Whoever wants to get acquainted with the main changes the cities of the former socialist countries in Europe are undergoing, can find a relatively reliable account of these processes in several handbooks, monographies and articles. There exist as well several books which try to analyze and explain in a complex way the general features of socialist cities and their transformation into post-socialist ones (Andrusz,Harloe,Szelenyi,1996; Enyedi,1998; French, Hamilton, 1979; Friedrichs,1985; Hampl,1999; Musil, 1980; Steinfűhrer 2004). Besides these compendia many studies were published in journals and conference proceedings (Domanski, 1994; Hamilton, 1995; Musil, 1993; Sýkora, 2000). Most often authors of such studies were scholars who had already studied for many years cities in socialist countries. There exist also many special monographies dealing with urban transformations in individual post-socialist countries or cities, or with different aspects of such transformations, as e.g. housing, governance, town-planning, etc. (Bodnár, 2001; Jalowiecki, 1999; Kostinskiy, 1994; Sýkora, 1999). Thanks to this rich literature on socialist cities, their transformations as well as thanks to the older studies on "ideal socialist cities", on so called Leitbilder of good cities, and on the principles of city planning in socialist countries (Baburov et al.,1968 Brumfield, 1990; El Lissitzky, 1984; Parkins, 1953) we have a rather complete picture of the inter-urban as well as intra-urban dimensions of what happened with cities in this region. We have as well some knowledge on the causes of transformations during and after socialism.

Analysts of cities in eastern and east central Europe are also fully aware of the fact that urban and regional developments and policies in individual former socialist countries differed quite considerably. This was to a large extent due to the inherited and differing urban and regional structures of the countries, due to differing duration of the communist rule, but also due to differing ideological approaches to cities. Especially the difference between USSR and the "new" socialist countries must be stressed in this respect. I think that especially the so called new cities in the former USSR are more transparent objects for the study of the impact of socialism on cities than the cities in those countries which became socialist after World War II.

We however miss almost completely thorough reflections - a kind of second thoughts - about the potential impacts of our knowledge on socialist and post-socialist cities on urban theory and research. What kind of inputs for urban theory can be gained from the experiment .with cities in eastern and east central Europe? The following thinking tries to show some of them.

How the knowledge about socialist cities´ development can be used for urban theory

It seems to me that to the most fruitful ways how to apply the accumulated knowledge on the development of cities under socialism for our purpose belong confrontations of the normative ideas, strategies and policies concerning cities and urban systems with the real and empirically documented development.

This means to compare the normative concepts of "socialist cities" with the factual development of cities in former socialist countries as well as to compare normative strategies of the future socialist urban and settlement systems, and the evolution of these strategies, with the factual development of settlement systems. Such comparisons should be complemented by analyses of the factors that caused failure or substantive modifications of the normative concepts. Important results can also be obtained by comparing the developments of socialist new cities built on greenfields, with developments of cities inherited from the past which should have been transformed into socialist ones.

What happened in the twentieth century with east European and east central European cities was indeed a remarkable experiment. The results of this experiment were however not yet fully reflected and exploited by urban theory that should try to understand deeper layers of contemporary European city structures. Let me first start with some general observations which try to link urban developments with two basic theoretical assumptions. The discussion of these general issues will be supplemented by two concrete examples.

A part of the mentioned "natural" experiment in planning, building and governing socialist cities was implicitly a test of two important concepts. One was concerned with the sociological nature (one is tempted to use the term social ontology) of cities. Marxism, which was at the roots of "real socialism" theory of city, was a variant of holistic social philosophy stressing the highly systemic nature of society as well as of cities. The other concept was stressing the possibility and feasibility of creating a harmonious, non-competing and non-conflictual urban society. It was assumed - by orthodox marxists - that after removing the deepest causes of social conflicts, i.e. of private property and capitalism, this new society would change step by step into a harmonious society. Both concepts did not, however, correctly describe the reality of socialist cities..

First, the general idea of the city as a highly integrated unit, i.e. as a tightly interlinked system, seems nowadays to be inaccurate. Marxist social scientists, politicians, planners liked to look at the city as a kind of organism and they stressed to much a holistic functional approach in analyzing and regulating it. Capitalism in their view destroyed the relatively harmonious pre-capitalist urban community and the role of socialism is to re-establish it. In a way socialists were in this respect very often near the conservative idea of the city. Nowadays we know that even pre-industrial cities were and are much looser organized phenomena than conservative and Marxist thinkers thought.

Second, the experiment did show as well that the picture of the "new society" and of "new good city", as presented by this political and social philosophy, did not reflect the reality that emerged after the revolutions. Ethical universalism applied theoretically to cities was slowly but systematically eroded by social and political processes after the revolutions. Marxist-Leninist socialism did not end in the rule of proletariat but engendered - as prophesized by Max Weber - formation of bureaucratic and interlinked elites. They co-operated, but at the same time competed and quite often were in conflict. And the socialist society - after removing the socio-economic inequalities linked up with capitalism- remained rather unequal and not as harmonious as presented by its ideologues. In fact it created its own and new social and power inequalities, as many careful social analysts discovered (Dangschat, 1987; Smith, 1989; Szelenyi, 1983). These inequalities were at roots of conflicts that were specific for socialist societies and their cities.

The socialist societies and especially their cities faced as well the old problem of all differentiated societies: how to distribute scarce urban resources and goods, i.e. who would live in environmentally and locationally better parts of cities, who would get into the better parts of housing stock, who would enjoy better technical and social urban infrastructure. The old question: "whose cities?" (Pahl,1970) did not loose its relevancy even after socialist revolutions. But the dream of a well functioning and at the same time socially harmonious urban society nevertheless captured the minds of many people. It was a dream which attracted for example so many Western avantgarde thinkers and architects, and not only marxists, as Ernst May, Bruno Taut , but also people with a very different background, as e.g. LeCorbusier.

Now to the first concrete example. Maurice Frank Parkins (1953) many years ago summarized the basic principles of city planning in Soviet Russia into 10 points. To a large extent they were used in a slightly modified way in other socialist countries as well. We can now compare Parkins´ summary of these principles with actual urban processes. In Parkins´ view the following principles were the most important: 1.Limiting population size and growth of cities, 2.Planned construction and servicing of cities, 3.Eliminating differences between the city and the village, 4.Individual projects to be completely planned, 5. Superblocks (kvartals) to be a basic planning unit for the city, 6.A program for community services, 7.Individual approach to each city, 8.The regard for national tradition in architecture and city planning, stress on "socialist realism" in architecture, 9.The city as a "living organism", 10.Priority for housing and the utilization of standard designs for residential projects.

The application of some of the principles almost completely failed, as e.g. of principle 1 or 9, some were used only partially, as e.g. 2, 4, 6, some were changed or only partially fulfilled as e.g. 3, 5, 10, some were successfully applied as e.g. 7 and 8. The failures were most often due to the clash between ideological (utopian) and pragmatic (mostly economic) approaches and constraints. More successful were the technologically based principles and those which paid attention to existing differences, as for example individual approach to cities.

The second concrete example is concerned with so called urbanization strategies. Here I use mainly my knowledge of Czech, Hungarian and Polish strategies (Musil, 1980). The main lesson emerging from analysing the history of these strategies can be expressed by the following sentence: from social utopianism to economic realism.

One can distinguish three generations of urbanization strategies in former Czechoslovakia. The first one which was formally decreed by the government, can be described as a modified, i.e. socialist planning version of Christallers´ central place theory. Stress was laid on creating a relatively dense network of central places (three categories) enabling all people to use easily all main types of social infrastructure (schools, health and social services, public administration, shops etc.). This was combined with the development of a dense network of public transport. After discovering that the number of selected central places is too high and thus too expensive, and that quite often other small towns than those which were selected by a political decision, are quickly growing, their number was reduced. This became the base of the second generation. The third generation of the strategies represents a more radical turn. To the central place theory was added a socialist version of growth pole theory. Stress was laid on concentration of activities and population into the main urban agglomerations. Behind the scene was a shift from stressing the servicing, or consumption aspects of settlement system to a policy that would form better economic conditions of production. A similar shift was observed in Hungary where the original strategy used as well a kind of central place theory and a control of Budapest growth. After analyses which did show that the economic growth of Hungary depends to a large extent on the growth of Budapest, the urbanization strategy was changed as well. In Poland the turn away from the concept of a decentralized settlement system ended in three versions of a more centralized urban system: 1. monocentric organization of territory, 2.polycentric organization and 3. zonal-corridor type of spatial organization.

Why are these examples important even nowadays? They all prove the fact that political, i.e. administrative decisions - based on social philosophy concepts - have undoubtedly an impact in shaping the structure of cities, but at the same time they have shown the limits of such type of managing the cities and their systems. The spontaneous "unplanned" processes always modified the intentions of politicians and planners even in a situation of a strongly reduced role of market in the economy and of strongly reduced role of democratic processes in the political sphere. To put it in more political terms and paraphrasing a former Russian geographer: socialist society was crippled by a gap between the complex fabric of its urban life and the archaic practice of its rulers. The rulers insisted on sending orders from above into the society, not understanding how much are the issues of modern urbanization beyond the reach of the simplistic mentality of the politicians and planners (Medvedkov, 1990).

Why the experience of post-socialist cities is important for urban theory

Urban changes brought by the collapse of communist regimes in the former socialist countries are as important as changes induced by the establishment of these regimes. They seem to be even more intensive, due to the fact that they comprise two simultaneously running transformations. One is the complex of transformations from an authoritarian, non-pluralistic political system to a democratic and pluralistic one and from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. The other are changes brought by globalization processes.

In the following part of my paper stress will be laid - due to my professional orientation - on socio-spatial and social changes of cities and of urban systems. Other issues, like city governance will not be discussed.

The observable socio-spatial and social changes can be linked to the synergy of the following causal factors: privatisation and restitution of property, reintroduction of property and land market, de-industrialization of cities, a growing presence of foreign investors in industry as well as in services, successive commodification of housing, including deregulation of rents, growing income differences, weakening of the welfare state system and of urban public transport systems, decentralization of city governments, more stress on environmental quality, some liberalization of immigration policies, individualization of values and increasing plurality of life styles.

In all post-socialist cities the main changes are concentrated in two major areas: into central parts of cities and into peripheral zones. New buildings - mainly administrative ones, shopping centres and hotels - are constructed in the centres of all post-socialist large cities. The most conspicuous in this respect are the changes of Warsaw centre. In other cities with well-preserved historical cores, as in Prague, the existing building stock is undergoing reconstructions and transformations from housing to administration and business function. Here the lobby of associations involved in monument protection plays an important role in saving the historical "face" of the core. But the cores are more and more serving tourists and less the locals.

In peripheral areas, especially along the motorways, extensive construction activities can be observed: the building of malls, administrative buildings, stores, but also new peripheral housing estates. A part of this development has the features of suburbanization.

Physical revitalization is another element of transformations of post-socialist cities. From the Czech perspective it is one of the most successful elements of transformation processes. Cities changed from drab and dull places into live and colourful spaces. However, the spatial distribution of the revitalization processes has been rather uneven, and has mainly concentrated into central parts of cities and especially along streets with shops. There exist simultaneously decaying parts of cities, most often in some inner city districts or in the old working class peripheral zones.

Deindustrialization and restructuralization of industrial production starts to change some parts of post-socialist cities into inner peripheries, similar trends are caused also by the rapid decline in railway transport and by the decline of buildings and spaces belonging to railways. Due to the rapidly growing air transport, completely contrary processes can be observed near the air-ports.

Some general features of the socio-spatial changes of post-socialist cities should be stressed. Thanks to small population growth of most post-socialist large cities, the changes, and especially the spatial expansions of these cities, are relatively slow and manageable. One can describe them - especially in central European cities - as a kind of reconstruction, restructuralization processes. The existing structure and fabric of these cities is relatively successfully assimilating the shocks of societal transformations. To a large extent these central European cities are returning back to their past, i.e. to their pre-socialist social ecology. We can thus speak about a kind of urban rectification processes. They are concerned mainly with the socio-spatial structure of the older i.e. pre-war and inner city zones. Not quite clear are however the trajectories of large socialist housing estates. Their present state and their future depend on the social structure of their population (in Prague they are socially rather mixed), on their location and more and more on the speed of their humanization, i.e. on their technical as well as environmental revitalization.

It should be stressed that as a part of the rectification processes we observe in all post-socialist cities a slow return of social segregation. Simultaneously in some of them a new urban phenomenon is emerging: gentrification. At the same time it should be stressed that the differences between the cities of the former Soviet block countries are growing after 1989. Especially the differences between the cities of former Soviet Union and cities of central European post-socialist countries are deepening.

The urban cultural as well as social patterns of pre-socialist period are gaining more and more on influence. The path-dependency concept is a multilayered phenomenon, especially when applied for cities.

To summarize the post-socialist transformations of settlement and urban systems is to a large extent easier than to find general features of inter-urban transformations. The following is a list of the main changes of urban system of post-socialist east central European countries: 1.The end of planned urbanization policies and regional redistributive policies resulted in increasing polarisation processes. 2. Capital cities and the largest cities see a more rapid growth than in the socialist past. On the contrary the medium sized and the small cities and towns are facing decline in population size, some in economic and political position. 3. The end of regional and urban redistributive policies linked with growing political decentralization means that the cities depend more than in the past on their endogenous economic and social potentials, on their economic base and on the quality of their local authorities. 4. The capital cities and some other large cities are growing thanks to their gate functions, rising international contacts and thanks their function as meeting places. 5. The fate of medium-sized and small towns starts to be precarious, and depends more and more on their location, access to main motorways, airports, etc. 6. Most difficult became the situation of large industrial conurbations whose economic base is "old industry" or mining, like the Polish Upper Silesian agglomeration. 7. Difficult became as well the situation of cities and towns in some peripheral regions, as e.g. south east Poland, northeast Hungary or eastern Slovakia as well as of small towns in the so called internal peripheries of Czech Republic. 8. The importance of geographic factors is shown by the fact that cities located in western parts of post-socialist countries and on the main transport routes to Western Europe are growing faster than similar cities in eastern regions.

Some conclusions

Eighty years of urban history in the Soviet Union and forty years of this history in other European socialist countries brought some important lessons. They can be summed up in the following way:

1. Cities in all types of industrial societies are deeply embedded into global societies. All industrial and post-industrial societies are urban societies. But this does not mean that the city as a specific sociological phenomenon has been "dissolved" in the global society. General theory of society can not substitute urban sociology. There will always exist a need to develop specific sociological approaches when trying to understand the city.

2. The failures of socialist governance and planning of cities was to a large extent due to two main causes: a) in the first phases to utopian way of thinking, b) later to extremely simplistic and technocratic interpretation of the functioning of cities. The stress on utopian blue-prints was at the roots of a too static perspective of socialist urbanologists. The dominance of architects and technicians blocked the development of highly needed process oriented approach in socialist urban theory.

3. The socialist planners conceived the city as a highly systemic entity not accepting pluralistic nature of cities. It seems that human ecology approaches, or modern political sociology, that combine co-operation and competition perspectives, are more realistic and useful.

4. The experiment with cities in socialist countries where concentration of political, economic and cultural power reached very high levels, and enabled thus quite intensive regulation of urban processes, has at the same time documented the importance of spontaneous, unplanned social processes (migration, family life, uses of time, life style preferences etc.) in shaping the so called planned cities.

5. Socialist politicians and planners used for governing and building the cities predominantly normative theories which however often changed. This brought many uncertainties into urban processes . Analytical urban theories were practically not used as a conceptual base for planning.

6. Socialist cities, especially the "new cities" differed from cities in capitalist countries in many respects (weak centres, weak social infrastructure, no suburbanization, less social segregation), but the urban systems (inter-urban dimension) of socialist countries did not differ considerably from those in capitalist countries. Socialist urbanization processes followed with some modifications (smaller capital cities, numerous medium sized cities) a similar trajectory as in capitalist countries. The inherited patterns from pre-socialist periods had rather strong impact.

7. The post-socialist urban developments in east central European countries are extremely complex processes. On the one hand they can be interpreted as rectification process, i.e. return to pre-socialist patterns, on the other hand they reproduce many patterns of the socialist period and at the same time they reflect, as well as the post-modern trends and the impacts of internationalization and globalization. To the most fascinating research themes belong studies which try to discover the new balance and which try to formulate strategic goals for the new situation. Important are also studies comparing the post-socialist development of Prague, Budapest and Warsaw.

8. The membership of these countries in European Union forms an institutional framework for rectification processes as well as of the acceptance of governance patterns, town-planning procedures and political culture of west European cities.

9. The development of soviet cities after socialism is more complicated, return to pre-socialist patterns is almost impossible, the inherited soviet past is dominant not only in physical, but also in political and social terms. At the same time the impact of globalization and westernization processes in Russian cities is strongly felt. One of the Russian urban sociologists expressed the view that the most difficult part of modernization and democratization of post-soviet society will be the humanization of soviet cities (Skaratan, 1990).

10. There is no doubt that the analysis of transformation of the physical fabric, of the institutional structures, urban governance, municipal economies, life styles and even population structures in post-socialist cities can become an important part of forward looking European urban research. Especially in our efforts to detect the general features of the urban.

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Source: www.valt.helsinki.fi/yhpo/kaupunki/Musil_Why_are_socialist_and_post.doc