Changing Urban Landscapes, Eastern European and Post-Soviet Cities Since 1989

AperTO - Archivio Istituzionale Open Access dell'Università di Torino Changing Urban Landscapes, Eastern European and Post-Soviet Cities Since 1989 This is the author's manuscript Original Citation: Availability: This version is available http://hdl.handle.net/2318/129418 since Publisher: Edizioni Viella Terms of use: Open Access Anyone can freely access the full text of works made available as "Open Access". Works made available under a Creative Commons license can be used according to the terms and conditions of said license. Use of all other works requires consent of the right holder (author or publisher) if not exempted from copyright protection by the applicable law. (Article begins on next page) 04 October 2021 I libri di Viella 149 Changing Urban Landscapes Eastern European and Post-Soviet Cities Since 1989 Edited by Marco Buttino viella Copyright © 2012 - Viella s.r.l. Tutti i diritti riservati Prima edizione: dicembre 2012 ISBN 978-88-6728-009-4 This book is one of the outcomes of a research project funded by the Italian Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (Prin 2008), directed by Andrea Graziosi. viella libreria editrice via delle Alpi, 32 I-00198 ROMA tel. 06 84 17 758 fax 06 85 35 39 60 www.viella.it Indice Introduction 7 GIULIA PANICCIARI Almaty as a New Kazakh City: Kazakhisation of Urban Spaces After Independence 23 MARCO BUTTINO Minorities in the Urban Territory of Samarkand from the Soviet Years to the Present 59 LIZA CANDIDI T. C. Sedentary Migrants in Germany’s New Capital 95 PIETRO CIN G OLANI Near or Far: Daily Life, Migration, and Symbolic Boundaries Between Roma and gagè in Romania 123 FRANCESCO VIETTI Old and New in Ksamil: Migration and Urban Transformation in a Southern Albanian Village 153 ZAIRA TIZIANA LO F RANCO Minorities and Housing Entitlements in Shifting Political Systems: Legal Provisions and the Experience of Displaced Sarajevans 179 Contributors 211 Introduction I have been a frequent traveller in Russia and Central Asia for many years now. My trips have usually been long; and I have spent the best part of my time in the archives. One of the most extraordinary aspects of this experience has been what I encountered when I would emerge from the archives: the world around me was changing at an unbelievable rate. In my work as an historian of the Soviet Union, I could hardly avoid taking into account what I was seeing and thinking as I walked through the streets, first in Soviet, then in post-Soviet Moscow, Tashkent, Almaty or other cities. I looked at the world through the eyes of an historian; but I needed other tools to interpret what was happening around me. As a result, I became interested in urban history and began to read the works of anthropologists, sociologists, town planners, and geographers. I found another clue pointing in the same direction in the very city where I live in Italy, and the same can be said for the cities where most of you live, too: the immigrants from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whom we meet in ever greater numbers, tell us of the transformations taking place in their cities of origin. They contribute to these transformations through their absence, through the remittances they send, and their influence on relatives and friends who have not migrated, as well as through their re- turn visits. This volume reflects these two perspectives and contains studies with different disciplinary approaches, investigating changes that have come about in the last twenty years in some cities of the East. In the same years, independently of what was happening in the East, migratory flows have become more consistent all over the world, cultural contacts and the circulation of information more intense. There are cities where the population has increased and become more complex in its cul- 8 Changing Urban Landscapes ture, others where the population has diminished through emigration. The specificity of these countries is due to their having had communist regimes for decades and having been dragged down by their collapse, a collapse that plunged many cities in the East into deep crisis and induced many of the inhabitants to emigrate, while other cities successfully entered global networks. The opening up of frontiers and the change-over to market econ- omies effectively brought these countries and their cities very abruptly into the world of globalisation.1 Today many of these cities boast a modernity signalled by member- ship in international business networks, and they underscore this belonging by adapting their image. In the first years after the collapse of the communist regimes, the urban landscapes began to change following the build- ing of skyscrapers by banks and multinational companies, later becoming increasingly vertical. Even the cities on the margins of development were not unaffected by this craze for modernity: the “European style” spread everywhere, indicating a will to conform to standards and canons of taste that identified with those of Western Europe. This “European style” af- fects, above all, the houses of families whose relatives are working abroad. Around the world people have come under the spell of an imaginary West, which informs the changes in their cities. This might be defined as “occi- dentalism,” implying something like “orientalism,” but in reverse. Tension with regard to the global future marks the urban landscape in many ways, with new buildings, reconstructions of and transformations in 1. The features of the post-1989 urban transformation are the topic of various studies with a comparative approach. See: G. Enyedi, ed., Social Change and Urban Restructuring in Central Europe (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1998); M. J. Bradshaw, M. Bradshaw, A. Stenning, East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union: The Post-Socialist States (Edin- burgh: Pearson Education Limited, 2004); I. Hamilton, K. D. Andrews, N. Pichler-Milanovie, eds., Transformation of Cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards Globalization (Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations University Press, 2005); S. Tsenkova, Z. Nedović-Budić, eds., The Urban Mosaic of Post-Socialist Europe. Space, Institutions and Policy (Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, 2006); U. Altrock, S. Güntner, S. Huning, D. Peters, eds., Spatial Planning and Urban Development in the New EU Member States (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006); G. Andrusz, M. Harloe, I. Szelenyi, eds., Cities After Socialism: Urban and Regional Changes and Conflicts in Post-socialist Societies (Oxford: Blackwell Publish- ers, 2006); I. Brade, K. Axenov, E. Bondarchuk, eds., The Transformation of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Russia (New York: Routledge, 2006); K. Stanilov, ed., The Post-Socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe After Socialism, Geo- Journal Library Series, no. 92 (Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2007). Introduction 9 the use of both public and private space. In their physical structure, cities tend to resist this urge to remodel: it is difficult to demolish or completely alter buildings, squares, and monuments. As a new rhetoric, post-Soviet modernity triumphs when the political forces have the strength to be ag- gressive and where there are areas that are free from signs of the past. In the East, one example of this is Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan, built in recent years practically from scratch. Here the “Western” model is Dubai or Shanghai, and architects have come from all over the world, fascinated by the freedom made possible by the absence of the past. The model that appeals to these cities is, in reality, an abstract reference that has by now taken root all over the world, independently of Europe. In new cities like Astana, the buildings not only lead towards a science- fiction concept of the future, but also tell their own version of the past. If you take the time to glance through the photographs of Astana, you will find in the designs of the buildings, their decorations, colours, and imagery, continuous references to traditions that lend themselves to the composition of a national style.2 Here even the invention of the past has no limits, since there has never been a significant urban past for the Kazak people, who were semi-nomadic until forced to settle in the 1930s. By contrast, in other cities the constraints to rewriting the past are significant, though the political and cultural operation is similar. During the years of the communist regimes, the population of Eastern cities was affected by systematic policies of integration and assimilation aimed at erasing previous cultural heritage and national specificities. These cities were the object of broad nationalisation of land and properties, state planning, and the symbolic construction of the urban landscape promoting communist political power. After the collapse of these regimes, the birth of new states entailed the transformation of the meaning of belonging to a specific national, ethnic and religious group, and the redefinition of citizenship rights through policies of inclusion and exclusion. Among other con- sequences, the demise of the state-controlled economy brought about the privatisation of real estate. The legal recognition, application, and enforce- ment of property rights were indispensable conditions for the development of the market, the birth of enterprise, and the arrival of foreign investment. 2. See the chapter by V. Buchli, “Astana: Materiality and the City,” in C. Alexander, V. Buchli, C. Humphrey, eds., Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 40-69. Many photographs of the city can be found online. 10 Changing Urban Landscapes The acquisition of citizenship and ownership rights proceeded in parallel; they were the pillars on which the transformation hinged. Several cities changed very rapidly, succeeding in attracting wealth and migrants seeking work. Other cities saw the impoverishment and emigration of the greater part of their population.

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