Specific urbanization in East-Central Europe

Geoforum, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. l&172, Printed in Great Britain

1990 0

0016-7lgsMl s3.00+0.00 1990 Pergamon Press plc

Specific Urbanization in East-Central Europe

GYORGY

ENYEDI,*

Budapest,

Hungary

Abstract: Socialist urbanization is not a new model of modern urbanization. East-

Central European socialist countries replicate to the global process. The specific features of their urbanization result partly from their historical developmentespecially their belated urbanization-and partly from their political system. Behind the facade of East-West differences lies a common underlying pattern of causality: the modern process of urbanization. Capitalist and socialist political systems have different mechaniwns by which to express the process but these result in similarities in long-term urban development.

Introduction

urbanization. These differences originate from collective (mostly state) ownership of urban land and infrastructure, centrally-planned allocation of development funds, and existence of comprehensive strategies shaping national settlement networks in the socialist countries: while capitalist urbanization is guided by market competition, private property, real-estate profitability, local decision-making and physical planning in individual cities.

The aims of this paper are to differentiate EastCentral European urbanization since 1945 from

Western urbanization, to analyze the sources of these differences, and assess how it fits into the global urbanization process. Urbanization is a spatial process, a spatial reorganization of society, which: (a) changes the geographical distribution of population of a given country and, at least in the first stages, gradually concentrates it in cities and urban agglomerations; and (b) diffuses urban life-styles and technical civilization into the countryside, so replacing an urban-rural dichotomy by an urban-rural continuum (or by a ‘unified settlement system’). Is There a Socialist Urbanization?

Our starting point resembles that formulated by FRENCH and HAMILTON (1979) in the introduction to their still fundamental book on urbanization in socialist countries: Is There a Socialist City? Their answer was affirmative, as virtually all urban geographers in East and West have agreed that there are crucial differences between socialist and capitalist

*Center for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-1538 Budapest, Hungary.

For East-Central European Marxist urban sociologists and geographers, a specific route to socialist urbanization has some theoretical evidence. Western neo-Marxist urban sociologists link the urban problems witnessed in Western societies to the contradictions of class and the capitalist mode of production (CASTELLS, 1983; HARVEY, 1973, 1985). This assumption implicitly suggests that socialist urbanization would provide solutions to such problems as excessive urban growth, and segregation within urban residential areas, and follow a different path. By contrast, neo-Weberian urban sociologists argue that it is not the mode, but rather the level ofproduction that determines the nature of urbanization. Large-scale industry has its own locational logic which would be valid in all fypes of industrialized societies, whatever their official ideology. They see the urban problems in Eastern Europe as different from those in Western Europe only insofar as the latter is more developed.

163

164 Empirical evidence shows that socialist principles are not always applicable in practice. Urban planners have had to face development problems similar to those in Western cities. There are various explanations for these similarities. East-Central European governments state that economic constraints have not yet allowed them to solve the problems of settlement development-such as housing shortages, or the degradation of the old city residential areas-but thy further economic development will gradually eliminate shortcomings partly inherited from the capitalist past. SZELENYI (1983) argues that similarities are banal, differences are fundamental. Although similar urban inequalities could occur in capitalist and state socialist societies, they have different causes like market inequalities vs bureaucratic redistribution. PICKVANCE (1977, p. 43) also reassures us that “the same phenomenon can occur for different reasons or causes in different cases”. My hypothesis is that socialist urbanization-more precisely, the urbanizgion of the East European socialist countries% not a new model of modern urbanization. They replicate the stages of the global process. These countries have reached different stages of urbanization and have developed special features as they reproduced each stage because of belated modernization and the socialist political system. Thus I do not accept either the neo-Marxist or the neo-Weberian standpoint: differences between East and West are neither wholly systemic, nor are they solely the result of belated development. Let us summarize the stages of global urbanization.

In the 197Os, geographers recognized that urban growth and growing population concentrated in metropolitan areas were not continuous phenomena. Most developed Western countries were showing signs of population relocation towards nonmetropolitan areas (BERRY, 1981; VAN DEN BERG, 1982). Theories were formulated to explain these spatial changes. Different stages of modem urbanization have been distinguished. The first stage comprised rapid expansion of industrial employment, strong rural-urban migration and spectacular city growth. The second stage embodied technical and structural changes in industry, resulting in a decline of factory employment and the rapid growth of services. The population continued to concentrate but in a relatively decentralized manner associated with suburbanization and selective growth of small and medium towns. The third stage introduces absolute decentralization of population, with growth occurring in non-metropolitan areas, which some authors

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call ‘counterurbanization’. The economy exhibits the introduction and propagation of high technology and rapid growth of tertiary and quarternary sectors. Empirical findings convince me that these three stages constitute a global model. But regions like East-Central Europe, which commence the process later, exhibit specific features only because the global environment had altered from when West European countries went through the various urbanization stages. East-Central Europe has reproduced the basic features of the first stage of modern urbanization. Most of these countries have entered or are currently entering the second stage, again in line with the model. Behind the facade of differences between capitalist and socialist urbanization, there are common features: rural-urban migration, urban concentration of population, spatial separation of workplace and residence, development of functional zones within cities, suburbanization, and, in the more developed northern half of East-Central Europe the increased importance of small and medium towns and growth of tertiary and quarternary functions. These phenomena are regulated by different mechanisms in the two social systems, but the basic processes producing them are similar or identical. Different mechanisms are simply alternative forms of expression of the process. For example, the role of the land market is frequently quoted as a key difference between socialist and capitalist urbanization. Although Western cities also have construction regulations (e.g. zoning) and government intervenes in housing and infrastructure development, the emergence of functional zones and different land uses in them have been largely shaped by the microgeography of land prices. Actually, it was not the land price but the locational value of urban land which was behind spatial regularity. Locational value expresses the rational use of land for urban functions‘rational’ meaning minimization of human effort in cost or travel time etc. to perform the functions or maximize their output. In a market economy, locational value is expressed in monetary terms. In a planned economy the same type of locational value is embodied in detailed construction regulations, norms, comprehensive physical plans, resource allocation. Locational value is similar in Western and Eastern cities: government offices, shopping areas, residential or recreational zones have similar site and location requirements for optimal functioning. Consequently, the functional map of an East-Central European city does not differ substantially from that

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of a Western one of the same size, importance functional type.

and

Certainly, governments have more power to shape the urban environment in the East than in the West. But detailed planning cannot express precisely locational values, Users of public land are not interested in reducing their land requirements to the absolute minimum necessary; rather, they are interested in being exempt from regulations. The lack of monetary measures means that the expression of the locational value depends on the planner’s subjective judgment. For this reason, socialist urban planning has a long history of efforts to place a quantified value on public land. The government in Hungary introduced a simulated land market 20 years ago, selling and leasing public land for state enterprises and agencies at a calculated price. Different prices were charged according to the type of settlement and the location of the land within the city. A property market operates in the residential and recreational areas of several socialist countries. Planning measures cannot express precisely the locational values, but the property speculation is typical in Western cities, and also distorts these values. The role of planning has been exaggerated as the most important independent feature of socialist urbanization. In such a complicated social system, cities cannot be planned and guided in a normative way. Planning aims at making wise corrections to spontaneous urbanization. One cannot start an entirely new process voluntarily; at best or-rather-worst, one can disturb the normal process by planning arbitrarily. We shall discuss later how the ‘classical’ goals of socialist urban policies had to be changed because they did not fit the normal processes. In the 1920s both West European and Soviet avant-garde urbanists supposed that social processes could be changed by construction. It proved to be an erroneous opinion. Collective apartments shared by several families developed neurosis rather than collective feelings among the inhabitants. Standardized apartments built on a massive scale did not make society more uniform. Two other factors made the normal processes of urbanization similar in East and West. Firsi, EastCentral Europe as a whole lagged behind Western Europe for centuries and has tried again and again to close the gap, For this reason, countries in the region have imitated or tried to follow Western patterns of political institutions, economic organizations and

urbanization. After World War II, newly established socialist governments tried again to catch up with the West through radical social changes, rapid economic growth and accelerated urbanization. Marxist ideology refused to adopt the life-style of Western societies, but needed their material wealth to establish the socialist (i.e. egalitarian) well-being of the population in what were economically poor East-Central European countries. Consequently, these societies followed Eastern (Soviet) patterns in formulating policy goals, and Western patterns in developing technical civilization in cities. But technology is not neutral: it expresses’ social relations, too. Western technical civilization is based on economic abundance and designed for differentiated individual consumption. Its adoption has had an effect on social differentiation in East-Central Europe. Second, planned urbanization based on government housing and centralized development of infrastructures creates only the built environment for socialized urbanization. That built environment is filled with social functions by people who make individual decisions in selecting a new settlement, accepting a new job, searching for a new apartment, and choosing education for their children. The goals set by individuals are quite simple: (a) adequate housing, (b) accessibility to work services and other family members, (c) social status: to live in a good place within the residential area of the city (KANSKY, 1976). The average citizen sets his or her goals in basically the same way whether he or she lives in EastCentral or Western Europe. After all, these choices express a certain perception of the urban space, which is a part of our common European culture. Goal-setting by government in shaping urbanization is different; it serves the purposes of regional and social equalization, the location of industry, or strategic needs. In the event that government and individual urbanization goals conflict, government has the power to constrain the articulation of individual interests, but none to change individual goals and ambitions. The structural features of the society set limits to individual behaviour but do not determine it. Individuals can build up hidden mechanisms for defending their interests, or at least for not following government goals. Even local government agencies might try to apply central government goals in a form adapted to local individual goals. To sum up, therefore, similarities between East and West European urbanization are of fundamental significance and express the general rules of modem urbanization and continuity of European urbanization.

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166 Belated

Development

Belated urbanization is a major source of the peculiarities of East-Central European cities. The region was located on the margin of classical (GrecoRoman) urbanization. Western types of medieval cities became widespread in Bohemia and in Saxony in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and had reached Hungary and Poland by the fourteenth century. They never became important on the Hungarian and Romanian Plains, where large rural market places formed the ‘urban’ network for centuries. And the Balkan Peninsula did not experience embryonic urban development until later in the nineteenth century (ENYEDI, 1978). Modem urbanization started in the German-Czech core area of Saxony, Thuringia, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. There, mercantile capitalism promoted handicrafts which evolved into manufacturing. Industry was dispersed in small units near rawmaterial and water energy sources and on the large landed estates: This early industrialization fashioned a dense urban network dominated by small and medium-sized cities. The process was slow and did not provoke massive migration or spectacular urban growth. Even nineteenth and early twentieth century urbanization did not distort the harmony of this urban network (see the paper by Musil in this issue). When in 1920 Czechoslovakia became independent, the new state localized 75% of all the industry of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1930, onethird of Czech communes contained manufacturing and three-quarters of all industrial settlements had fewer than 2500 inhabitants! So at the beginning of the socialist era, the Czech lands, Silesia and southern German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) were already highly urbanized (KANSKY, 1976). Urbanization in Hungary and Poland was delayed because both countries had long lost their independence. Hungary was partitioned into three parts in the sixteenth century: the Turks occupied the centre for 150 years, Transylvania became independent but under Turkish control, and the remainder was absorbed by the Habsburg Empire. After expulsion of the Turks (1699), Hungary became a mere province of the Austrian monarchy. And by the 1770s Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Russia and the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, norze of the present East-Central European states were independent in the nineteenth century (except what is now the G.D.R., which was part of

21 Number 2/1990

Prussia) when the first stage of modem urbanization was already fully developed in Western Europe. The region was dominated by four powers: Russia, Prussia, the Habsburg Empire, and the Turkish Empire. So, except for the German-Czech core, modem urbanization started only in the late nineteenth century and was not widespread. Sporadic mining and manufacturing, mostly promoted by foreign capital, fostered urbanization in only a handful of cities which remained isolated within a predominantly traditional pre-industrial settlement network. Economic stagnation typified the entire region between the two World. Wars (RANKI, 1983). Service functions remained poorly developed because backward farming restricted peasant incomes. Industrialization was disturbed in Germany (as a consequence of losing the First World War), Czechoslovakia (as a result of disintegration of the large AustroHungarian market) and Poland, where, in 1938, industrial output had not regained its 1913 level. Yet real industrial take-off began in the 1920s in the Balkans, and especially in Romania, but affected few settlements, leaving the subregion fundamentally rural. In sum, therefore, industrialization and urbanization were late, slow and in certain countries interrupted. The industrial structure and technology differed from the classical industrial revolution of a century earlier. The food industry played a much more important role in the industrial take-off of East-Central Europe than in Western Europe, and that sector did not promote large-scale urbanization. Foreign capital was invested in large enterprises located usually in a few bigger towns: urban development remained geographically polarized. Furthermore, territorial changes followed World War I and disturbed earlier urbanization processes. New boundaries imposed by the Versailles peace treaties in 1920 cut off traditional linkages which had evolved over centuries. The Hungarian urban network was seriously amputated: all its secondary neighbouring towns were incorporated into countries, leaving Budapest, the capital, the only sizeable city. At the same time, newly established countries experienced difficulties integrating the ‘pieces’ of ‘jigsaw’, their inherited urban network, into a unified, national settlement system. In Romania and Czechoslovakia two, in Yugoslavia at least three strikingly different urban systems existed within their new frontiers. This situation has not yet disappeared: it takes time to form a new urban network. So

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uneven urban development and boundary changes produced a unique situation in which different historical stages of urbanization coexist within rather small states. The first stage of modem urbanization penetrated the predominantly rural society only slowly. The population in East-Central Europe remained overwhelmingly rural as late as 1950: over 80% in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, 70% in Romania and Poland, 60% in Hungary. The theories and practices of socialist urbanism had to be introduced into a poorly-urbanized, largely pre-industrial settlement network.

Urban Development Era

Strategies

in the Socialist

Communist parties took over power in the entire region between 1945 and 1948. Building a socialist society on the Soviet model was declared a basic goal by the ruling parties and governments. Industrial, financial and trade enterprises were nationalized, and attempts were made to collectivize agriculture. The next urgent task was to close the economic gap between the industrialized West and the peripheritally developed East: hence the priority for rapid industrial growth. Industrial take-off, and consequently the first stage of urbanization, speeded up remarkably after 1950. Agriculture and people constituted the resources for rapid industrialization: heavy taxation of the agriculture and a low standard of living were tools utilized to achieve that goal. The new industrial take-off followed the Soviet pattern: energy, mining, heavy metallurgy and engineering were the leading sectors. All were organized in large production units and required locational concentration. So’the industrial take-off of the 1950s transformed only parts of urban hierarchy: industrializing cities attracted many rural migrants and became ‘strongholds of the working class’ which entitled them to have a number of privileges at the expense of rural communes and non-industrialized cities. Socialist urbanism was founded on two basic principles: egalitarianism and planned urbanization. Egalitarianism meant levelling the living conditions between settlements in the network and within individual settlements. Egalitarianism was a popular slogan in poverty-stricken East-Central Europe where striking differences in the inherited living conditions existed between cities and regions, and where strictly segregated zones and extended shanty towns occurred within the larger cities. Egalitarian principles were applied through new, large government

167 housing schemes comprising apartments with the same layout and level of comfort. Slight variations in the size of apartments were intended to meet the needs of different sizes of families, but every family had the right to the same area of residential space per person. People in these housing units were socially mixed. Basic public services were evenly located within the residential areas using general norms like the number of kindergarten places or shopfloor space per 10,000 inhabitants. Shanty towns were tom down and replaced by government housing. It was more difficult to apply the egalitarian pbciples in the older zones of the cities. Local authorities partitioned bigger, capitalist-period apartments and villas, or located several families in single, large apartments. Egalitarian urbanism had the greatest opportunity in newly-established, ‘socialist’ cities. There was a generally-accepted hypothesis that, with the advancement of socialism, society will become more and more uniform so that egalitarian use of urban land will be in harmony with social structure. It was expected that inequalities inherited from the capitalist past would disappear thanks to socialist development: subtenants, residents of collective apartments and workers living in hostels would receive their own apartment in 5,lO or 15 years. But in reality, as its economy matured, socialist society has become more stratified. New professions have emerged, but East-Central European societies have become more egalitarian, as a result of ‘pruning’ the extremities: the very rich and the masses of very poor have disappeared. At the same time, the working classes have become much more differentiated than they were earlier. The size and importance of whitecollar professions is growing remarkably. So the meaning of eguZiturianzkmhas had to be repeatedly reevaluated since the 1950s. Current policies in individual socialist countries differ strongly on this question. Classical egalitarianism-under strikingly different living conditions, to be sure-is strongly supported in the G.D.R. and Romania. Differentiated social structures, and hence differentiated urban land use, are ideologically accepted in Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia and tolerated in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Since the late 196Os, the slogan of egalitarianism has been combined with efficiency. Governments were unable to fulfil their promised goals in housing and public services. Shortages in infrastructure became permanent, as investment was notoriously postponed. Egalitarianism under shortage produces inequalities (HAMILTON, 1979a,b). If governments

168 fail to supply everybody with certain scarce public services, they have to select whom to supply. Privileged classes, social groups or individuals will have better access to scarce goods or services than those who are poorer or less well informed. Increasing inequality under ‘egalitarian’ central bureaucratic distribution was first revealed by SZELENYI and KQNRAD (1989). It is often held that dispersion of in~~t~~~re investments and operating public services throughout the entire settlement network is inefficient. Egalitarian services must be created to function efficiently, but this means concentration in selected places. In my view, economies of scale have been applied to public services in an unjustified manner: economic efficiency is not a valid criterion for establishing or running a non-economic institution such as a public school or hospital (see the paper by Orosz in this issue). West European welfare states face similar problems. Several research projects were carried out in the 1960s in industrialized countries to define the optimal efficiency of city size (JACOBS, 1964; RICHARDSON, 1973). Although results varied, there was a consensus that: large metropolitan areas are less efficient (i.e. more expensive) forms of urbanization than medium-sized cities: and rural settlement must be rationalized by concentrating ~pulation in larger settlements with an ‘efficient’ size for modernization. East-Central European urbanists were continuously distressed by the existence of so many rural settlements because they could not apply the principles and the tools of socialist urbanization to them; for instance, such settlements were pra~tic~ly excluded from government housing programmes. Except for a few workers’ colonies built by state farms, rural housing remained mainly private and more differentiated than urban housing. PZunning itself is not a privilege of socialist urbanization. Urban planning is well developed in many Western (mostly West European) countries, too. Yet it is much more comprehensive in socialist countries and also controls the financial-economic mechanisms of urbanization. The classic Soviet planning model covers all details of urban developments and is based on collective ownership and strict government control of urban land and infrastructure. Central authorities decide the location of infrastructure development, local authorities simply execute the central directives. But despite detailed planning, urban development contains many spontaneous elements. Central planning is t~tamount to sectoral planning under which housing, public health, transport, communication, education and industry are planned separately by different ministries. City councils have the

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task of co-ordinating this development-but they have no decision-making power. Poorly-co-ordinated sectoral decisions frequently produce bottlenecks in in~ast~cture. The countries of East-Central Europe exhibit great variety in the interpretation and application of the socialist principles. They face differing problems in contrasting development levels and settlement networks. They also have divergent ideas about urbanization and planning mechanisms. Nevertheless, there are common features in settlement development strategies in the region: First, urban policies have passed through several phases in the Socialist era. No explicit urban policy existed in the early 1950s: sectoral planning was dominant and principles of socialist urbanization were applied only sporadically in certain sectors (e.g. government housing) or in certain settlements. Each country established a few new, ‘socialist’ cities, imitating the Soviet example where more than 1000 new cities were built, many of them near mines or in the Siberian and Soviet Far Eastern uninhabited territories. In densely-populated East-Central Europe, new towns served to demonstrate the rapid success of Communist governments and to experiment with socialist urban planning. But after four decades of existence, most of these cities remained company towns-like Leninvaros in Hungary-or developed into industrial suburbs of neighbouring cities (as did Nowa Huta near Krakow in Poland). During this period relatively little m~ufact~ng was located in less-developed rural areas, but it still promoted urban growth there. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed the introduction of the-first comprehensive regional and urban strategies. The key was industrial de~n~al~ation to provincial cities to help level out employment opportunities among regions and diminish interregional migration. The first long-term Hungarian urban development strategy, published in 1962, classified cities according to their ability to support industry. But by the 1970s cities were no longer regarded simply as a site for industrial production; the importance of their central place functions was being stressed. The equalization of living conditions in different regions and types of settlement has become the basis for new regional and urban policies. Nowadays, the spatial organization and accessibility of public services attract at least as much attention as industrial location and integration of the urban and

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the rural settlement network into a unified settlement system has been formulated as a long-term goal. Second, the management of urban growth has been controversial. On the one hand, to diminish regional tertiary and industrial-later inequalities, quarternaryaecentralization was welcomed and several regulations tried to limit the expansion of larger cities where infrastructure shortages were most acute. On the other hand, centralization and concentration were highly praised as politicians, government bureaucrats and state enterprise managers were convinced that ‘big is beautiful’, that the large factories, large hospitals, large restaurants etc. are more efficient than small ones. Urban and regional policies have struggled to find a proper compromise between equality and efficiency. Several strategies have been suggested to find this elusive compromise, such as of concentrated decentralization (i.e. location industry in an underdeveloped region in a few selected major centres) or to maintain provincial production units (branch plants) under strict control of large enterprise headquarters. Alternative strategies have been discussed between experts and decision-makers. Political, economic and strictly professional issues were considered in such discussions. Little, if any, attention has been paid to the opinion of the population. Public participation has been reduced to largely symbolic involvement, such as voluntary work performed in free time for building a new neighbourhood playground, or the exhibition of physical city plans where the public could comment in a guestbook. Third is the controversy over rural development strategies. Abolition of social differences between town and village has been a traditional cornerstone of Marxist theory. This has special significance in EastCentral Europe where a large part of the population suffered rural poverty. Sectoral plans promoted key measures to modernize the countryside (e.g. electrification, road construction). But both the theory and practice of the Marxist governments have favoured cities. It has been repeatedly quoted that, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels bemoaned “the idiocy of rural life” and called for the “gradual abolition of the distinction between the town and country”. Lenin described cities as “the centres of the economic, political and spiritual life of the people and the major source of progress” (DEMKO and REGULSKA, 1987). Actually, socialist power in the regions has been city-based: the prime purpose was to

169 control key cities and govern the country from them, so these cities enjoyed advantages in obtaining centrally-allocated development funds. Moreover, socialist governments have been suspicious of the countryside where farming people, suffering heavy taxes, compulsory deliveries and collectivization, have been reluctant to support the ambitious programmes of industrialization. In addition, rural development did not offer any professional challenge to physical planners because there was little room for spectacular new projects. So, until the 1970s no valid strategy existed for rural development. Fourth, throughout the region urban policies focused on the formation of a ‘proportionate’, or ‘balanced’ urban network. As noted earlier, no well-developed urban network existed in pre-war East-Central Europe outside Bohemia and the present-day G.D.R. Development of the urban hierarchy has been directed ‘from above’. Centralized investment allocations expanded and modernized first the top of the urban network, the capital city and large regional centres, then later the medium-sized cities, and still later the small cities. Such ‘reverse’ urbanization typifies countries where modem economic development came late. So there was a period when city systems in much of East-Central Europe exhibited a dichotomy between modern cities and tradi&?onal local centres, and this inhibited adequate linkages between modern cities and the countryside. Nowadays, policy is focusing on achieving integration of the urban and rural settlement networks. For this purpose, non-farm and public service jobs are being concentrated in large villages, with a concomitant running down of ‘non-viable’ villages. The latter have been sometimes selected by planners arbitrarily and without considering local opinion (RONNAS ,19&t). Fifth, planners agree that urbanization must continue as the rural population symbolizes the backward past and the developmental gap between East-Central and Western Europe must be diminished. Nevertheless, advocates of rapid urban growth miscalculate two things. First, they overlook that the high level of urbanization in Western Europe results from ,centuries-old, organic development ‘from below’, while post-war urbanization in East-Central Europe occurred under different social conditions and in a short time. Second, the proportion of population urbanized does not mean anything: statistically, Latin America is as urbanized as Europe, but the level of modernity is quite different.

170 Differences within East-Central Europe Differentiation of the urban landscapes in the region can be summarized from four viewpoints: First, levels and s~~iures of urb~ni~~on vary greatly between and so~e~~es within countries. The G.D.R., Czechoslovakia and Hungary are experiencing limited urban growth, especially in large cities. Bulgaria and Romania are experiencing urban explosion. Yugoslavia exhibits all possible variations within its national territory, Demographic trends are important too: although Poland and Hungary are at the same urbanization stage, Polish urban growth is stronger on account of a high natural increase in population. Second, urb~ni~tion is shaped by the i~ter~i po~~ti~~l-te~to~~ organization and ~~tio~~l minorities of individ~zstutes. Federal states like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia can never concentrate the planning, management and development in the capital city as much-as non-federal states like Hungary or Bulgaria. Multinational states like Yugoslavia and Romania must maintain a balance in urbanization among territories occupied by different national minorities. Third, two divergent models are applied in the region concerning role of pinning arad central de~~io~making. The first group comprises Czechoslovakia, the G.D.R., Bulgaria and Romania, which follow the classical Soviet model of detailed central planning and administration which allocates development resources to individual settlements through an intermediate regional agency. A second group consisting of Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia apply a more decentralized planning and decision-making model, in which central planners designate only desirable long-term trends in national settlement development, but actual planning and de~ion-m~ing occurs at the local level. Yet this power may be limited to technical matters. East-Central Europe will need decentralized financing or urban development as an important step toward self-government, and citizens’ participation in decision-making. Local authorities are now more willing to share responsibility with the citizens because they can no longer blame the central govemment for making all the wrong decisions. Decentralized settlement development may promote some political pluralism and teach people how to express and manage diverging interests in a democratic manner.

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Fourth, generally accepted principles are applied differently in the planning practice of individual countries. For example, equalization may be seen to be necessary among regions, and within certain settlements, different types of settlement, and various zones or social groups within a specific city. But it has also been interpreted as requiring levelling in total employment, industrial jobs, per capita GNP, personal or family income, and living conditions (expressed in access to infrastructure supply). Or it has been expressed in control of urban growth to avoid ‘excessive’ concentration in one or a few cities. Different methods were developed for this purpose: administrative control over migration, employment decentralization, or accelerated growth of local centres. Eficiency has been the official explanation (‘metropolitan growth is too expensive”) while environment~ deterioration and social deviations have been only rarely mentioned.

Special Features of East-Central European Urbanization An earlier section discussed the lateness of EastCentral European urbanization and its central planning and management since 1945. Here two further specific features need elaboration. First, the excessive role of i~~~iaii~ation in urban development. Before 1939, industry was highly localized in small enclaves within the region. The post-war industrial take-off brought industry to every part of East-Central Europe. But provision of services and infrastructure have been seriously neglected because they were classified as ‘non-productive’, consuming rather than producing national income. However, the low efficiency of industrial investment resulted in acute capital shortages, forcing central authorities to allocate infrastructural investments to transport, telecommunications and other facilities to meet industrial needs. Residenti~ i~astm~ure developed as a spin-off from this. So, at least until the 197Os, industry really rneunt city development. This situation was theoretically formalized in Soviet urban geography and expressed in urban policies (POKSHISHEVSKIY and LAPPO, 1976). City growth and decline depended on their industrial functions. Urban spheres of influence coincided basically with industrial commuter zones. By the 197Os, industrial growth had slowed down and, today, only Bulgaria and Romania are sustaining any significant industrial expansion. The effect on urban population change is partly evident from Table 1.

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burst of industrialization and neglect of the tertiary sector. Settlement policies must pay more attention

Table 1. Proportion of the urban population in EastCentral Europe (%) * Country

1970

1975

1980

1985

Albania Bulgaria Czechoslovakia G.D.R. Hungary Poland Romania Yugoslavia

33.7 53.0 62.3 73.8 49.9 52.3 36.9 38.68

33.97 58.0 65.7 75.4 51.7 55.7 39.2 n.a.

34.43 62.5 72.6 76.3 55.1 58.7 45.8 46.511

74.3 76.6 56.8 60.2 50.0 n.a.

iif!5

* Sources: for the CMEA countries: Statisticheskiy yezhegodnik strumtchlenov SEV, 1986, p. 10. Finansy i Statistika, Moscow. Census data for 1970 and 1980; estimate for 1975 and 1985. For Albania: 35 Years ofSocialist Albania. 8 Nentori PublishingHouse, Tirana (1981). For Yugoslavia: Statistical Yearbook, 1986. t 1973. $1978. § 1971. 111981.

to urbanization of the countryside. To date, rural development has been contradictory in East-Central Europe. Strong social levelling has occurred, yet the urban-rural dichotomy in living conditions persists. One marked sign of social levelling is the high proportion of industrial workers among rural residents. Daily commuting is widespread and comprises mainly blue-collar workers who are generally firstgeneration workers not keen to settle down in the cities, partly because of urban housing shortages but mostly because of the advantages of their dual agricultural-industrial occupations. In some places the proportion of industrial workers among the rural population is higher than among the urban population. Cities became ‘strongholds’ of white-collar workers. Before World War II, rural areas were seriously underdeveloped and, despite substantial improvement in rural living conditions, they continue to suffer serious disadvantages. Rural people have difficult access to a number of subsidized public services. Rural incomes lag behind urban ones. Indeed, inequalities between town and country represent one of the most serious examples of social discrimination in East-Central Europe today.

About 55-60% of the population lives in cities, a relatively small proportion, though Albania and the G.D.R. define the wide extremes still found in the region. We cannot expect strong urban growth in the future because an expanding service sector can recruit manpower from manufacturing where there is clear ‘overemployment’ and inefficiency. The indus-

Urbanization as a social process has remained imperfect because a significant proportion of urban dwellers still retains rural attributes. This is especially true of first-generation worker immigrants from the countryside. Former peasants poured into the cities in such great numbers that they modified traditional patterns of urban life and partly ‘ruralized’ the cities (SIMIC, 1973). In 1970, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, were first-

trial take-off and the rapid urban growth era have already ended: yet the rural sector still remains large and important. Second, the ruralsector is still important in the process of urbanization. The continued existence of a relatively large rural sector (Table 2) is the expected result of belated urbanization, the short historical

Table 2. Employment in economic sectors (%)* 1970 Country Bulgaria Czechoslovakia G.D.R. Hungary Poland Romania Yugoslaviat

1980

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

38.8 47.3 49.6 43.2 37.6 30.8 29.6

35.8 18.5 13.0 26.4 34.6 49.3 48.7

6.0 6.8 7.4 ::;

19.4 27.4 30.0 23.2 21.6 15.1 17.7

45.6 47.0 50.3 38.5 37.7

21.1 13.6 10.6 22.7 29.1 289 30:6

6.7 6.6 7.3 8.1 6.2 7.1 5.1

26.6 32.8 31.8 30.7 30.0 19.5 27.7

4.8 4.0

?6::

* Sources: see Table 1. 1 = industry, 2 = agriculture, 3 = transport, 4 = tertiary. t 1971 and 1981.

172

generation migrants from the provinces. Rural people help their urban relatives in many ways (with food supplies, financial aid for housing), which means rural areas continue to contribute indirectly to urban development. Recent city-dwellers often return to their villages during their paid holidays to undertake farm work in peak seasons. And Yncountries where second homes are common, plots around these homes are intensively cultivated: in Hungary, for instance, one-quarter of all urban families possess such ‘auxiliary farms’. Unlike the U.S.A. and Western Europe, suburbs in East-Central Europe are dominantly blue-collar commuter zones. Settlement in suburban zones usually occurs among migrants from more distant rural areas. These workers continue to maintain a rural life-style by residing in single-family homeswhiih they build, at least in part, by themselves-set in large, intensively-cultivated gardens with orchards, vineyards and some livestock. Such people simply ‘relocate’ some of their former rural habits and traditions from rural to suburban areas. Moreover, *migrants from the same village try to live in the same street or neighbourhood in their new suburban settlement.

Looking to the Future

East-Central Europe will continue to exhibit special features as it proceeds through the second stage of modern urbanization. Rapid levelling between urban and rural living conditions cannot be expected. Structural and technological change in the economy might take in both concentrated and decentralized forms, but their introduction will be hampered by the current economic and political crisis affecting the region. Several questions regarding the impacts of that crises remain unanswered: will political institutions alter to become more favourable for decentralized development? Will the structure of state industrial enterprises move towards centralization and integration (as is*occurring in the G.D.R.) or toward decentralization and self-management of smaller units? What role will private capital play in restructuring the and providing modern urban infraeconomy structure? One can add more questions, but definitive answers cannot be given at this stage. One thing is certain, however: deep social changes are taking place in East-Central Europe and they will continue to shape and affect the path of its urbanization as well. The end of the 1980s marks the close of an

GeoforumNolume important and contradictory of the region. Acknowledgement-The

21 Number 2/1990

era in the urban history

author acknowledges the support

of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

(Washington, DC) during the preparation of this paper.

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