Iron Curtains Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space in the Post-socialist City

The fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was arguably the most significant political event of the late 20th century. For many, this dramatic historic shift was symbolized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, an iconic emblem of fear and division. Yet only twenty years later, many new walls—both physical and imaginary—have been erected across Eastern Europe, including redrawn state borders, partitioned cities, and myriad walled-off urban spaces.

Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs, and Privatization of Space in the Post-socialist City explores the human dimension of new city-building that has emerged in East Europe. Utilizing firsthand research culled from more than 100 interviews conducted primarily in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia—a city whose public spaces have unraveled over the last two decades—Sonia Hirt examines the ways people live and experience the new, post-socialist urbanism. Also addressed are what these new spaces tell us about their builders, users, and inhabitants. Embracing an explicitly cultural approach, the author suggests that disappointment with socialist and post-socialist conditions has led to mass skepticism toward the public domain, further resulting in a radical de-construction of public spaces. Iron Curtains offers provocative insights into the complex relationship between society and space during times of fundamental change.

Iron Curtains has been awarded Honorable Mention for the 2013 ASEEES Harvard Davis Center Book Prize! The prize is sponsored by Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and is awarded annually by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography.

Utilizing research conducted primarily with residents of Sofia, Bulgaria, Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs, and Privatization of Space in the Post-socialist City explores the human dimension of new city-building that has emerged in East Europe.

• Features original data, illustrations, and theory on the process of privatization of resources in societies undergoing fundamental socio-economic transformations, such as those in Eastern Europe
• Represents the sole in-depth monograph on contemporary urbanism in Southeast Europe
• Makes a broader statement on issues of urbanism in Europe and other parts of the world while highlighting the complex connections between cultures and cities