Urban transformations as indicators of economic change in post-communist Eastern Europe: Territorial diagnosis through five case studies

The fall of the communist regimes in the Eastern European countries supposed a drastic transformation in their economic systems that has been reflected in the urban development of their cities. Urbanism from the planned socialist economy has often been replaced by strong and accelerated urbanization processes of neoliberal economies with common issues and specific casuistries of each territory. The new economic inertia, coupled with the major development of infrastructures derived from the important arrival of cohesion funds from the European Union and western multinationals investors, have meant a sudden change in the urban landscape of their territory that needs to be diagnosed from a global comparative approach to really assess the actual transformation of these former communist European countries of Eastern Europe. In the present article, the transformations which have occurred in the urban configuration of five representative cities will be evaluated through different space-time GIS indicators: Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Bucharest and Sofia. These indicators will help planners and decision-makers to diagnose the issues derived from the rapid urbanization associated with the new economic and social context. Their numerical and comparative analysis allow us to draw conclusions about the current situation of these processes of transformation of the territory and the future perspectives of the inertias of change in cities suffering from unbalanced urban sprawl and growth phenomena of gated communities.