Post-socialist infrastructuring

Abstract

Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant political and economic systems, function alongside one another in contemporary cities. While infrastructures attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the “East” of Europe has still largely been left out, as the studies mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper, thus, takes on two challenges by intersecting an infrastructural lens with the re-conceptualisation of post-socialism. First, following calls from comparative urbanism and the postcolonial turn in urban studies and geography to work beyond usual suspects, the paper expands the territorial scope of infrastructure research. Second, the paper takes the critical edge of the aforementioned calls by offering new ways of attending to infrastructures through relations to the (socialist) past. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more-than-North/South perspective, this paper analyses post-socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. Instead of centralising the present or the “Western” best practice, the paper investigates to what extent it is possible to take elements of the (socialist) past and develop them into forward-looking measures. The paper shows the need to incorporate questions of social justice and equity – perspectives which were more central for infrastructural provision under socialism – into the ways in which infrastructures are planned, made, and used today.

Abstract

While infrastructures have attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the “East” of Europe has still largely been left out, as studies have mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper intersects an infrastructural lens with the re-conceptualisation of post-socialism. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more-than-North/South perspective, this paper analyses post-socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good.