Cities of Choice: Elective Affinities and the Transformation of Western European Urbanity from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s

AbstractThis article discusses the meanings and effects of personal choice and elective affinities in Western European cities from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. The first section shows how the notion of choosing one's surroundings and relations underpinned the development of ‘modern’ apartment buildings, suburban homes and road networks but also attracted significant criticism. The second section argues that this notion soon was not only criticised, but came under pressure by New Left activists, whose emphatically different elective affinities led them to create alternative spaces such as communal apartments and squatted houses. In so doing, they reinvigorated urban life, but also diluted their initial political project and triggered a conservative counter-reaction.

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Enlargement of apartments in socialist housing estates in Skopje under transition: The tension between individual preferences and collective action

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment ◽

10.1007/s10901-021-09875-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jasna Mariotti ◽

Daniel Baldwin Hess

Keyword(s):

Housing Stock ◽

Urban Life ◽

Strategic Decision ◽

Planning System ◽

Apartment Buildings ◽

Living Space ◽

Future Demands ◽

Residential Space ◽

Housing Estates ◽

Neighborhood Level

AbstractThe post-socialist urban restructuring of Skopje, North Macedonia has been characterized by significant changes in the built fabric of the city, resulting from the political, economic and societal processes following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In early 1990s and post-privatization, there was a dynamic transformation of the city’s housing stock in post-WWII prefabricated apartment buildings. Flat owners in socialist-era housing estates in Skopje modified their apartments by expanding and enclosing balconies, thus gaining more living space. Garages were converted into shops and ground-floor and first-floor apartments were renovated into offices, resulting in commercialization of previous residential space. To better understand the spatial disorder triggered by transformation of housing estates during the lengthy transition from a centrally-planned system to a market economy, this article evaluates various spontaneous and planned practices of transformation of residential space in housing estates in post-socialist Skopje. We analyze these changing practices of transformation through fieldwork and focus group discussions with residents. We also review archival material and administrative and legal documents, including municipal master plans and national planning laws and decisions related to housing estates in post-1991 Skopje. Findings emphasize the complex interplay between many actors, ideologies and interests that shape the experience of urban life in post-socialist Skopje, evidenced by outcomes related to housing choice and renovation practice, especially the enclosure of balconies for providing more living space. Such interventions are viewed as important steps towards improving living conditions in prefabricated apartment buildings in Skopje. Individual decisions about apartment renovation affect urban planning at the neighborhood level, and the findings from this research thus inform residential mobility and neighborhood-level strategic decision making. The aim is to help neighborhoods—built in an earlier socio-political era under a central planning system—to adapt to future demands.

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Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x00008155 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 77-96 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

K. N. Chaudhuri

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Historical Geography ◽

Urban Life ◽

Alexander Hamilton ◽

European Cities ◽

Sea Ports ◽

Political Economic ◽

The Town ◽

French Physician ◽

Local Languages

There can be few aspects of Indian studies more neglected than that of historical geography. Within this larger area of neglect, urban history occupies a special place. The indifference with which Indian historians have approached the urban heritage of the subcontinent is all the more difficult to understand because to contemporary European visitors, the merchants and other travellers, the towns and cities of Mughal India held a profound fascination. From the time of Tomé Pires and his highly perceptive Suma Oriental down to the end of the eighteenth century, stories of Indian travels and the accompanying descriptions of Mughal urban life continually entertained the popular literary audience. Not all of them understood or reported accurately what they saw. As the Scottish sea captain and country trader, Alexander Hamilton, who had an unrivalled knowledge of the sea ports and the coastal towns of India, pointed out with some candour, one great misfortune which attended the western travellers in India was their ignorance of the local languages. But the manifest contrast between the physical appearance of the European cities and those of Asia provoked some considerable and sensitive analysis of the nature of the urban processes in the two continents. Perhaps the most able and penetrating comments on the Mughal political, economic, and civic order came from the pen of the Dutch merchant, Francisco Pelsaert, and the French physician, François Bernier.

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Consumption of Meat in Western European Cities during the Late Middle Ages: A Comparative Study

Food and History ◽

10.1484/j.food.1.100974 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 63-86 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ramón A. Banegas López

Keyword(s):

Comparative Study ◽

Middle Ages ◽

European Cities ◽

Late Middle Ages ◽

Western European

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Hugo Soly and Alfons K.L. Thijs (eds), Minderheden in Westeuropese steden (16e-20e eeuw) [Minorities in Western European cities (sixteenth-twentieth centuries)]. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1995. No price indicated.

Urban History ◽

10.1017/s0963926800016461 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 261-263

Author(s):

Peter Borsay ◽

Elizabeth Musgrave ◽

Leo Lucassen

Keyword(s):

European Cities ◽

Western European

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National identity and Europeanization in post-communist Romania. The meaning of citizenship in Sibiu: European Capital of Culture 2007

Communist and Post-Communist Studies ◽

10.1016/j.postcomstud.2007.12.004 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 63-78 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Dragoş Dragoman

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

European Integration ◽

Nation Building ◽

National Sovereignty ◽

European Cities ◽

European Capital Of Culture ◽

Political Project

The structure of the requirements for citizenship in a Romanian city differs by and large from the structure of the same requirements in other European cities. The peculiarity lies in the lack of distinctiveness between the origin, the ethnic aspect and the civic aspect of citizenship and also in the emphasis on the language requirements for citizenship. The explanations could be traced back to the previous century and to the cultural and political project of state and nation-building. But the importance assigned to the national identity and national sovereignty issues in Romania may affect the European integration by hindering the feelings of European belonging and solidarity.

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