Eastern, East-Central and South-Eastern European Cities, 1850-2000

Abstract

This chapter delineates eastern, east-central and south-eastern Europe, highlights its problematic and shifting geographies for the study of cities, and argues for the need to see the region ‘between the Baltic and the Adriatic’ as one whole for the period the late nineteenth- and twentieth century. Whereas imperial capitals Vienna, St Petersburg and Istanbul tend to be seen in scholarship as either not representative, or outside the delineated borders of the region, the chapter pays closer attention to other cities in the urban typology, especially the so-called ‘second capitals,’ regional and provincial centres, ports, and border towns. In the analysis of the imperial context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, major urban planning and improvement projects are analysed as the responses to the perceived backwardness of the region as compared to their counterparts in western and German-speaking central Europe, where the latter served as useful models. When addressing various attempts at 'modernisation' on either central or municipal level, cities of eastern, east-central and south-eastern Europe emerge as a group that displayed similar urbanisation patterns and chronology, as well as persistent ethnic and religious diversity. Their twentieth-century experiences were also shaped by the ‘long’ First World War and the accompanied revolts and revolutions. While many became sites of nation building in the interwar period to a varying degree and duration, they also shared similar pathways during the Second World War and in the post-war period, when they became sites of urban programmes of state socialism and post-socialist transformations.