The socialist city – a homeless city? A contribution to research on model implementations
The socialist city – a homeless city? A contribution to research on model implementations

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the homlessness of the socialist city. The model industrial cities of the so-called Eastern Bloc countries: Dymitrovgrad in Bulgaria, Eisenhuttenstadt in Germany, Dunaujvaros in Hungary and Nowa Huta in Poland were established around factories, power plants or foundries as a key element of the economic plans. They became single-purpose production centres, isolated and historically alienated. The system and economic changes of the 1990s unlocked many market mechanisms and social processes that enforced far-reaching transformations of their social-spatial structure. This revealed the weakness of those artificially created urban complexes and exposed the false image of a wonderful “home.” The “abandoned” city, negated in the post-transformation world, as well as its space are going to become the starting point of the analyses. The problem of homelessness of the socialist city will be considered especially in the context of the genesis of its creation, when the problems of the social and spatial structure of such complexes are discussed.

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