Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, central state institutions coordinated and imposed all major decisions on societal and economic development – which had a major impact on urban development. Under Soviet conditions, “the city” barely was the result of a negotiation process. Since the onset of societal transformations, cities in the successor states of the Soviet Union are facing severe pressure to adapt to newly emerged nation states and globalisation.

With these developments in mind, the research project was targeting processes of urban reconfigurations in post-Soviet space from a comparative perspective. The research goal was to explain how cities confront new challenges of modernisation, new forms of economy and living in the context of different nation states and a globalised liberal economy.

Results/Publications

The project has created an international network of about 20 senior researchers in eight countries from different disciplines who engage in urban research in post-Soviet space. The project has hosted PhD fellows from Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, France, Germany and Lithuania. One main result of the joint international work is "The urban database" for the former Soviet Union countries. Several international workshops, PhD summer schools and conferences on urban development, urban governance and civil society were organised in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Publications (selection):

Brade, Isolde / Neugebauer, Carola S. (Hrsg.) (2017): Urban Eurasia. Cities in Transformation. DOM publishers. Berlin. 200 pp.

Salukvadze Joseph / Golubchikov, Oleg (2016): City as a geopolitics: Tbilisi, Georgia – A globalizing metropolis in a turbulent region. In: Cities, Vol. 52, pp. 39-54.

Slepukhina, Irina / Brade, Isolde (2016): The polarization of Russian space: Cities and Regions.  In: Problems of regional development of Russia. “Kodeks” Publishing House. Moscow

Nefedova, Tatjana / Slepukhina, Irina / Brade, Isolde (2016): Migration attractiveness of cities in post-Soviet space: a case study of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In: Regional Research of Russia. Vol. 6 (2), pp. 131-143.

Neugebauer, Carola / Rekhviashvili,  Lela ed. (2015): The special Issue “Loss and (re)Construction of Public Spaces in post-Soviet cities”. In: International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy has been prepared. Vol. 35, issue 7/8.

Golubchikov, Oleg / Slepukhina, Irina (2014): Russia: showcasing a "re-emerging" state? In: Grix , J. et. all. (eds). Leveraging Legacies from sports mega-events. Palgrave Pivot, pp. 166-177.

Golubchikov, Oleg / Badyina, Anna / Makhrova, Alla (2013): The Hybrid Spatialities of Transition: Capitalism, Legacy and Uneven Urban Economic Restructuring. In: Urban Studies,  July 15, 2013. pp. 1-17.

For more information, please visit the ira.urban website