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In 1949 construction of the planned town of Nowa Huta began on the outskirts of Krakow, Poland. Its centerpiece, the Lenin Steelworks, promised a secure future for workers and their families. By the 1980s, however, the rise of the Solidarity movement and the ensuing shock therapy program of the early 1990s rapidly transitioned the country from socialism to a market-based economy, and like many industrial cities around the world Nowa Huta fell on hard times. Kinga Pozniak shows how the remarkable political, economic, and social upheavals since the end of the Second World War have profoundly shaped the historical memory of these events in the minds of the people who lived through them. Through...
Unfinished Utopia is a social and cultural history of Nowa Huta, dubbed Poland's "first socialist city" by Communist propaganda of the 1950s. Work began on the new town, located on the banks of the Vistula River just a few miles from the historic city of Kraków, in 1949. By contrast to its older neighbor, Nowa Huta was intended to model a new kind of socialist modernity and to be peopled with "new men," themselves both the builders and the beneficiaries of this project of socialist construction. Nowa Huta was the largest and politically most significant of the socialist cities built in East Central Europe after World War II; home to the massive Lenin Steelworks, it epitomized the Stalinist ...
The cultural landscapes of Central European cities reflect over half a century of socialism and are marked by the Marxists' vision of a utopian landscape. Architecture, urban planning and the visual arts were considered to be powerful means of expressing the 'people's power'. However, since the velvet revolutions of 1989, this urban scenery has been radically transformed by new forces and trends, infused by the free market, democracy and liberalization. This has led to 'landscape cleansing' and 'recycling', as these former communist nations used new architectural, functional and social forms to transform their urbanscapes, their meanings and uses. Comparing case studies from different post-s...
Cities have always been dynamic social environments for visual and otherwise symbolic competition between the groups who live and work within them. In contemporary urban areas, all sorts of diversity are simultaneously increased and concentrated, chief amongst them in recent years being the ethnic and racial transformation produced by migration and the gentrification of once socially marginal areas of the city. Seeing Cities Change demonstrates the utility of a visual approach and the study of ordinary streetscapes to document and analyze how the built environment reflects the changing cultural and class identities of neighborhood residents. Discussing the manner in which these changes relat...
A complicated clock, an elephant in the woods, the emperor's paddle steamer, and the first "Dark Restaurant." There is obviously more to Zurich than banking, clean streets, and punctuality. This guide shows a very different side to Switzerland's largest city. Published by The Urban Explorer these city tales from new and unusual perspectives provide independent travelers with unforgettable memories. Ideal for those who want to escape the crowds and get beyond the well-known paths, as well as for those inhabitants who perhaps thought they already knew their city. Eccentric museums, secret gardens, iconic structures, idiosyncratic shops, colorful characters and unusual places of worship.
Discover this fascinating country with the most incisive and entertaining guidebook on the market. Whether you plan to wander through Krakow's magnificent medieval Old Town, hike in the Tatra Mountains or relax on the Baltic coast, The Rough Guide to Poland will show you the ideal places to sleep, eat, drink, shop and visit along the way. - Independent, trusted reviews written with Rough Guides' trademark blend of humour, honesty and insight, to help you get the most out of your visit, with options to suit every budget. - Full-colour maps throughout - navigate the cobbled alleys of Lublin or Warsaw's New Town without needing to get online - Stunning images - a rich collection of inspiring co...
You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in Krakow, Warsaw, and Gdansk. In this compact guide, Rick Steves and Cameron Hewitt cover the essentials of Krakow, Warsaw, and Gdansk, including The Tri-City. Visit Krakow's stunning Main Market Square, Warsaw's historical Royal Way, or Gdansk's Main Town Hall, featuring Golden Age decorations. You'll get firsthand advice on the best sights, eating, sleeping, and nightlife, and the maps and self-guided tours will ensure you make the most of your experience. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves Snapshot guide is a tour guide in your pocket.
When Henri Lefebvre published The Urban Revolution in 1970, he sketched a research itinerary on the emerging tendency towards planetary urbanization. Today, when this tendency has become reality, Lefebvre’s ideas on everyday life, production of space, rhythmanalysis and the right to the city are indispensable for the understanding of urbanization processes at every scale of social practice. This volume is the first to develop Lefebvre’s concepts in social research and architecture by focusing on urban conjunctures in Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dhaka, Hong Kong, London, New Orleans, Nowa Huta, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, Sarajevo, as well as in Mexico and Switzerland. With contributions by historians and theorists of architecture and urbanism, geographers, sociologists, political and cultural scientists, Urban Revolution Now reveals the multiplicity of processes of urbanization and the variety of their patterns and actors around the globe.
Based on in-depth research in Poland and Slovakia, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism addresses how we understand the processes of neo-liberalization in post-socialist cities. Builds upon a vast amount of new research data Examines how households try to sustain their livelihoods at particularly dramatic and difficult times of urban transformation Provides a major contribution to how we theorize the geographies of neo-liberalism Offers a conclusion which informs discussions of social policy within European Union enlargement
Rosemary Wakeman provides a sweeping history of "new towns"--those created by fiat rather than out of geographic or economic logic and often intended to break with the tendencies of past development. Heralded throughout the twentieth century as solutions to congestion, environmental threats, architectural malaise, and cultural anomie, today they are often seen as sad, pernicious, or merely suburban. Wakeman shows that hundreds of such towns sprang from templates and designs not only in North America and across Europe but around the world, revealing how different cultures dreamed of (re)organizing themselves. Wakeman also illuminates the missteps and unanticipated results of the initial optimistic choices and impulses.