От Града на мечтите до Града на фонтаните: образи на новата „българска мечта”
From the City of Dreams to the City of Fountains: Representations of the New “Bulgarian Dream”

Summary/Abstract: The article inquires into the factors, agents and practices which have been shaping the visual imagery and aesthetics of the new housing developments in the years of post-socialist transition in Bulgaria. It examines critically the proposition that post-socialist urban landscape can be interpreted as a visual and spatial articulation of the ruling neoliberal mechanisms and policies, and as an outcome of the rational choices made by entrepreneurs, architects and potential home buyers. The article sets to establish how the representations of the new “Bulgarian dream” are constructed on both the supply and the demand side of the housing real estate market, and to what extent the resulting images – the actual image of the dwellings built, the advertised image and the image of the dream home – correspond to each other. The implicit question brought up by the article concerns the “power” and the “right” of the consumer-resident-citizen to choose and to participate in the “making” of the place he or she inhabits, having a say in both its functional and aesthetic characteristics – in other words, to exercise his or her “right to the city”

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