’ against simplistic understanding of land ownership in informal

settlements represented by De Soto’s views (Roy, 2005), the approach either faced limited

criticism in the post-socialist context, or such criticisms were unable to garner attention

beyond the very local realm.

In the meantime, across many parts of the world alternative formats for land access or

community ownership in informal contexts had been circulated via the work of international

grass-roots movements. However, a glimpse at the coverage of two major housing networks

in the world, the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) and the Asian Coalition of Housing

Rights (ACHR), shows a vast gap in CEE and post-soviet contexts (except of efforts of the

ACHR in Mongolia). HIC has asubstantial presence in nearly all regions except CEE, the

Caucasus, Central Asia and Australia, while the ACHR has representation across most of

Asia, except for in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The case of the ACHR is particularly

interesting, considering the network’s failed efforts to establish a presence in Kazakhstan, and

its ability to launch activities in Vietnam and Mongolia – countries that share anumber of

historic commonalities with post-Soviet states. As such the local housing struggles in

countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Isabaeva, 2018), quite similar in their nature to

international experiences,are not incorporated in global rights to the housing discourse.

To sum up, for many critical scholars, the ease with which the Western model of

transformation was applied is seen as something akin to anew colonial dependency on

external influences, replacing what others considered to be the colonial influence of former

Russian and then Soviet empires(Stenning and Hörschelmann 2008; Miłosz, 1953, Lisiak,

2010). The application of this one-dimensional planning approach was, of course, not the

responsibility of researchers operating with the post-socialist terminology, many of whom

thoroughly documented the issues of growing socio-spatial segregation, gentrification and

displacement. However, going back to the argument of Ferenčuhová (2012), the post-socialist

discourse,as much as it produced worthwhile research, was often done without

acknowledgement or reflection on the fact that the framework of analysis in itself legitimises

the rightfulness of the transition towards the Western model.

Iwould like to conclude this part of the article by referring to a question posed by

Sonia Hirt (2013: 36): ‘today’s East-Central European cities resemble Western cities much

more so than they did a quarter of a century ago. Have they then become capitalist? Is there

still a ‘post-socialist city’ (assuming there ever was one) or has it melted into a broader

category?’. Although the observation that CEE cities more and more resemble those of

Western Europe is clearly valid,the argument I put forward in the following part of this

article is that it is in fact impossible to know what cities in CEE are nowadays if we keep on

describing them solely in terms of how they compare to Western cities.

CEE – orientalisation and dismantling of urban informality

The growing body of literature that recognises issues of power, informality and its

multidimensional potential as a site of critical analysis (Banks et al., 2019) remains at odds

with the more conventional view on informality held by planning practice and parts of

academic sector.In this conservative perspective informality is criminalised and orientalised

as foreign or transitional’ phenomena (Polese and Rekhviashvili, 2017). Consequently, within

the analytical focus of post-socialist urban studies, phenomena such as self-built extensions

within large housing estates, either for living or commerce, were seen as resulting primarily

from the absence of rules or loosening of governmental control (Vasilevska et al., 2015).

Even in the rare situation wherethey were allowed by governments,as in the case of Georgia,

these forms of development were eventually stigmatised by local experts as a ‘menace to the

development of the city’(Bouzarovski et al., 2011: 2701) and eventually forbidden.Similarly,

informal settlements were most often identified as asymptom of a state’s failure to organise

their regulatory mechanisms fast enough. From the government’s perspective, their existence

was considered to be normatively bad and as something that should be no more than

‘tolerated’. In this type of cases the mainstream research approach suffered from the same

deficiencies as found in the Euro-American academic tradition; namely, of thinking of

informality as the absence of formality (Banks et al., 2019), thereby reinforcing the

dichotomy between the two. Consequently, in spite of the inherent complexities in the

relations between them,this simplistic understanding of the formality-informality continuum

was manifested in urban development policy and practice.

The contestation of informality as ‘foreign’ forms of development in CEE was clearly linked

to the prevalence of ‘idealised’ vision of Western city in official policy making and urban

development debate. A striking manifestation of a similar trend resonates in the conference ‘Is

Warsaw Becoming a City of the Third World?’, which took place at the University of Warsaw

in 2006 (and was still referred to by local press in 2020). One of the seminal post-conference

articles described the following issues in the city:

‘Shabby shacks,the exotic food stalls and sex shops are located on the main streetsof

the city: Marszałkowska and Al. Jerozolimskich. Next to it, on Próżna street, stand the

ruins of allegedly historic buildings, which cannot be torn down nor be rebuilt,

because the conservationist does not allow it (…) In the whole city centre the illegal

street vendors sell (typically smuggled) clothing, household items and illegal CDs. For

years the city authoritieswere unable to handle this compromising phenomenon. The

city centre is dirty and the street sweepers, used for cleaning streets in Paris and

London, are not used in the Polish capital anymore.Sloppiness, dirt and disorder are

typical features of a ‘Third World City’’ (Jałowiecki 2006: 51).

While these ‘aesthetics of chaos’ (Kusiak, 2012) may have indeed complicated the

formal development processes in some instances,the issue remains of how such a one-

dimensional understanding of complex urban processes may have shaped the academic

perception and planning response to informality. An insight into the area of the city (Plac

Defilad) referred in the quoted article illustrates these complexities. After the fall of the

Soviet bloc and change in the political regime in 1989, a portion of a huge area surrounding

the monumental soviet-styled Palace of Culture and Science started to be used as asemi-

temporary market space. This space was spontaneously claimed by unsolicited traders who

initially erected their temporary stalls without permission or a fee. During peak periods there

were around 2000 people trading in the area. Due to difficulties in managing the space, the

city gave a number of concessions to private companies who collected the tenancy fees from

traders and dealt with the site management. In the 1990s the market experienced a back-and-

forth story of attempted relocation, resistance and partial formalisation through construction

of more permanent structures (Bartoszewicz, 2013). In 2006 the city’s authorities decided to

reclaim the space in an attempt to beautify the area. This process led to street riots, fights with

the police, and the blockage of the city’s main street. After intense and forceful action

involving police intervention the traders were finally moved to another location. However,

this operation, did not result in development in line with the proposed policy ‘remedies’ such

as the promotion of stararchitecture or attracting the creative class to the city (Jałowiecki,

2006).

During the last three decades since 1989 the city has attempted to develop Plac Defilad

several times, based on ideas ranging from densification through reconstruction of the pre-war

urban grid, to filling in the vacant space with skyscrapers (Górczynska et al., 2019). The first

development idea clearly reflected the nostalgic attempts to forge connections to pre-war

traditions of the city, while also being related to the controversial idea of removing the iconic

Palace of Science and Culture, which was seen by many as an example of imposed heritage of

the Soviet Union. The second reflected a ‘global city aspirations’, curiously resembling urban

fantasies from Africa (Watson, 2014) or the mega projects of Asian cities. In addition, the

efforts to redevelop the space also included a couple of competitions for the design of the

Modern Art Museum (Kusiak, 2018), the creation of new public spaces, and the selling of

land to private investors.Such attempts at redeveloping the urban space have largely failed,

due to the inability to merge different land titles in the area as aresult of restitution law,

which acknowledged the pre II World-war ownership structure of the city. The law was

misused through speculation with these land titles by syndicates of investors, sometimes in

informal partnership with municipal workers (Kusiak, 2019). Finally as of date, only the said

museum started to be constructed in 2019 and the temporary trading or consumption spaces

keep on popping up in the area.

The juxtaposition of these two seemingly separate processes – firstly, the fight over the use of

space by traders; and secondly, the restitution issues – illustrates informality as one of the key

framing factors of the central location of the city and its role in regulating structural power

relations at various levels (Polese et al., 2016:17). The opportunistic move to relocate traders

highlights the municipality’s commitment to modernise akey space in the city and rid itself of

the kind ‘informality’ deemed unfit for the capital of a European country. In parallel, similarly

informal activities were conducted at an administrative level to secure financial gains for

groups involved in speculative activities. The ability of specific groups to employ legal

language to push for their own interests (Kusiak, 2019) represents the process of how

advantaged groups selectively utilise informal solutions(Banks et al., 2019), while trying at

the same time to evict the informality manifested in the imaginaries of backwardness.

Paradoxically, and in asimilar way to the process of othering of Eastern Europe by

power centres in the Western Europe (Kuus, 2004), the discussed example illustratesthe

common tendency to distinguish CEE from ‘the Third World’. At the same time,theway

informality is treated directly replicates the past (and often current) policy responses from the

South where ‘modernity continues to be associated with the formalisation of economic and

residency status, while informality is designated as asign of ‘backwardness’ and of secondary

social status’(Banks et al., 2019: 230) – an outlook that was strongly inculcated by the

historical experience of colonialisation. Parallels with similar processes of dismantling street

vending in Sofia (Venkov, 2018) or Tbilisi (Rekhviashvili, 2015; Polese et al., 2016)

highlight the comparative value of the study of informality in post-socialist cities and beyond.

For instance, the process of the dismantling of informality and its relations to urban

governance and the modernisation process were thoroughly discussed in the case of cities

such as Johannesburg. The biggest metropolis of Southern Africa, chasing the image of a

world-class city (Sihlongonyane, 2015), engaged in a series of modernisation-inspired

initiatives, including the eviction in 2013 of an estimated 6000-7000 informal traders through

‘Operation Clean Sweep’ (Rogerson, 2016). In response, the local academic sector did not

limit itself to just researching the phenomena; instead, despite having limited capacities to

impact the process, it provided a platform for the engagement between traders’ organisations

and the city in the post-removal period (Benit-Gbaffou, 2016). This approach contrasts

sharply with the heuristic device employed in Warsaw, in which the aforementioned

conference (‘Is Warsaw Becoming aCity of the Third World ?’) academics advocated for the

dismantling of informality and adaptation of copy-paste solutions from the West. The former

engaged with the subaltern and worked towards localising the practice of urban development;

the latter with the agendas of power holders and globalizing this practice.

Marginalised urban phenomena and learning across the South and the East—a way

forward

As illustrated in the preceding subsection, the flows of knowledge circulation tend to omit

post-socialist contexts. As much as the issue of inner orientation is at the core of the problem

(Gentlie, 2018), further externalities make it even more challenging to break through with a

novel local contribution at an international level. Post-socialist research’s double exclusion

from global discourses is amajor issue: its position outside mainstream urban studies, as well

as its ‘insignificant role in recent post-colonial critiques of this field’ (Tuvikene, 2016: 133).

Similarly, from the perspective of Western academia, local research is typically ‘fitted’ into

existing discourses. For instance the original analysis practices, such as food-self

provisioning, are likely to be seen as an expression of ‘culture of shortage’ or ‘economy of

scarcity’ (Jehlička, 2021). Lastly, the language exclusion is amajor concern (Müller, 2021b),

although the same problem may be raised regarding works on informality and other urban

phenomena in Latin America (Varley, 2013), not to mention francophone Africa.

Is there, therefore, a way forward to facing these internal and external limitations? The quick

outlook at planning practice in the review of the selective replication of planning trends from

the power centres and the orientalising and dismantling of urban informality, direct at two

key points of this paper and anchors we could use for such an operation. First, the overarching

frame of development in which peripheries desperately want to (or have to) replicate the

strategies of the power centres is a powerful condition impacting local patterns of

development across both the South and the East. This condition, more than any other

predicament, can be a strong motivator for finding common ground in new theorisations,

methodological approaches, and urban experimentation. Second, shared phenomena such as

various forms of informality do occur across the East and the South.

The first point brings me back to the initial argument of this paper. If any inspiration from the

South may be pointed at, it is the recognition of the need to ‘deconstruct what we think we

know, disrupting norms about what is familiar andwhat is strange’ (Sheppard et al., 2013:

895) or, as put by Gentile (2018: 10), ‘droppingthe implicit assumption of Western

normality, and thus of the normality and applicability of Western-made theories, we may be

able to unleash vast untapped intellectual resources’. If the experience of peripherality across

the South and the East can be treated as acommonality, then the Southern take on the study of

informality (or other marginalised phenomena) can help us bring to the table shades of local

urbanityin the East as well. This leads me to the second point: looking at similar phenomena

and engaging in planning practice as a vehicle for the knowledge decentring process. While

the vast diversity of contexts across the South and the East may position this task as

challenging, I argue after Caldeira Caldeira (2017: 4) that ‘peripheral urbanisation is

remarkably pervasive, occurring in many cities of the south, regardless of their different

histories of urbanisation and political specificities’. One solution in facilitating this process in

real terms is to look across phenomena identified by Southern scholars as containers of

peripheral practices, since the ‘Southern questions can well be asked from the peripheries of

all cities, no matter where they are’ (Bhan, 2019: 642). For instance, Bhan’s categories for

engagement between academia and practice means producing a common language of

investigation and scrutinising processes such as: squatting, repair and consolidation.

Although not all categories identified through these types of exercise may fit across all

contexts in the East (just as they do not fit across all contexts in the South), they provide an

opening for the initial engagement and testing of common areas of interest. A curious

example of this may be found when we juxtapose the notion of repair from India (Bhan,

2019) with Sgibnev’s (2015)investigation of the practice of ‘remont’ in the context of

Tajikistan. Both render conceptual similarity and emerge as promising opportunities to enrich

the vocabularies of practice from a non-anglophone perspective (Zhao, 2020).

In other words, the benefit of learning from the South in post-socialist contexts means

challenging the dominant modes of knowledge production with heuristic and methodological

perspectives from the South (Point 1) and substantiating this approach through exploration of

how similar ‘marginalised’ phenomena unfold and are tackled in urban practice, activism, and

engaged academia across relevant contexts (Point 2). Engagements around planning practice

may provide an opportunity to map relevant (dis)similarities of processes, work towards the

development of joint vocabulary, as well as the portfolio of approaches for engaged academic

practice and institutional development (with good examples such as African Centre for Cities,

its master in ‘Southern Urbanism’ or African Urban Research Initiative implemented by

universities across the continent).

However, it is crucial to bear in mind that the second point needs to be treated with caution

and should gradually lead to the expansion of areas of enquiry developed in cooperation with

the ‘Southern’ perspective. This ultimately means using heuristic and epistemological

approaches (Point 1) to facilitate enquiry about one’s own marginalised phenomena, including

and extending the problematic of informality. Several examples illustrate such an approach.

First, the discussed case of Warsaw documents and how street vending was dismantled in its

core symbolic location. However, as suggested by Gonzalez (2019), the investigation of

marginal marketplaces provides a different opportunity for theoretical contributions. Indeed,

in Warsaw’s own peripheries, undisturbed with the implementation of ‘prestige planning’, the

pop-up and informal markets underwent completely different pathways than in its central

locations. This marginal status was, in the first place, a condition for them to exist, but it also

resulted in limited interest from the academic community. After gradual consolidation, these

spaces became an appreciated element of district life—a phenomenon common across various

Easter European contexts and often acrucial element of livelihood creation and affordable

food provisioning (Shokalo, 2011; Humphrey and Skvirskaja, 2009).Consequently the

outlook on ‘own’ peripheries would support recognition of home-grown solutions or various

forms of hybridity that merge globalising ambitions with local needs in everyday life and

policy development (Robinson, 2008). The trading spaces are just one possible example,

whereas a wider portfolio of ‘themes’ needs to be considered and proposed by the wider

academic community in various contexts across the East.

Second, the approach to self-marginality may also include reflection on past phenomena,

which, in line with modernisation discourses, have been contested in official urban policies

and eventually eradicated or pushed to grey spheres of urban development. An example of

this can be the deregulation of the early 1990s, which, in atruly paradoxical manner, can now

be seen as a laboratory of self-made transitions and ways of navigating formalisation beyond

the South. The processes, which took place before formalisation, and arguably some hidden

innovative approaches towards formalisation, may become relevant now in completely

different contexts (see deregulation approach and housing extensions issue in English housing

market (Lombard, 2019; Ferm et al., 2020) or proposed deregulation in housing policy in

Poland). This perspective provides a different set of opportunities than self-made transitions

from Africa or Asia, which typically occur from scratch rather than in ready-made material

frames.

Third, the reflexivity towards self-marginality means critically revisiting dominant lines of

enquiry in specific thematic niches popular in post-socialist contexts and revaluating the way

these were framed. For instance the numerous quantitative studies documenting decreasing

socio-economic status in large housing estates from pre-fabricated panels in CEE used the

development patterns of Western European estates as abenchmark of a possible future. In

other words, the expectation of local cities becoming more and more like Western European

cities (Hirt, 2013) positioned local estates at risk of declining into ‘slums’ (Enyedi, 1998).

However, in spite of the documented decreasing or fluctuating status, many estates continue

to be attractive for various groups of users, and efficient upgrading and management solutions

are being deployed to increase the liveability and quality of these spaces. Consequently, a

deep qualitative study documenting these processes, rather than being labelled merely as

‘divergent pathways of development’ (Temelová et al., 2011), might hold more interesting

potential for reversed ‘benchmarking’ (or reversed best-practice solutions) between Eastern

and West Europe. Similarly, in the context of increased interest in the creation of massive

low-income multi-storey housing in cities such as Addis Ababa or Delhi, it is not hard to

imagine that the exchange of expertise and solutions between the East and the South can be

truly beneficial for these developments.

Conclusions

The recent debate on post-socialist cities has made significant advances in understanding their

own marginalities within international urban studies. This came with the recognition of the

need to disentangle from Western assumptions on urban modernity as ameans of breaking

path dependencies in theory creation. The proposal included de-territorialising post-socialism

as a concept (Tuvikene, 2016), looking at these cities as ordinary ones (Gentile, 2018) or new

discourses, such as the Global East (Müller, 2020).

In this article, I argue that it is not enough to stop at this. Turning to the ordinariness of cities,

although well justified as an analytical step, will not automatically make marginal (or even

major) towns of deep Asia or Ukraine interesting to the international research community.

Framing new discourse, such as the Global East, as much as empowering in attempts, will

always hold the risk of simplistically replacing the old discourseii,if not substantiated with a

practical approach for moving beyond the existing detachment. Considering the leading

academic and funding institutions will not suddenly shift long-term collaborations (Tuvikene,

2016) to obscure Eastern contexts, I argue that away forward lies in linking with the existing

empowering discourses. It involves benefiting from adecolonial approach, which helped

selected theorisations from the South reach international recognition. This operation requires

careful attention and a balance between the benefits and risks involved. What comes first is

the recognition that the historical connectivity with Western Europe as much as intuitively

‘felt’ across CEE and big bits of Eurasia should not discard the reflexivity of shared

experiences with other contexts. This reflexivity is challenging because, as I demonstrated in

the review of some planning trends in CEE, the phenomena that are similar across both East

and South tend to be labelled in the former as ‘foreign’ forms of development. For instance

the informality, rather than being treated as arelevant resource, is seen as arisk factor in

chasing the imagined ideal model of aWestern city. This very outlook epitomises the same

framing condition as in multiple cities in the South: the persistence of external imaginaries on

how a proper city should look and, in some cases, own exaggerations of these imaginaries (as

shown in an example of dismantling rental housing in CEE). This similarity provides a strong

first basis for learning from the South in terms of shifting attention to local modes of

development and taking the active role of academia in mainstreaming these nuanced

approaches.

Building on these foundations, I suggest working towards new theoretical conceptualisation

through careful review of what phenomena might have been overlooked so far in mainstream

academic inquiry. Here again, the exchange between the East and the South comes handy.

The recent debate on linking theory and practice in the South (Bhan, 2019) offers a good

openingfor such an engagement. Seeing how marginal practice unfolds itself across different

contexts renders the possibility of a refined language of enquiry and a search for

commonalities and differences that can then be forged into aplatform of cooperation. The

question of what ‘appropriate’ contexts for exchange may be is up for further scrutiny. Using

the international legacies of post-socialism may be a starting point, but again, Isuggest

focusing on contemporary (marginal) practice and urban activism as apromising opening.

The discussed examples of the dismantling of informality between Warsaw and Johannesburg

or the notion of ‘repair’ and ‘remont’ in India and Tajikistan (Sgibnev, 2015) (in fact multiple

of other post-socialist contexts) are as justifiable as any comparisons between urban

transformations across CEE and Western Europe. Endless other connections may be further

envisaged with the opening up of thematic horizons of mainstream enquiry.

With all the promising sides of this approach, it is crucial to be weary of overly idealising the

‘Southern’ theoretical conceptualisations, not to fall into the trap of uncritically replacing the

dominance of old ‘Western’ discourse with the Southern one. I suggest that this risk can be

avoided as long as the Southern approach is treated as astarting point and as a conceptual

device for uncovering home-gown phenomena. A discussion on the way forward in this paper

illustrates such three approaches, which hold the potential to inform theorisations and urban

practice both in the South and the North.

To sum up, building real connections between ‘marginalised’ contexts that go beyond the

basis of previous colonial relations, language, or convenience may be a meaningful

mechanism for disrupting current flow of knowledge creation. Setting-up new, stronger

research networks, engaging in joint studies, and establishing collaborative advocacy

platforms around these themes, are essential steps that must be taken in order to challenge

existing path-dependencies and build engaged academia. At the same time, new

configurations of cooperation can help to bring to light avast pool of knowledge relating to

both failed and successful urban development approaches from CEE, the Caucasus and

Central Asia – knowledge that has the potential to inform urban theory and practice beyond

real or imagined geographic boundaries and self-imposed academic silos.

References

Acuto M, Dinardi C and Marx C (2019) Transcending (in) formal urbanism. Urban

Studies 56(3): 475-487.

Aliyev H (2015) Post-Soviet informality: towards theory-building. International Journal of

Sociology and Social Policy 35(3/4): 182-198.

Bartoszewicz D (2013) Plac Defilad 20 lat histori upadku centrum Warszawy. Gazeta

Wyborcza 5 January, 2013. Available at:

https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,34862,13139591,Plac_Defilad___20_lat_historii_u

padku_centrum_Warszawy.html (accessed 25.09.2020)

Banks N, Lombard M and Mitlin D (2019) Urban informality as a site of critical analysis. The

Journal of Development Studies 56(2): 223-238

Bayat A (2000) From dangerous classes' to quiet rebels'. Politics of the urban subaltern in the

Global South. International Sociology 15(3): 533-557.

Benda-Beckmann F, Benda-Beckmann K and Griffiths A (2009) Space and legal pluralism:

an introduction. In: Benda-Beckmann F, Benda-Beckmann K and Griffiths A (eds)

Spatializing Law. London: Routledge, pp.15-44.

Bhan G (2019) Notes on a Southern urban practice. Environment and Urbanization 31(2):

639-654.

Bénit-Gbaffou C (2016) Do street traders have the ‘right to the city’? The politics of street

trader organisations in inner city Johannesburg, post-Operation Clean Sweep. Third World

Quarterly 37(6): 1102-1129.

Borén T and Young C (2016) Conceptual export and theory mobilities: exploring the

reception and development of the “creative city thesis” in the post-socialist urban

realm. Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(4-5): 588-606.

Boanada-Fuchs A and Boanada-Fuchs V (2018) Towards a taxonomic understanding of

informality. International Development Planning Review 40(4): 397-421.

Böröcz J (2000) Informality rules. East European Politics and Societies 14(2): 348-380.

Bouzarovski S, Salukvadze J and Gentile M (2011) A socially resilient urban transition? The

contested landscapes of apartment building extensions in two post-communist cities. Urban

Studies 48(13): 2689-2714.

Bromley R (2000) Street vending and public policy: a global review. International Journal of

Sociology and Social Policy 20(1/2): 1-28.

Burgess R (1978) Petty commodity housing or dweller control? A critique of John Turner's

views on housing policy. World Development 6(9-10): 1105-1133.

Caldeira TP (2017) Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics

in cities of the global south. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(1): 3-20.

Chan KW, Gentile M, Kinossian N, Oakes T and Young C (2018) Editorial –theory

generation, comparative analysis and bringing the “Global East” into play. Eurasian

Geography and Economics 59(1): 1-6.

Chelcea L and Druţǎ O (2016) Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist

Central and Eastern Europe. Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(4-5): 521-544.

Coudroy de Lille L (2015) Housing cooperatives in Poland. The origins of a deadlock. Urban

Research &Practice 8(1): 17-31.

Czepczyński M (2016) Cultural landscapes of post-socialist cities: representation of powers

and needs. London/New York: Routledge.

Devlin RT (2018) Asking ‘Third World questions’ of First World informality: Using Southern

theory to parse needs from desires in an analysis of informal urbanism of the global

North. Planning Theory 17(4): 568-587.

Durst NJ and Wegmann J (2017) Informal housing in the United States. International Journal

of Urban and Regional Research 41(2): 282-297.

Enyedi G (1998) Transformation in Central European postsocialist cities. In: Enyedi G (ed)

Social Change and Urban Restructuring in Central Europe. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, pp.

9–34.

Esposito E and Chiodelli F (2020) Juggling the formal and the informal: The regulatory

environment of the illegal access to public housing in Naples. Geoforum 113: 50-59.

Ferenčuhová S(2012) Cities and urban research in postsocialist Europe. In: Edensor T and

Jayne M (eds) Urban Theory beyond the West: AWorld of Cities. London: Routledge, pp. 65-

74.

Ferm J, Clifford B, Canelas P and Livingstone N (2020) Emerging problematics of

deregulating the urban: The case of permitted development in England. Urban Studies

0042098020936966.

Gilbert A (2002) On the mystery of capital and the myths of Hernando de Soto: what

difference does legal title make? International Development Planning Review 24(1): 1-19.

Gentile M (2018) Three metals and the ‘post-socialist city’: reclaiming the peripheries of

urban knowledge. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 42(6): 1140-1151.

Gonzalez S (2020) Contested marketplaces: Retail spaces at the global urban

margins. Progress in Human Geography 44(5): 877-897.

Górczyńska M, Śleszyński P and Niedzielski AM (2019) Impact of property rights and

ownership on the development of Warsaw’s contemporary city centre. European Planning

Studies 27(1): 160-180.

Grashoff U (ed) (2020) Comparative approaches to informal housing around the globe.

London: UCL Press.

Grubbauer M and Kusiak J (2012) Post-Socialism and the Dynamics of Urban Change. In:

Grubbauer M and Kusiak J (eds) Chasing Warsaw: Socio-material dynamics of urban change

since 1990. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, pp.9-24.

Gurran N, Pill M and Maalsen S (2020) Hidden homes? Uncovering Sydney’s informal

housing market. Urban Studies 0042098020915822.

Hatcher C(2015) Globalising homeownership: Housing privatisation schemes and the private

rental sector in post-socialist Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. International Development Planning

Review 37(4): 467-486.

Haid C and Hilbrandt H (2019) Urban informality and the state: geographical translations and

conceptual alliances. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(3): 551-562.

Hart K (1973) Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. The Journal

of Modern African Studies 11(1): 61-89.

Hanchard M (1999)“Afro-moderni: temporali, politics, and the African diaspora.” Public

Culture 11(1): 245–268.

Hilbrandt H, Alves SN and Tuvikene T (2017) Writing across contexts: Urban informality

and the state in Tallinn, Bafata and Berlin. International Journal of Urban and Regional

Research 41(6): 946-961.

Hirt S (2013) Whatever happened to the (post) socialist city? Cities 32: S29–S38.

Humphrey C and Skvirskaja V (2009) Trading places: Post-socialist container markets and

the city. Focaal 2009 (55): 61-73.

Isabaeva E(2020) Squatters and the socialist heritage: A comparison of informal settlements

in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In: Grashoff U (ed) Comparative approaches to informal

housing around the globe. London: UCL Press, pp. 95-109.

Jałowiecki B (2006) Is Warsaw becoming a city of the Third World? Studia Regionalne i

Lokalne 4: 48-60.

Jehlička P (2021) Eastern Europe and the geography of knowledge production: The case of

the invisible gardener. Progress in Human Geography 0309132520987305.

Kębłowski W and Rekhviashvili L (2020) Moving in informal circles in the global North: An

inquiry into the navettes in Brussels. Geoforum.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.014

Kok H and Kovács Z (1999) The process of suburbanization in the agglomeration of

Budapest. Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 14(2): 119-141.

Kovács Z (1999) Cities from state-socialism to global capitalism: an

introduction. GeoJournal 49(1): 1-6.

Kunzmann K (2004) Culture, creativity and spatial planning. Town Planning Review 75(4):

383-404.

Kusiak J (2012) The cunning of chaos and its orders: A taxonomy of urban chaos in post-

socialist Warsaw and beyond. In: Grubbauer M and Kusiak J (eds) Chasing Warsaw: Socio-

material dynamics of urban change since 1990. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, pp.

291-321.

Kusiak J (2019) Rule of law and rules-lawyering: legal corruption and ‘reprivatization

business’ in Warsaw. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(3): 589-596.

Kuus M (2004) Europe's eastern expansion and the reinscription of otherness in East-Central

Europe. Progress in Human Geography 28(4): 472-489.

Ledeneva A (ed) (2018) Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2: Understanding

Social and Cultural Complexity. London: UCL Press.

Lisiak AA (2010) Urban cultures in (post) colonial Central Europe. Purdue University Press.

Lombard M (2019) Informality as structure or agency? Exploring shed housing in the UK as

informal practice. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(3): 569-575.

Lux Mand Mikeszova M(2012) Property restitution and private rental housing in transition:

The case of the Czech Republic. Housing Studies 27(1): 77-96.

Marx C and Kelling E (2019) Knowing urban informalities. Urban Studies 56(3): 494-509.

McFarlane C (2012) Rethinking informality: Politics, crisis, and the city. Planning Theory &

Practice 13(1): 89-108.

McFarlane C and Waibel M (2016) Introduction: The informal-formal divide in context. In:

McFarlane C and Waibel M (eds) Urban informalities. London: Routledge, pp. 15-26.

Misztal B (2002) Informality: Social theory and contemporary practice. London: Routledge.

Mojanchevska K (2020) Governing diversity in socially fragmented urban settings: ‘Skopje

2014’and the ethnocratic homogenization of public spaces. Urban Research & Practice 13(4):

452-464.

Morris J and Polese A (eds) (2013) The informal post-socialist economy: Embedded practices

and livelihoods. Routledge.

Miłosz C (1953) Zniewolony umysł.Paryż: Instytut Literacki.

Müller M (2020) In search of the global east: Thinking between north and south. Geopolitics

25(3): 734-755.

Müller M (2021) Footnote Urbanism. In: Lancione M and McFarlane C (eds) Global

Urbanism: Knowledge, Power and the City. London: Routledge, pp. 88-95.

Müller M (2021b) Worlding geography: From linguistic privilege to decolonial

anywheres. Progress in Human Geography 0309132520979356.

Odendaal N (2012) Reality check: Planning education in the African urban century. Cities

29(3): 174-182.

Payne G, Durand-Lasserve A and Rakodi C (2009) The limits of land titling and home

ownership. Environment and urbanization 21(2): 443-462.

Pieterse DE (2013) City futures: Confronting the crisis of urban development. London: Zed

Books Ltd..

Polese A, Morris J and Kovács B(2016) “States” of informality in post-socialist Europe (and

beyond). Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 24(3): 181-190

Polese A, Morris J, Kovács B and Harboe I (2014) ‘Welfare states’ and social policies in

Eastern Europe and the former USSR: where informality fits in?. Journal of Contemporary

European Studies 22(2): 184-198.

Polese A and Rekhviashvili L (2017) Introduction: Informality and power in the South

Caucasus. Caucasus Survey 5(1): 1-10.

Polese A, Rekhviashvili L and Morris J (2016) Informal governance in urban spaces: Power,

negotiation and resistance among Georgian street vendors. Geography Research

Forum 36(2): 15-32.

Potts D (2020) Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis. Zed Books Ltd..

Rekhviashvili L (2015) Marketization and the public-private divide: Contestations between

the state and the petty traders over the access to public space in Tbilisi. International Journal

of Sociology and Social Policy 35(7/8): 478-496.

Rekhviashvili L and Sgibnev W (2018) Placing transport workers on the agenda: the

conflicting logics of governing mobility on Bishkek's Marshrutkas. Antipode 50(5): 1376-

1395.

Robinson J (2008) Developing ordinary cities: city visioning processes in Durban and

Johannesburg. Environment and Planning A 40(1): 74-87.

Robinson J (2013) Ordinary cities: between modernity and development.London/New York:

Routledge.

Robinson J (2016) Thinking cities through elsewhere: Comparative tactics for a more global

urban studies. Progress in Human Geography 40(1), 3-29.

Robinson J (2016b) Starting from anywhere, making connections: globalizing urban

theory. Eurasian Geography and Economics,57(4-5), 643-657.

Rogerson CM (2016) Progressive rhetoric, ambiguous policy pathways: Street trading in

inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa. Local Economy 31(1-2): 204-218.

Roy A (2005) Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the

American Planning Association,71(2), 147-158.

Roy A(2009) The 21st-century metropolis: new geographies of theory. Regional Studies

43(6): 819-830.

Roy A and AlSayyad N (eds) (2004) Urban informality: Transnational perspectives from the

middle East, Latin America, and south Asia. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Salukvadze Jand Golubchikov O (2016) City as ageopolitics: Tbilisi, Georgia - a globalizing

metropolis in aturbulent region. Cities 52: 39-54.

Sayın Ö, Hoyler M and Harrison J (2020) Doing comparative urbanism differently:

Conjunctural cities and the stress-testing of urban theory. Urban Studies 0042098020957499.

Sgibnev W (2015) Remont: housing adaptation as meaningful practice of space production in

post-Soviet Tajikistan. Europa Regional (1-2): 53-64

Sihlongonyane M (2015) The rhetorical devices for marketing and branding Johannesburg as

a city: a critical review. Environment and Planning A 47(10): 2134-2152

Simone A (2004) People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public

Culture 16(3): 407-429.

Sheppard E, Leitner H and Maringanti A (2013) Provincializing global urbanism: A

manifesto. Urban Geography 34(7): 893-900.

Shokalo M (2011) 'Buy from babushkas': Markets in Ukraine, BBC Ukrainian

Service, 7 March 11, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/direct/ukraine/9409814.stm

(accessed 25.09.2020)

Stanek Ł (2020) Architecture in global socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the

Middle East in the Cold war. Princeton University Press.

Stenning A and Hörschelmann K (2008) History, geography and difference in the post-

socialist world: or, do we still need post-socialism?. Antipode 40(2): 312-335.

Sýkora L and Bouzarovski S (2012) Multiple transformations: Conceptualising the post-

communist urban transition. Urban Studies 49(1): 43-60.

Tammaru T, Van Ham M, Marcińczak S and Musterd S (eds) (2015) Socio-economic

segregation in European capital cities: East meets West. Abingdon: Routledge.

Temelová J, Novák J, Ouředníček M and Puldová P (2011) Housing estates in the Czech

Republic after socialism: various trajectories and inner differentiation. Urban Studies 48(9):

1811-1834.

Thieme TA (2018) The hustle economy: Informality, uncertainty and the geographies of

getting by. Progress in Human Geography 42(4): 529-548.

Tsenkova S (2009) Self-made cities: In search of sustainable solutions for informal

settlements in the United Nations economic commission for Europe region.New York &

Geneva: United Nations Publications.

Tsenkova S (2014) Planning trajectories in post-socialist cities: patterns of divergence and

change. Urban Research & Practice 7(3): 278-301.

Trubina E, Gogishvili D, Imhof N and Müller M (2020) A part of the world or apart from the

world? The postsocialist Global East in the geopolitics of knowledge. Eurasian Geography

and Economics, 1-27.

Turner JF (1977) Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. New

York: Pantheon Books.

Tuvikene T (2016) Strategies for comparative urbanism: post-socialism as a de-territorialized

concept. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40(1): 132-146.

Varley A (2013) Postcolonialising informality?. Environment and Planning D: Society and

Space 31(1): 4-22.

Venkov N (2018) Assembling the post-socialist marketplace: transitions and regeneration

projects at the central pazar of Sofia. EthnoAnthropoZoom/ЕтноАнтропоЗум, 17, 229-279.

Warzywoda-Kruszyńska W and Jankowski B (2013) Ciągłość i zmiana w łódzkich enklawach

biedy.Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.

Watson V (2009) Seeing from the South: Refocusing urban planning on the globe’s central

urban issues. Urban Studies 46(11): 2259-2275.

Watson V (2014) African urban fantasies: dreams or nightmares? Environment and

Urbanization 26(1): 215-231.

Wiest K (2012) Comparative debates in post-socialist urban studies. Urban Geography 33(6):

829-849.

Young Cand Kaczmarek S (2008) The socialist past and post-socialist urban identity in

Central and Eastern Europe: the case of Łódź,Poland. European Urban and Regional Studies,

15: 53-70.

Yiftachel O (2006) Essay: Re-engaging planning theory? Towards ‘South-Eastern’

perspectives. Planning Theory 5(3): 211–222

Zhao Y (2020) Jiehebu or suburb? Towards a translational turn in urban studies. Cambridge

Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 13(3): 527-542.

Zysiak A (2014) The desire for fullness. The fantasmatic logic of modernization discourses in

the turn of the 19th and 20th century in Łódź.Praktyka Teoretyczna 13: 41-69.

iFor the ease of the argument the terms North and South will be referred to in the paper. However, I

acknowledge the diversities and contradictions embedded in these formulations and treat them more as epistemic

constructs rather than any real ‘geographic’ denominator. Similar apples to the ‘post-socialist’ cities – the term,

that has been heavily contested by now and the ‘Global East’, that is not uniformly accepted as an alternative. I

will use these interchangeably either referring to past or newer discourses. This acknowledges that these

denominators are applied to cities, which might share some historical experiences but often are very diversified.

ii The term ‘post-socialist Global East’ is already in use.