Retrofitting the City: Residential Flexibility, Resilience and the Built Environment 9780755620128, 9781784531508

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To Saska

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 2.1 Different domains (‘planes’) of flexibility affecting households.

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3.1 A three-dimensional representation of the changing amounts of connectedness, resilience and potential in different stages of the complex adaptive cycle.

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3.2 Theoretical scope of the concepts of resilience, flexibility and adaptive capacity relevant to the relationship between households and the built environment of the home.

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4.1 The underlying dynamics of in-situ adjustments vs the classic residential mobility model: multiple housing ‘episodes’ and ‘events’ are experienced in the same dwelling.

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4.2 An outline of the different facets of household resilience (understood in social-ecological terms) within the context of a number of crucial planes of flexibility.

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5.1 Locations of the case study cities and countries.

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5.2 Salient features of Gdan´sk, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

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5.3 Prefabricated panel blocks in Zaspa. They are surrounded by green spaces that are well maintained. Most of the buildings have been subject to upgrading investment (photo by the author).

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5.4 One of the main streets in Wrzeszcz Dolny. Parts of the area have been subject to revitalization, although this is not always the case (photo by the author).

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5.5 Salient features of Ljubljana, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author). 124 5.6 A large part of Sˇisˇka’s pre-war urban structure still survives today, albeit many houses have undergone significant alterations, and the district now contains a much more eclectic mix of housing, including numerous apartment blocks along the main streets (photo by the author). 126 5.7 Sˇisˇka’s continued residential attractiveness is demonstrated by the extensive construction of new apartment buildings at its northern outskirts, either as stand-alone complexes or as infill among older blocks (photo by the author).

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5.8 Salient features of Budapest, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

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5.9 The district of Lipo´tva´ros extends across the northern part of the historical urban core of Budapest. It contains a mixture of commercial buildings and residential space in addition to a range of services and public areas. Much of the area has seen re-development and improvement, though not at the scale seen in some other ECE urban capitals such as Prague or Ljubljana (photo by the author). 132 5.10 The housing estate of Ka´poszta´smegyer consists entirely of prefabricated buildings, which largely remain in the same state in which they were built (photo by Vastalicska).

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5.11 Salient features of Skopje, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

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5.12 Skopje’s older urban quarters are undergoing rapid processes of housing infill and densification, with little planning control and oversight (photo by the author).

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5.13 Many of the five-storey prefabricated panel apartment buildings in the district of Karposh IV have been extended via vertical additions (photo by the author). 142 6.1 The Große Allee as it appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/ , tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

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6.2 Wrzeszcz’s central square as it appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/ , tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

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6.3 A German map of the northern districts of Gdan´sk from 1930, indicating the morphology of the city; the empty area to the north of Wrzeszcz (then ‘Langfuhr’) is now occupied by the Zaspa housing estates. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/ , tomek/ Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

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6.4 The river port along the Vistula river canal in Nowy Port at the beginning of the twentieth century; the landmark Nowy Port lighthouse (dating from 1893) and some of the old fishermen’s houses are visible in the background. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/ ,tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm. 149 6.5 Lower Sˇisˇka in 1913. Source: www.stara-siska.si.

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6.6 The centre of Sˇisˇka after World War I. Source: www.stara-siska.si.

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6.7 Stylized sketch of the home of Gabriela. (Left) original room plan; (right) changes implemented in response to different demographic events: 1 – illegal conversion of part of the corridor to a bathroom once the flat was occupied; 2 – construction of a partition wall in the living room upon the birth of a second child; the wall was removed after the children moved out (sketch by the author). 156 6.8 Nowy Port’s prefabricated panel housing buildings can be seen in the background, having been obscured by older built tissues which constitute the urban heart of the district (photo by the author). 158 6.9 Much of Karposh IV is comprised of five-storey prefabricated apartment buildings constructed during the 1970s, now almost completely covered by external extensions and additions.

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6.10 The heavy fuel oil-burning plant that supplies Karposh IV with district energy.

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6.11 A housing block in Gdan´sk’s district of Nowy Port, just north of Zaspa, known for being one of Europe’s longest. Numerous such structures can be found in the area, albeit they are not as long in Zaspa.

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6.12 The disproportionately high number of pensioners’ clubs and associations attests to the extensive presence of their age group in Sˇisˇka.

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7.1 Household categories according to the relationship between classic residential mobility and in-place adjustment. 178

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8.1 Spatial adaptability issues in Gizela’s apartment: 1 – narrow door does not allow for moving big furniture pieces in; 2 – removal of partition wall; 3 – remainder of partition wall cannot be removed because it contains chimneys; 4 – addition of curved wall to separate kitchen and bathroom.

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8.2 Ground-floor conversion of apartments into small businesses is visible throughout the case study areas (photo by the author).

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8.3 Varying levels of housing upgrading and reconstruction are both embedded and create micro-scale patterns of inequality that may be replicated across wider spaces (photo by the author).

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9.1 An integrated perspective on in-situ housing transformations and resilience via the lens of resilience thinking.

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Boxes 2.1 The second demographic transition

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2.2 Anthony Giddens’ Modernity and Self-Identity

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3.1 Critiques of social-ecological resilience

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4.1 Retrofitting the city

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4.2 Performances of architecture

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4.3 Power, space and society

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6.1 Older women in post-communist cities

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7.1 The second demographic transition in ECE

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8.1 Urban decision-makers and older people in inner cities

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the result of a series of empirical and theoretical investigations spanning a period of almost ten years. In the first instance, it would have been impossible without the opportunities for exchanging knowledge and ideas that I gained as a result of working as a post-doctoral fellow within the EUfunded Re-urban project at the Department of Geography within Queen Mary University of London, where I benefited from the mentorship of Philip Ogden and Ray Hall, and international academic links with Annegret Haase, Annett Steinfu¨hrer and Sigrun Kabisch in particular. This engagement led to a visiting professorship at the University of Gdan´sk, thanks to which I was able to gather and analyse much of the evidence that forms the core of this book. There, I received unparalleled academic guidance and support from Iwona Sagan, while undertaking fruitful collaborative work with Maja Grabkowska and Mariusz Czepczyn´ski. I am also grateful to a number of other individuals in the university and city of Gdan´sk for their intellectual input, friendship and help: Stanisław Rzyski, Magdalena Szmytkowska, Kamila Me˛drzycka, Wojciech Da˛browski, Grzegorz Masik and Klaudia Nowicka. Between 2004 and 2007 I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford; many of the chapters that follow were developed and written thanks to the opportunities for academic exchange and overseas work afforded by this position. To support the former, I was also fortunate to receive a small grant from the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers. I also benefited from ideas developed as a result of discussions with individuals such as Judith Pallot, Elton Barker, Sarah Whatmore. Andrew Barry, Linda McDowell, Gordon Clark, Sarah Dyer, Derek McCormack, Murat Erdal, Ivan Panovic´, Sandra Sˇc´epanovic´, Francesca Martelli, Olga Tribulato, Dariusz Wo´jcik, Patricia Daley and Brenda Boardman. I continued working on the book between 2007 and 2012, when I moved to the University of Birmingham, while profiting from the intellectual

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presence and support of, inter alia, Dominique Moran, Jon Coaffee, Rosie Day, Phil Jones, Julian Clark, Lloyd Jenkins, Mark Bassin, Peter Lee, Lauren Andres, Oleg Golubchikov, John Round, Deema Kaneff, Tim Haughton, and Vlad Mykhnenko. During this period, I was invited to take up a Visiting Professorship at Charles University in Prague, thanks to funding from the Czech Ministry of Education (Grant no. MSM0021620831 – Geographical Systems and Risk Processes in the Context of Global Change and European Integration). This project funded part of my work in Skopje and Ljubljana, and some of the concepts and frameworks presented here were developed thanks to conversations with Ludeˇk Sy´kora and Roman Matousˇek in particular. The most recent stage of the book-writing process took me to the University of Manchester at the beginning of 2013, where I received outstanding academic support, and found fertile ground for the generation of new knowledge and ideas. For this, I am particularly grateful to colleagues in the School of Environment, Education and Development, as well as the Centre for Urban Resilience and Energy. These include Maria Kaika, Erik Swyngedouw, Noel Castree, Simon Guy, Andrew Karvonen, James Evans, Kevin Ward, Tim Allott, Albena Yaneva, Joe Ravetz, Jeremy Carter, Alexander Wochnik, Alison Browne, Jonny Darling, Helen Wilson and Alastair Moore. The award of a starting grant from the European Research Council (to be more precise, this was funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, FP7/2007–2013, via ERC grant agreement no. 313478) allowed me to undertake a final round of fieldwork in Skopje, Budapest and Gdan´sk, and enhance the theoretical framework of the book. The multi-sited nature of the projects that led to this book means that over the years I have come into contact with a number of individuals whose exceptional scholarly capacities and energy have invigorated my own work. They are too numerous to mention, although I would single out Michael Bradshaw, Gavin Bridge, Vanesa Castan Broto, Harriet Bulkeley, Kathryn Furlong, Mark Gaterell, Michael Gentile, Sergio Tirado Herrero, Mojca Hrabar, Michael Pasqualetti, Katrin Grossmann, Adrian Smith, Alison Stenning, ¨ rge-Vorsatz, and Gordon Walker. Thanks are Miguel Torres Garcia, Diana U also due to the Cartography Office at the University of Manchester for drawing some of the maps in this book, and David Stonestreet at I.B.Tauris for his exceptional tolerance and assistance throughout the editorial process. Last but not least, none of this would have happened without the strength I drew from my family (parents: Dimitrije, Eleni; sister: Rumena; in-laws: Petre, Dafinka; and my late grandmothers Maria and Vera). Saska, who has been by my side throughout all of this deserves a special mention as an endless provider of patience, understanding and inspiration.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The beginnings of this book can be found in a European Union-funded research project aimed at exploring the repopulation and diversification of inner-city areas with a variety of social groups and household arrangements. Its analytical framework centred on the concept of ‘reurbanization’, which pinpoints the conditions under which some metropolitan areas in developed-world countries have been renewing their residential attractiveness and dynamism, after a long phase of decline. As a researcher within the project, I was able to travel across the continent and acquaint myself with the views of local residents, city authorities, commercial actors and academic experts on the issue, while exploring the social and spatial underpinnings of the changes that had engulfed their cities. The results of this scholarly undertaking, which have since been published, inter alia, in the form of various articles in academic journals (see Bouzarovski et al. 2010; Buzar et al. 2005, 2007a, 2007a; Haase et al. 2010), emphasized the close relationship between reurbanization and socio-demographic change at the level of the household, as well as the multi-directional and internally diverse character of the process. Throughout the background research for the project, I observed that the ability of inner-city tenement buildings to respond to the changing needs of their inhabitants by lending themselves to constant built environment transformations provided an important residential pull factor towards innercity living. In many of the urban areas that I explored, households had undertaken extensive alterations of their residential dwellings, mainly by changing the number and layout of rooms, or building external extensions. I almost had the feeling that the flexibility of the lifestyles and housing histories of the people who inhabited these places was supplemented by the adaptability and mutability of the dwelling stock itself. This relationship was creating a landscape of flux in the inner city, placing the built environment of the home in a constant state of outwardly invisible, albeit often quite slow, change and transformation.

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The theme of housing transformation came up, once again, during some of my subsequent collaborative research work in the cities of Gdan´sk (Poland), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Skopje (Macedonia). Although this time my colleagues and I were looking at patterns of everyday life among a specific set of social groups in the inner city – mainly pensioners and working class families – we still observed a similar trend: the surveyed households had undertaken an extensive set of modifications of their residential dwellings, which were also serving as vibrant sites for the development of informal economic practices and social networks. This was partly due to the fact that these people had lived in their homes for a long time, as a result of being unable or unwilling to make a house move even after the family had experienced an event that usually leads to relocation in developed-world contexts. It was almost as if the households had formed an invisible alliance with the buildings in which they lived, allowing both parties to remain in the same dwelling thanks to the articulation of a wide range of creative responses to each other’s needs (some of this research has been published in Bouzarovski 2009; Bouzarovski and Czepczyn´ski 2008; Bouzarovski and Grabkowska 2008; Bouzarovski et al. 2011; Buzar 2008a, 2008b). However, the hidden vibrancy of the inner city was in sharp contrast with the views of many of the press articles that I read and the decision-makers who I consulted during both research undertakings: they were representing the areas that I surveyed as passive and unresponsive to the far-reaching social and economic changes that had engulfed their host cities. Most portrayals of the quarters’ inhabitants often claimed that the local residents lacked the qualities that would allow an individual to easily adapt to the fast pace of life and residential mobility in a capitalist economy. Rather than ‘pro-active’, ‘enterprising’, ‘creative’ and ‘dynamic’ – adjectives that emerged from my research findings – I frequently read the phrases ‘passive’, ‘dependent’, ‘feckless’ and ‘unable to adapt to the new economic situation’ in these reports. Having become intrigued by this discrepancy, I started exploring the relevant academic literature on the subject, hoping to discover what kind of evidence about it had been gathered in different geographical settings – especially the post-communist states of eastern and central Europe (ECE) where most of my work took place – and which theoretical approaches had been used in this context. But I soon came to the realization that the portrayal of urban segregation and social change within many key scholarly contributions has often helped reinforce the crude dualisms present in the decision-makers’ and journalists’ language. As a result of processes like globalization, post-Fordism and the ‘space of flows’, sociologists like Zygmunt Bauman (2005) have spoken of the emergence of a ‘liquid modernity’: a society where ‘the conditions under which its members act

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change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines’ (p. 1). A ‘kinetic elite’ has been said to be emerging in response to this situation, which ‘to be sure tears down every border that stands in the way of its advancement but which at the same time erects new, if selectively porous, borders through which most capital but not all labour can pass’ (Armitage and Roberts 2002: 53). Loı¨c Wacquant (1999, 2011) has emphasized that ‘advanced marginality’ at the close of the Fordist era is characterized, inter alia, by the coalescence of poverty in ‘territorially stigmatized’ areas, associated with the weakening of communal bonds. These purported social developments have a number of spatial corollaries: Christine Boyer (1996), for example, has coined the phrase ‘lag-time’ spaces in order to capture the ‘unknown and threatening’ intra-urban districts ‘of forced delay put on hold in the process of postmodernization’ (p. 20). Her work is known for distinguishing between the ‘figured’ and ‘disfigured’ city: while the former contains well-designed consumption nodes for affluent groups, the latter extends through a much wider, incoherent network of neglected and ‘unimageable’ spaces inhabited by disadvantaged social strata. In the places forgotten by the ‘networked metropolis’, argue Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (2001), ‘time and space remain profoundly real, perhaps increasing, constraints on social life because of welfare and labour market restructuring or the withdrawal of bank branches or public transport services’. Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen (2002) have employed the ‘partitioned city’ metaphor as a means of shedding further light on the manner in which contemporary processes of urban differentiation are territorially bound with the emergence of new patterns of urban social exclusion and marginalization. In a broader sense, such academic discourses suggest that the social deprivation of spatially ‘disconnected’ people and places is a result of their exclusion from the benefits of intensifying global circulations of capital, culture and power. However, the belief that these populations and locations are somehow unable to plug themselves into the ‘space of flows’ may have helped create the perception that they lack the necessary capacity to respond to, and cope with, the demands of current lifestyle, mobility and economic production patterns. I gradually became aware of an implicit conviction across the wide range of academic research on the topic – articulated in the work of authors such as Tony Killick (1995), Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider (2007), Ethan Watters (2003), and Michael Flamm and Vincent Kaufmann (2006) – that the extent to which a social or spatial formation can successfully participate in contemporary social processes is contingent upon its ability to respond to a change in external conditions in a manner that is desirable in relation to that change. Among humans, this may involve assets that are both internal and external to any individual or household, including the spatial

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location of the dwelling, a high level of income, favourable transport linkages, advantageous employment arrangements as well as an increased psychological capability and willingness to quickly adjust to shifts in economic and/or family circumstances. Dwellings, neighbourhoods, cities, regions and countries have also been seen as unequally accommodating to changing external arrangements, with their degree of internal adaptability often being seen as a measure of their success in the late capitalist economy. Whether it is Peter Sloterdijk’s (1988) ‘kinetic elite’, Christine Boyer’s (1995) ‘figured city’, Anne Markusen’s (1996) ‘sticky regions in slippery space’ or Ethan Watters’ (2003) ‘urban tribe’, the conclusion that one can inevitably draw from this line of thinking is that the individuals and places that are best placed to deal with – and shape – the socio-economic changes that have engulfed the globe during the last 30 or so years tend to belong to a relatively well-defined group: networked, connected, wealthy, young, mobile, Western, and so on. Such thinking is based on a vision of society that is fundamentally binary and divisive, and one in which being on the wrong side of the ‘space of flows’ – often termed the ‘space of places’ (see Albrechts and Coppens 2003; Castells 2002) – inevitably leads to various forms of social or infrastructural exclusion. Not only was this perspective in a direct collision with my research findings – which identified a much wider range of practices and features associated with adaptability and change in the built environment – but it also contradicted the growing body of scholarly research on the articulation of ‘social resilience’ in the city. Originally a concept developed in the ecological sciences and psychology, resilience has assumed a much wider range of meanings and applications over the past three decades. Despite the fact that many of these connotations are specific to the disciplines that they have evolved in – there is a significant conceptual difference between the use of resilience in ecology and engineering, for instance – it is without doubt that resilience thinking has been playing an increasingly important role in the social sciences. In part, this may be due to the theoretical versatility of its original definition in ecological scholarship, where it was meant to capture the diverse development trajectories that a system may follow in response to a disturbance. However, the rapidly expanding use of resilience across a very wide range of disciplinary contexts has led to a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the meaning of the term, which has been further aggravated by the inadequate theorization of the attributes and processes – such as adaptive capacity, socio-technical transition and flexibility – that have come to be associated with it. It is in the midst of such conceptual gaps, misunderstandings and lacunae that I locate the main contribution of this book. Its main purpose is to shed

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further light on the diverse practices and meanings of social resilience in developed-world cities, by illuminating the wide range of creative and largely informal strategies that arise at the nexus of relations between households and their dwellings in the built environment of the home. Considering that this would also imply a critical examination of the operation of residential adaptability in the built environment of the home, the book examines the manner in which inner-city households ‘practise’ an alternative form of urbanism by altering residential buildings over time. In particular, I focus on the adaptation of seemingly rigid housing structures in line with the fluid everyday needs of different household members. The book also explores the rootedness of new patterns of urban social inequality and exclusion in these ‘geographies of resilience’ of the inner city, while investigating the role of the built environment of the home in the negotiation of everyday lives through the complex maze of employment requirements, mobility constraints and domestic tasks. This predisposes it towards scrutinizing the household-scale implications of the multiple fluidizations of demographic, social, economic, cultural and political formations in the developed world more broadly. I have developed my argument in relation to several hithertodisconnected strands of work in the human geography, labour studies, feminism, housing, demography, sociology of science, and architecture literatures. In a sense, I am trying to do for the geographies of home what authors like Anna Pollert (1988, 1991) or Richard Sennett (1998) have achieved for the social study of labour: to ‘unpack’ the concept of flexibility, while demonstrating that its meanings and articulations are highly contextdependent. By relying on social resilience as an analytical tool, I aim to shed further light on the complex relationships between the physical adaptability of the built environment, on the one hand, and social and demographic transformations at the level of the household, on the other. The evidence reviewed for the purposes of this investigation is drawn from a number of European cities, the majority of which are undergoing multiple changes in both their organizational structures and the fabric of their built environments. Yet the interpretation of data is placed within a broader theoretical framework that should help demonstrate the relevance of my findings to a wider spatial context. However, before delving into the analysis in further detail, I would first like to elaborate some of the thinking that led to this study in the first place. The remainder of this chapter provides an initial discussion of the relevant literatures on adaptive capacity, resilience and flexibility, with the aim of identifying the gaps in knowledge and theory among them. As such, it also constitutes a conceptual framework for the chapters of the book that follow.

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The different facets of adaptive capacity Conceptually, practices of adaptation and attributes of adaptive capacity lie at the heart of most understandings of flexibility. The notion of ‘adaptation’ itself is rooted in the natural sciences – particularly evolutionary biology – where it ‘broadly refers to the development of genetic or behavioural characteristics that enable organisms or systems to cope with environmental changes in order to survive and reproduce’ (Smit and Wandel 2006: 283). Despite numerous differences over the definition of the concept, most scientists will agree that individual adaptations are the traits that allow organisms to survive in a given environment, noting that the term ‘organism’ may encompass all possible scales, ranging from a single individual to an entire ecosystem (ibid.). Initial uses of the term ‘adaptation’ within the social sciences operated with an analogous understanding, underlining that societies, just like organisms, develop cultural practices in order to cope with environmental stress, in addition to possessing adaptive features that allow them to exist and thrive in a given environmental context (O’Brien and Holland 1992). In recent years, the definition of environmental stress and context has moved beyond biophysical factors to include changes in ‘internal stimuli, such as demography, economics and organization’ (ibid.: 401). This means that a given society can be considered more adaptable if it possesses an increased ability to respond to and cope with change, regardless of the nature of that change. More recently still, the notion of ‘complex adaptive systems’ has offered a more robust theorization of dynamic transformations in social and ecological systems (Welsh 2014). Much of this work ‘attempts to explain how complex structures and patterns of interaction can arise from disorder through simple but powerful rules that guide change’ (Folke 2006: 257). It focuses on the diverse ways in which groups of social and ecological agents respond to shocks and stress, underlining that dealing with such challenges requires ‘a response system that is flexible and adaptive’ (Levin et al. 1998: 224). There has been a special emphasis on the ‘diversity of options to deal with uncertainty, the importance of tracking trends and maintaining flexibility’ (Berkes 2007: 293). However, the theorization of adaptive capacity in this context, as well as the policy paradigms stemming from it – such as adaptive environmental assessment and management – suffer from a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the internal social and political dynamics of system responses. In particular, the property or process of flexibility tends to be seen in a very narrow manner: as a desirable characteristic of governing institutions and/or social networks in a given system (see, for example, Gunderson 1999). This ignores the vast body of work that contains a more critical and comprehensive interpretation of the concept (see Pollert 1988, 1991).

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The background of the complex adaptive systems concept is rooted in a much wider school of thought, dubbed ‘social and ecological resilience’. Borne out of a preoccupation with stability-related concepts in ecology that dates back to the 1950s, this approach is broadly premised upon the notion that all complex systems – be they human, non-human or a mixture of both – possess multiple equilibrium states. It has managed to develop an elaborate explanatory framework about the manner in which such systems evolve and change over time in response to internal dynamics and external influence, emphasizing that: Change in most territorial systems is not continuous and gradual, but is punctuated by the sudden reorganization of the stock resources. This often occurs after long periods of apparent stability, and often after some ‘exogenous’ perturbation of the systems. (Perrings 1994: 36) Social-ecological resilience has become an important source of ideas and concepts for scientific debates in a wide range of disciplines, including biology, ecology, sociology, economics and complexity theory. Although different natural and social sciences tend to operate with somewhat different understandings of social-ecological resilience, the overarching definition of the concept always assumes the existence of a sudden external perturbation acting on a ‘locally’ stable state for each of the equilibriums contained within a given system (Reggiani et al. 2002). This means that applications of socialecological resilience have operated under the aegis of ‘capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure’ (Walker and Salt 2006: xiii). At the same time, however, an entirely separate understanding of social resilience has evolved in a range of other disciplines: psychology, urban and security studies. In this instance, the emphasis has mainly been on the ability of human communities and individuals to both withstand and recover from external shocks or perturbations to their ‘infrastructure’, including ‘environmental variability’ or ‘social, economic or political upheaval’ (Adger 2000). The popularity of resilience thinking in such domains can partly be attributed to the expansion of political debates on climate change mitigation and adaptation, where it has offered a theoretical framework that encapsulates the ability of social formations to reconfigure their technological networks and decision-making structures in line with the demands of a more carbon-neutral and technologically precarious energy future (O’Brien et al. 2004). Indeed, recent years have seen the publication of a significant body of academic and policy-driven work on the practical application of adaptation

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and adaptive strategies in the context of growing human vulnerability to changes in the climate system. While some authors have focused on the ‘adjustments in ecological-socio-economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli, their effects or impacts’ (Smit et al. 2000: 225), others have emphasized ‘adjustments in individual groups and institutional behavior in order to reduce society’s vulnerability to climate’ (Pielke Jr. 1998: 159). It has been frequently underlined that: Adaptation in the context of human dimensions of global change usually refers to a process, action or outcome in a system (household, community, group, sector, region, country) in order for the system to better cope with, manage or adjust to some changing condition, stress, hazard, risk or opportunity. (Smit and Wandel 2006) As pointed out by Gilberto Gallopin (2006), ‘in seeking sustainable development, we must overcome the obstacles of lack of understanding, unwillingness to change, and lack of adaptive capacity’ (p. 362), since the major obstacles to sustainability can be boiled down to these three categories. While the lack of understanding results in a ‘failure to address the relevant linkages within and between systems and across scales’, he attributes the insufficient amount of political will to ‘asymmetric power structures, vested interests, and conceptions by humankind that emphasize antagonism, competition and individualism over cooperation and solidarity’, alongside the nature of epistemological and educational systems (ibid.). At the heart of the inadequate amount of adaptive capacity to ‘perform the actions and changes needed’, in his view lies the poor development of ‘institutions, lack of financial resources, unskilled human resources, weak infrastructure, plain poverty, and other limitations’ (ibid.). Environmental psychologists have also documented and analysed the mechanisms that allow individuals to adapt to conditions of adversity and stress. Research scholarship in this domain has often emphasized the complex ways in which political contexts combine with life biographies and household assets to affect vulnerability and resilience. It is often underscored that ‘rapid and negative change’ in the ‘mental and physical experience of place’ is associated not only with a decline of the ‘economic welfare of residents’ but also with a deterioration of ‘their sense of self and well-being’ (Gregory and Satterfield 2002: 357; also see Kahneman et al. 1999). Thus, if individuals see themselves as lacking the capacity to adapt to a new set of circumstances, it is the perception itself that can hinder further remedial action. What is more, feelings of stigmatization often extend beyond the sphere of the self to

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encompass concerns about the condition and portrayal of the social community undergoing the stress (ibid.).

Flexibility: A controversial concept Despite frequent criticisms of the concept, the general attributes – or behaviours – associated with ‘flexibility’ remain poorly understood in the theoretical literature, and a distinct conceptual paradigm has never been developed to study it. While the Oxford Dictionary defines the property as a ‘capability to bend easily without breaking’, which would mean that a flexible object or subject is one that can be ‘easily modified to respond to altered circumstances’, and a flexible person is ‘ready and able to change so as to adapt to different circumstances’ (see http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ english/flexible), the term’s usefulness has been contested by a wide range of authors (see, for example, Pollert 1988, 1991). Even though some authors have attempted to develop measurement indicators for adaptability in economic systems based on a definition that sees flexibility as ‘the ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances’ (Mandelbaum 1978), there is little doubt that the concept has assumed very different meanings and interpretations in different spatial and social contexts. A highly engaging discussion of the theoretical aspects of flexibility is contained in The Corrosion of Character – Richard Sennett’s (1998) seminal deconstruction of ‘the social and personal costs of flexible capitalism’. He argues that the term ‘flexibility’ entered the English language in the fifteenth century, based on ‘the simple observation that though a tree may bend in the wind, its branches spring back to their original position’ (p. 46). Sennett’s historical overview of the concept contrasts the views of early modern philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume with more recent political economy texts written by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. While the former ‘equated the bending aspect of flexibility with the self’s power of sensation’, he argues, ‘flexible behaviour begets personal freedom’ for the latter. He furthermore stresses that current capitalist development has stretched the meaning of the term even further, since the pursuit of flexibility has now produced new structures of power and authority, rather than creating conditions for personal freedom. Some of these definitional dilemmas have been carefully considered by Dan Jonsson (2007a), who develops an engaging discussion of the relationship between the various controversies in the ‘flexibility debate’, on the one hand, and the different meanings of the term, on the other (p. 30). He offers a much more elaborate understanding of the concept, by seeing it as ‘the propensity of an actor or a system to exhibit variation in activities or states which is

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correlated with some other variation and desirable in view of this variation’ (p. 2). By conceptualizing the standard definition of flexibility through a desirability lens, he is able to deduct that ‘adaptive change of activities occurs as a result of (a) ability to change, (b) willingness to change and (c) changing circumstances in view of which change of activities becomes desirable’ (ibid.). Dan Jonsson claims that the states of flexibility, inflexibility, instability, and stability, respectively, actually represent states of desirable variability, desirable invariability, undesirable variability and undesirable invariability. Interestingly, even though his definition implies that flexibility is desirable per se, he is quick to point out that ‘variability regarded as flexibility may be “bad” even for an actor for which this variability is desirable if its consequences are disregarded’ (ibid.). Even though the notion of flexibility has not served as the template for the development of a distinct analytical paradigm that would become accepted in the theoretical mainstream, it has been studied extensively within the social sciences. In this context, flexibility has been used as a descriptor for a number of economic, social and political processes whose rise has often been attributed to the crisis of the Fordist mass production economy in the late 1960s. This period was marked by rapid economic decline, accompanied by a growth in unemployment rates, saturated markets and a lack of innovation (Fura˚ker et al. 2007). Firms and locales have started to compete with each other across national borders (Killick 1995; Scott 1988a). With the globalization and liberalization of economic flows has come the flexibilization of work and employment, entailing both the dismantling of regulations and institutions protecting workers, and the increasing prevalence of work arrangements that enable employees to meet the demands of longer opening hours, ‘round-theclock demand’ and ‘just-in-time production’ (Wallace 2003). As a result, it is often pointed out that ‘we are now said to be living in a post-Fordist era, marked by flexibility and characterized by deepening social divisions of labour’ (Bondi and Christie 2000: 330).

Towards a critical theory of adaptive capacity and resilience Clearly, adaptive capacity and resilience are now seen as desirable qualities for a wide range of social actors and dynamics: from individuals coping with personal stress, to cities that may be vulnerable to disaster or terrorist attack (Coaffee 2010). Resilience has thus assumed a normative character, entering the vocabulary of decision-making organizations across the world: Resilience is used in two ways, one of which is very similar to what we would call sustainable development, i.e., resilience as a normative goal.

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Clearly resilience in that sense would be part of sustainability. So part of sustainability would be the ability to change, the ability to deal flexibly with the future, and in the context of changing social values, a changing demographic and other types of social, environmental and political change [. . .] there’s a huge amount of traction that ideas of resilience can give to how we’re going to cope with change in the long run and how people cope with change in the contemporary and historic sense. That’s why resilience ideas are so popular in those areas. (Interview with Neil Adger, 26 March 2010, http://transitionculture.org/2010/03/26/an-interview-with-neiladger-resilience-adaptability-localisation-and-transition/) Given how widespread the use of resilience is becoming within the context of urban spatial, social and political transformations, it is surprising – if not disconcerting – to see how rarely this framework has been discussed within the context of everyday changes in the social and built fabric of the city. Although the dynamics and properties of adaptation, adaptive capacity and flexibility are frequently brought up in policy and scholarly debates on this topic, they have seldom been seen through a resilience lens. There is a clear need to enrich the analytical vocabularies of all these approaches with a unified and critical conceptual matrix about the articulation of alternative social practices within the urban geographies of quotidian. Such an endeavour might benefit the theoretical development of social resilience, which itself suffers from a paucity of micro-scale perspectives and integrated epistemologies. While noting that ‘much work has been done exploring, describing and modelling the ecosystem dynamics’ in maintaining social and ecological resilience, Frances Westley (2002: 333) concludes that less analogous work has focused on the operation of social system dynamics and their interaction with adaptive environmental cycles. She emphasizes that existing social science work in the field has mainly ‘focused on the macro level, in order to apprehend the slow variables (institutions, laws, and cultures) and the ways in which particular management practices support or undermine ecological resilience’ (ibid.). Also: [. . .] I think that if resilience has some purpose and traction and explanatory powers of theory, then it needs to be able to explain and also give normative goals for all areas, including how we deal with what others call socio-technical transitions and change in the way that we actually use resources. (Interview with Neil Adger, 26 March 2010, http://transitionculture.org/)

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A stronger focus on the everyday urban dimensions of social and ecological resilience can also help address the ‘intrinsic limitations’ of its definitions, while refining the theorization of the complex adaptive cycle. However, more research is certainly needed, theoretically and methodologically, on the resilience concept [. . .]. Empirically, applications of resilience measures to real case studies in economic science are still missing to our knowledge. (Reggiani et al. 2002: 219) Social psychologists, mental health specialists and urban researchers have reached similar conclusions, emphasizing the need for ‘a clearly delineated theoretical framework within which hypotheses about salient vulnerability and protective processes are considered vis-a`-vis the specific adversity under study’ (Luthar and Pusnik 2010: 555). Obviously, resilience remains under-explored and under-theorized within the grain of society and the city, which in itself opens the space for multiple political uses and abuses of the concept – particularly in relation to adaptation and flexibility.

Purpose Despite receiving significant academic and media attention, articulations of resilience, adaptive capacity and flexibility in the built fabric of home and the city have yet to be conceptualized as a distinct social phenomenon, in spite of their complex spatial, social and economic ramifications. Even though the last few years have seen the emergence of a more general theoretical understanding of the complex implications of built environment transformations on urban social and political development, the micro-scale relationships between household social resilience, flexibility and housing remain largely unexplored. There is a need for theorizing the ‘flexibilization of home’ in an integrated and systematic way, by synthesizing a number of geography, urban sociology and architecture debates that have remained disconnected to date. In particular, the mainstream understandings of flexibility in households, homes, and the city more widely can benefit from a stronger engagement with the following issues: .

Firstly, the social (re)production of social resilience, adaptive capacity and flexibility in the built environment: how do households modulate built structures in response to changing family needs? How does the construction of an ‘infrastructure of everyday life’ (Jarvis 2005a; Wankiewicz 2014) relate to the level of elasticity with which dwellings can be transformed in line with social processes?

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Secondly, it is necessary to shed further light on the manner in which households interpret and understand social resilience and flexibility in the city. Is flexibility in the built environment ‘an object of desire for nearly everyone’s personality, body, and organization’ (Martin 1994: xvii), or an ‘asset’, in the terms understood by some authors (Burawoy et al. 2000)? If so, is it possible that households who do not possess it may become socially excluded? Thirdly, what are the changing functions and meanings of home in relation to built environment transformations doing to the city? How are the resulting social geographies of resilience and flexibility manifested in different urban contexts?

Using empirically grounded observations, the principal objective of the book is to provide a theoretically integrated conceptualization of residential built environment transformations, taking into account the multi-faceted socioeconomic contingencies of social resilience, flexibility in the grain of the city. Within this overarching effort, the book: (i) investigates the conceptual roots and structure of the frameworks of flexibility and social resilience, as well as the various theoretical and policy approaches that have come to be associated with them. At the same time, I interrogate the manner in which the geographies of post-modernity and ‘liquid life’ are related to economic, cultural and spatial ‘flexibilizations’ at the household scale. The book also outlines some of the ways in which resilience thinking has challenged previous understandings of social and ecological processes, relating them to the research questions posed above; (ii) critically integrates a series of relevant strands of work on adaptive capacity, resilience and flexibility that have developed independently within different disciplines. This discussion is aimed at opening the path towards a broader debate about the driving forces of household and residential change in the city, while highlighting the multiple dimensions of social resilience in such contexts; (iii) examines the manner in which households articulate alternative urbanisms in the grain of the city, by modifying the physical structure, social meaning and economic function of residential dwellings in line with changing needs. The book highlights the social strategies, practices and relations associated with such alterations, while exploring the diverse ways in which they help weave the wider social, cultural, demographic, economic, institutional and architectural fabric of the city; (iv) analyses the relationships between inequality and housing transformations. One of the most important issues in this regard is the relation

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between political discourses about the desirability of ‘flexible’ traits and behaviours, and the everyday lives of households who are subjected to such framings and narratives; (v) discusses the potential for building progressive local politics in the ‘flexible’ and ‘resilient’ city, in light of the new patterns of socioeconomic differentiation and institutional transformation. A basic challenge in this context is finding a way to use the emergent spatial tensions in the inner city as a pathway towards economic and social vibrancy, rather than a source of social exclusion and marginalization. Constraints on space do not allow for a detailed discussion of all these questions at the global scale – the book builds its argument on a number of case studies (more on this below), which are situated in wider theoretical reviews. Rather than providing detailed empirical analyses, however, the purpose the book is to develop a broad conceptualization of domestic residential transformations with its various socio-economic components, while opening the space for further reflection, debate and in-depth research on the issue. Most of the explorations undertaken in the book are aimed at establishing the validity of, and undertaking further in-depth research into, the following arguments: .

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Developed-world and former Eastern Bloc countries have undergone a series of multiple systemic transformations, commonly termed ‘transitions’: post-communist, post-Fordist, (second) demographic, low carbon, etc. These variegated processes of restructuring have changed established notions of economy, culture, politics and space, resulting in the loss of previous orderings and hierarchies in the city. Households have reacted to – and simultaneously shaped – the resulting socio-spatial fluidization and economic neoliberalization of urban structure in creative and diverse ways, which are not necessarily linked to income status and/or neighbourhood context. These developments have made it more apparent than ever that everyday life in the home is jointly produced through networked relations between animate (households, individuals) and inanimate (buildings, dwellings) objects, among other actants. This means that the agency of residential homes in the city is not only ‘structured and shaped by walls, doors and windows, framed by the decisions of designers’ (Dovey 1999: 1), but arises through a dynamic relationship between built and social formations. The indoor environment of the home has acquired a new meaning and role as a space for political action (Biehler and Simon 2010). The boundaries

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between private and public spaces have become blurred and undermined by various conscious and unconscious everyday practices of resistance towards the encroaching discourses and policies of socio-economic flexibility. This process has created new geographies of unevenness within the urban. The social-ecological resilience paradigm can provide a useful explanatory framework to understand the multiple interactions between households and homes in transition contexts. However, there is a danger that resilience thinking will become loaded with some of the same political connotations that have come to be associated with flexibility discourses. It should be taken into account at all times that resilience can only provide a partial explanation of household assets and strategies in this regard, since it may fail to adequately capture the pro-active and anticipatory character of household actions.

Considering that my focus is on the residential domain, the co-embodiments and co-expressions of power between the social and built environments of the home form a central theme of the book. But rather than exploring the relationships between architectural design and different forms of power – a subject that has received a lot of attention to date – I am keen to interrogate the dynamic interaction between different building types and domestic spatial arrangements, within the context of the micro-geographies of quotidian. The book therefore zooms in on the different ways in which the built forms of the dwelling help households mediate between housing and mobility needs. I am also interested in the factors that constrain and enable the transformation of residential dwellings over time, with the aim of exploring the extent to which socio-spatial agency in this context is something that is physically possessed or ‘stored’ by either buildings or people. As suggested by the title, the concept of ‘retrofit’ – understood in very broad terms, as adding a component or accessory ‘to something that did not have it when manufactured’ (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ english/retrofit) – provides the principal organizing framework for the book. In current policy and academic debates, retrofits are often understood within the growing effort to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings in light of the policy challenges posed by climate change (Thornbush et al. 2013). While there is a significant amount of engineering-led work on the subject, it has become increasingly apparent that such measures can only work if they are implemented within a comprehensive effort that recognizes the complexities associated with enacting change among consumers and local authorities, as well as the role of wider socio-technical systems, institutions, innovation, and multi-stakeholder collaboration (Vergragt and Brown 2012).

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Research on the subject has emphasized the importance of neighbourhood contexts (Xu et al. 2012), demographic variables (Pelenur and Cruickshank 2012) to the process, as well as the role of relations of trust, social norms and everyday engagement (Brown et al. 2014). Many experts emphasize the importance of retrofits to the broader dynamics of ‘urban sustainability transitions’, involving a systematic re-engineering of the built environment and urban infrastructure (Eames et al. 2013). In line with such debates, this book focuses on the social, technical and political processes that allow for retrofits to happen on a grassroots basis during extended periods of time, although issues of climate change, energy use and resource scarcity are not its explicit conceptual concern. As was noted above, the book is geographically focused on developed-world countries, using theory and evidence from the global North (Europe, North America, and the countries of the former Soviet Union). These are the contexts that I am familiar with and have been working on during the entirety of my professional career. The case studies in the second part of the book, however, are based in four ECE cities, where I have undertaken most of my research to date. I would argue that they can capture some of the underlying tensions and driving forces of flexibility in the domestic domain in a very pertinent manner, due to the clash of economic regulations that has unfolded there. Being aware, however, of the global conceptual and policy significance of processes of urban repair and maintenance (Graham and Thrift 2007), and the wider dynamics of social exclusion that accompany the production and management of networked infrastructures in the built fabric of the city (McFarlane and Rutherford 2008), the book also employs evidence regarding housing transformations in the global South – including a range of studies on the articulation of dwelling alterations in Africa and Asia and the institutional transformations of utility service provision throughout the developing world. Although these explorations can provide a stepping stone for other authors to look at the residential changeflexibility nexus in the developing world, I would leave it to other authors to establish its global presence in a more systematic way.

Frameworks Despite its final outcome being a set of general conclusions, this book is not organized around a particular approach; rather than deductively applying or arguing for the relevance of any given theory, my central argument is developed inductively, by connecting a series of empirical observations and theoretical arguments drawn from several hitherto disparate strands of research in the resilience and flexibility literatures. Changes in household structures and urban spatial formations provide a useful conceptual

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pathway for linking these fragmented knowledge contexts into a common set of ideas. As I have pointed out above, the theoretical tenets of adaptive capacity, flexibility and resilience have yet to be employed towards the in-depth study of dwelling alterations, although various contributions have explored some of the wider socio-spatial relations associated with the households–homes nexus. The in-betweenness of the built environment of the home between the material and the social has prompted me to rely on ideas based on actor-network theory (ANT) – which sees agency as an ‘effect generated by a network of heterogeneous, interacting, materials’ (Bingham 1996: 647; Law 1992) – in the development of the analytical approach of the book. ANT-inspired literature draws attention to the ‘conceptual and empirical inadequacy of human-centred notions of agency’, while foregrounding a more distributed, non-linear and non-hierarchical understanding of the concept, one that crosses the ‘human–nonhuman divide’ (Bennett 2005: 446). Work in this field points to the multiple mechanisms that allow humans and non-humans to inhabit co-constructed ‘force fields’ or ‘assemblages’, which have a synergetic interaction of their own, while pulsing with different internal agencies (Bennett 2009; Latour 2005). In particular, Nick Bingham’s (1996) argument that buildings – among other ‘things’ and people – can ‘be seen as (potentially) embodying networks, and thus (potentially) the loci of “action”’ (p. 647), has provided a foundation stone for many of the analytical explorations presented in the chapters that follow. ANT-based thinking can thus be utilized in the development of a theorization of flexibility and flow in the built environment that would recognize the joint agency of human and non-human structures in transforming the city ‘from within’. The central premise is that social, technical and natural objects should be viewed on the same terms, in the form of actor-networks that are constructed through processes of translation and ‘mobilization of allies’. As such, ANT provides an unconventional view on the manner in which a given programme of action is incorporated into a piece of technology (Callon 1986; Yaneva 2013). According to Jonathan Murdoch (1998) ‘it is the heterogeneity of actor-networks which allows them to remain durable in space and time’, especially ‘the seamless mixing of social, technical and natural objects within networks’ (p. 367) which helps them frame human interactions, while shaping their activities and directing their movements. By flattening the distinctions between the entities that comprise networks, and questioning the depth of differences between humans and non-humans, ANT allows for an innovative reading of socio-spatial relations in the built environment. Its network-orientated topology of space is congruent with a relational approach that conceives ‘difference and the space that it

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constitutes as seemingly fluid, complex, and unfinished in character’ (Hetherington and Law 2000: 127). Scott Kirsch (1995) argues that when seen through the light of ANT, technology ‘is always open to interpretation, resistance, and change’. The accumulation of socio-technical processes in ‘technological formations’, he argues, helps redefine the boundaries of ‘nature’, space and time (p. 536). At the same time, Bruno Latour (1997) has pointed out that actor-networks cannot be equated to either social or technical webs (they are not even ‘networks’ in the strict sense of the term, since they have no compulsory paths or strategically positioned nodes), and that it is the density of topological links, rather than the physical length of topographical distances between actants, that accounts for their power. This means that ‘strength does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting of weak ties’. Together with the broader approach articulated by Science and Technology Studies (STS), therefore, ANT provides one of the few frameworks to explore the nature of power relations in the construction of matter and technology. The role of the ‘space of flows’ (Castells 2002) in the rise of relative notions of space also comes into the theoretical discussions in the chapters that follow. The space of flows unravels territory by creating ‘proximity over distance’ with the aid of networks of technology, capital and ideas. Yet its economic and social implications are articulated within the constraints of absolute, topographical space. The book devotes particular attention to the multiple reflections of this paradox on urban spatial structures. The contradiction between relative and absolute space created by the space of flows – which is also engrained in the notion of ‘liquid life’ (Bauman 2005) – leads to further contradictions in the urban, not only by decreasing the scale of social inequality and segregation, but also by allowing some residents and locations to change their relational distance from the remainder of urban space via the intensification of socio-economic flows. This also means that the notion of relational space is a key component of the analytical matrix of the book. Transformations of the built environment of the home are relational by nature, because they arise at the interface of different socio-economic processes, while expressing the dynamic interactions of various components of the urban: social, economic, architectural. Some of my previous work has examined the workings of such connections within the ‘grain’ of society. For example, in a paper about the ‘relational spaces of energy poverty, I linked the emergence of domestic energy deprivation in eastern Europe with the interaction between institutional transformations, built structures and household needs’ (Buzar 2007a; also see Bouzarovski and Bassin 2011; Bouzarovski and Konieczny 2011; Bouzarovski et al 2012;

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Bridge et al. 2013). An earlier study in the Czech Republic placed the institutional trap in the public rental sector of this country within the framework of three nested circuits: the power geometries of post-socialist reforms, the geographies of housing prices and social welfare, and the consumption patterns of disadvantaged households (Buzar 2005). The concept of ‘reurbanization’, on which I have co-written several papers (for example, Bouzarovski et al. 2010; Buzar et al. 2005, 2007a, 2007b), also figures heavily in the book. One of its main tenets is that developed-world inner-city areas are seeing increased densities of ‘post-modern’ arrangements of kin and friendship: one-person households, childless couples, cohabiting partners, non-related flat-sharers. Reurbanization theorists argue that the demographic rejuvenation and ‘residentialization’ of the inner city embodies the joint agency of such household structures and international migrants. It thus provides a useful framework for examining how the demographic rejuvenation of inner-city areas is impacting on the socio-spatial structure of the city. There is a mounting body of evidence to suggest that a series of minute, and not easily perceptible, socio-demographic changes associated with reurbanization are leading to a fundamental reorganization of the social and spatial tissues of the city (also see Bouzarovski et al. 2013). It has been argued that the dynamics of urban change associated with some of the socio-spatial transitions described above have also created new patterns of inequality in the city, by fragmenting the nature of urban social segregation and interaction. The dynamics of displacement generated by processes such as gentrification and inner-city residential upgrading have been widely publicized in the relevant literature (see, for example, Lees et al. 2013). In this book, I argue against the common representation of non-gentrifiers as ‘victims’, since such thinking all too often ignores the multiple experiences of everyday life and mobility among deprived urban populations. I emphasize that it is difficult to assign a capital value to flexibility and mobility in the built environment: different residents articulate it differently, and the lack of movement, or the presence of particular types of movement cannot be judged through a unified value system. Also, by focusing on spatial flexibility in the upper end of the labour market, it is all too easy to forget that homelessness is the ultimate form of housing mobility and flexibility (despite important caveats – see Gaetz and O’Grady 2002). Some of the empirical material included in the book has been explored by various evidence-based studies in the relevant disciplinary literatures. For example, demographers and sociologists have dealt extensively with the ‘fluidization’ of bodies, households, and homes in post-modernity (Hellevik and Settersten 2013; Lesthaeghe 2010; Ley 1996; Martin 1994; Verdon 1998; Watters 2003; Zheng 2000), and there is an extensive literature on the

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incorporation of urban economic, social and institutional systems within wider socio-technical networks and the ‘space of flows’ (Amin and Thrift 2004; Coutard and Rutherford 2010; Dupuy 1991; Garreau 1991; Marcuse and van Kempen 2002; Peterson et al. 1998; Prytherch 2010; Weinstock 2013). Yet, as was noted above, flexibility has rarely been employed in explicitly conceptual or explanatory terms within any of this work, particularly when it comes to issues such as social exclusion and inequality; most mentions of the process – or property – focus on the driving forces and implications of changing employment patterns in the developed world (for example, see Slater 2002). Indeed, the need for a unified perspective on built environment transformations arises from the lack of conceptual links among the various spatial, social, economic, and institutional aspects of the adaptability and change in the city within all of these contributions. Considering that sociospatial processes at the level of the home are sunk in relations of power, the book places a special emphasis on the topologies of dominance and control that allow relations of ‘authority, coercion, seduction and manipulation’ to be stretched across fragmented urban spaces (Allen 2003). Although the articulations of agency that accompany these spatial dimensions of flexibility in the domestic domain are not a central theme of the book, they do figure in discussions of urban discourses, governance and economy, as well as explorations of the relationship between the built environment and the space of flows. The agency of built forms also needs to be understood in an historical context. Although it would be easy to look for a correlation between demographic, social and spatial changes associated with the rise of flexible and resilient household behaviours under conditions of transition, on the one hand, and the broader ‘condition of post-modernity’ (Harvey 1990), on the other, many of the processes I examine in the book have been taking place on a longer timescale. For example, the notion of flow was explicitly incorporated in architecture already from the beginning of the twentieth century, through the work of architects such as Bruno Taut, Theo van Doesburg or Eero Saarinen. This is despite the fact that the entrance of flexibility in architecture and design approaches has received mainstream theoretical attention only in the last two decades (Barley 2000; Gosling et al. 2013; Herwig 2005; Skov Holt and Holt Skov 2005; Till and Schneider 2007). Despite the book’s critical perspective on framings that imply that certain locations are less able to cope with the demands of current socio-economic developments due to their internal characteristics, it remains true that the paradigm of ‘splintering urbanism’ (Graham and Marvin 2001) can help unravel the different ways in which current political and economic

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transformations are related to the spatial fragmentation of infrastructural services, while linking the emergence of ‘networked exclusion’ with conscious policy strategies to unbundle and liberalize public energy, water and telecommunications companies. Similarly, the partitioned city (Marcuse and van Kempen 2002) sheds further light on how contemporary processes of urban differentiation – including the space of flows – are connected with the emergence of new patterns of urban social exclusion and marginalization, through dynamics such as ‘the disfigured city’ or ‘lag-time places’. The book also borrows the insights of a broader kaleidoscope of theoretical approaches, because, as noted earlier, I have no intention of relying on any particular conceptual framework. Neo-Marxist political-economy theories (notably heralded in Brenner 2009; Gibson-Graham 1996; Hardt and Negri 2001; Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003) have been useful in understanding how power structures may emerge out of, and are challenged by, everyday urban practices. Bob Jessop’s (2001) ‘strategic-relational’ approach is employed in the deconstruction of policy discourses relating to flexibility, as it emphasizes the manner in which a given institutional structure may privilege ‘some actors, some identities, some strategies, some spatial and temporal horizons, some actions’ over others. It also explores the ways in which actors (individual and/or collective) take account of this differential privileging through ‘strategic-context’ analysis when choosing a course of agency. As was noted above, the heterogeneous socio-technical networks operating in the fabric of the city are powerfully captured by the concept of assemblage: a ‘living, throbbing’ network consisting of diverse actants with an ‘uneven topography’, whose ‘origins are historical and circumstantial’ as they are not governed by a central power (Bennett 2005: 445). This perspective allows spatial transformations to be theorized as the outcome of a variegated set of actions dispersed along an ‘ontological continuum of beings, entities, and forces’ (ibid.). But, this ‘distributed view of agency’ should not necessarily be equated with the intentional actions practised by humans (who act as intermediaries that often allow the assemblage to communicate externally); rather, it is the collective function of force fields (or milieux), which embodies the productive power behind the network’s effects. Assemblage thinking is now increasingly employed in human geography and urban studies to explore the ‘sociomaterial distributions through which the human enters into the constitution of urbanism’ (McFarlane 2011: 668) and the ‘exclusions, resources, histories, and forms of power’ associated with this process (ibid.). This approach, however, has been criticized for failing to account for the hierarchical and multi-scalar social and political relations that produce contemporary urbanization (Brenner et al. 2011).

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Structure of the book After this introduction, the monograph is divided into two parts. The first part is a combination of literature reviews that offers a conceptual framework for integrating resilience and flexibility in the study of residential building transformations through a critical lens. The second part provides a more detailed empirical exploration of such themes in four case study areas. Given the lack of a widely accepted definition of the concepts of flexibility and resilience, Chapters 2 and 3 provide a critical engagement with relevant knowledge developed within the disciplines of geography, ecology, sociology, demography, urban studies and architecture, in order to open the path for an integrated theorization of the multiple spatial and social expressions of adaptive capacity and change in the built environment of the home. The aim of this part of the book, in a broader sense, is to overcome the paucity of conceptually aware research that is evident in disciplinary settings beyond the contexts where the two frameworks have been used to date. Chapter 4 brings the broader tenets of flexibility and resilience into a dialogue with more specific knowledge about socio-spatial transformations taking place at the level of the social and built setting of the home. In order to achieve this, the chapter explores the ‘fluidization’ of ties of kin and friendship and the destabilization of traditional understandings of household and family relations – as well as the role of the built fabric of residential dwellings – with the aid of a variety of examples and literatures from across the developed world. There is a special focus on the socio-spatial agency exercised by the constructed environment. The second part of the book commences with a chapter aimed at providing an outline of the geographical locations that have been used as sources for the empirical material discussed in the book. The chapter starts from the premise that the lack of micro-level empirical support for the theoretical matrix behind the concept of social resilience is particularly evident when the analytical focus is shifted onto geographical contexts that have experienced far-reaching structural change in recent years. The post-communist states of ECE provide one of the best examples of such a situation, as they have been transforming their societies and economies away from the legacies of communist political dictatorship and central planning, towards a parliamentary democracy with a market-based system. The chapter, therefore, is aimed at creating a conceptual link between the literature on resilience and flexibility, on the one hand, and theorizations of post-communist urban change, on the other. Chapter 6 explores the nature of affective bonds between people and buildings. Using concepts borrowed from ANT and STS, it analyses the manner in which hybrid assemblages arise at the nexus of residential

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buildings and their inhabitants, with the aid of four case studies in ECE. Having rejected ‘bounded’ constructions of the built environment of home, I interrogate the ability of residential dwellings to both react and give rise to deep-seated institutional and economic transformations within the urban fabric. The chapter also explores performances of architecture within everyday life, including a discussion of their political purpose and social meaning. This argument is placed within the wider economic and institutional topographies of the space of flows. Chapter 7 investigates the implications of the relationship between people and their dwellings for residential mobility. Its focus is on the multiple ways in which a household can change its living arrangements in response to events in the built environment. I therefore explore the manner in which households are affected by the relationship between the geographies of everyday life and urban structures. The chapter interrogates relevant empirical evidence gathered in the field within the framework of the wide literature on residential mobility and economic flexibility. Chapter 8 scrutinizes the wider urban dimensions of the multiple articulations of flexibility and resilience in the residential environment of the home. In particular, I focus on the ‘hidden life’ of neighbourhoods brought about by prolonged conditions of in-situ housing alterations and low residential mobility. I am interested in the specific urban landscapes that have arisen in the four study cities as a result of the specific relationships between buildings and people contained in them, in light of socio-political contingencies arising in the recent and more distant past. The conclusion of the book identifies a secondary set of questions and research themes to be addressed by future work on the issue. There is a special focus on the relationship between residential mobility and urban governance, and its effect on future urban development. I emphasize the different ways in which household strategies at the level of everyday life illuminate the existence of a much wider network of socio-economic practices and material sites. But the hybrid assemblage that sustains such networks is embedded in the political and economic changes associated with the process of post-communist restructuring. The conclusion, therefore, points to the potential usefulness of the concepts of pathdependency and path creation for understanding situations characterized by a major restructuring of social and spatial arrangements at the household scale. I also query the extent to which the trends I have observed express an underlying social force not only in post-communism but late capitalism more generally, as well as the manner in which they can be used as a basis for developing de-centred epistemological frameworks for studying urban mutability.

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There is no strong ordering logic behind the succession of chapters in the second part of the book: they are, put simply, different components of the urban where I have observed similar processes through my own work. Although it may be claimed that they cover different scales and tissues of the city in an ‘ascending’ spatial scale – as the argument moves from households and homes to then extend to the wider structure of urban spaces, institutions and economies – I would be reluctant to state that they exhaust the main systemic features of the city. This hesitation is consistent with arguments about the artificiality of scale, and rejections of the direct causality of social events and actions. In no way does the book aim to provide an all-encompassing theorization of flexibility and resilience in the built environment of home – the aim is, merely, to affirm the importance of these concepts as possible explanatory tools for contemporary socio-spatial transformations in the city, through different empirical examples. Boxes – useful in terms of emphasizing material that is more generic and may be referenced multiple times in each chapter – are sometimes employed to break up the linear flow of the argument. The material presented in this way is of no less or more importance, but perhaps does not easily lend itself to straightforward inclusion in the chapter structure.

CHAPTER 2 INTERSECTIONS OF THE ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND MATERIAL: DIVERSE GEOGRAPHIES OF FLEXIBILITY

Two of the Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino’s (1993) final literary work, are titled ‘lightness’ and ‘quickness’. In positioning them within such a conceptual trope, it can be argued, he captured a broader social trend, because adaptability and mobility have gradually come to dominate economic and cultural developments in the developed world. We are being bombarded by the symbols and messages associated with flexible behaviours and properties on a daily basis: from the employment opportunities emphasized by job adverts, to the connectivity options and financial arrangements offered by communications companies and retail banks. But the ubiquity of adaptability jargon is not limited to the discourses or marketing campaigns: it also shapes the material urban landscapes that we inhabit. While retail and commercial developments – many of them conversions from previous uses – offer ‘flexible office space’, transport and communications infrastructures underline the ‘path to flexibility’ that may be gained by relying on them (see the description in Buzar 2008). The ability to adjust oneself to the fast-changing character of contemporary societies is thus being depicted as a beneficial property that becomes, to use Emily Martin’s (1994) words, ‘an object of desire for nearly everyone’s personality, body, and organization’ (p. xvii). The overwhelming emphasis on the properties of flexibility, versatility and mobility in marketing messages across the entire economy suggests that they also serve wider cultural, social and political functions. Indeed, it is not difficult to find examples of politicians promoting ‘flexible’ behaviours (Tony Blair’s speech in favour of ‘workforce flexibility’ is perhaps the best example – see BBC News 2007), particularly in

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the sphere of work and employment. In such conditions, it is easy to see why ‘the many meanings of the term make flexibility an excellent basis for forming ideological and value-laden discourses’ (Fura˚ker et al. 2007: 1). This ‘optimistic’ reading of flexibility directly contradicts the view held by many labour unions and activists across the world. On International Workers Day 2007 (1 May), I received an email containing a call for worldwide protests against current employment practices in capitalist countries. Its sender, an organization named ‘Precarious in Europe’, had used the words of the 2004 ‘Barcelona EuroMayDay Manifesto’ to represent itself: We are the precarious, the flexible, the temporary, the mobile. We’re the people that live on a tightrope, in a precarious balance, we’re the restructured and outsourced, those who lack a stable job, and those who are overexploited; those who pay a mortgage or a rent that strangles us. We’re forced to buy and sell our ability to love and care. We’re just like you: contortionists of flexibility (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/04/369064.html). Scholarly research of the social and economic contingencies of work and employment frequently underlines the deleterious aspects of contemporary regulatory practices in these domains. Many experts in the field argue that the rise of short-term, flexible employment is a product of the ‘market utopia’ (Beck 2001: 1) of neoliberalism. This situation has created a new wave of dispossession, insecurity and poverty: for example, Vicki Smith (1997) claims that ‘unease and destabilization permeates work and employment in the late twentieth century’ (p. 333). Despite the evident benefits of flexible jobs in the new capitalist economy, these experts argue, there has been a rise of wage and gender inequalities, while households have been finding it increasingly more difficult to negotiate their lives through the conflicting requirements of work and care (see, inter alia, Burchell et al. 2002; Coe 2013; Dyer et al. 2011; Jarvis et al. 2001; Purcell et al. 1999). These findings and developments make it clear that the effects of flexibilization of the economy, work and employment on the social (re)production of everyday life are associated with a series of deep contradictions and political struggles in society. Yet with the notable exception of Anna Pollert (1988) and Tony Killick (1995), there is a paucity of integrated accounts of the economic, social and spatial dimensions of flexibility. Despite the rapid expansion of discourses emphasizing the positive aspects of adaptability and mobility during the last quarter of the twentieth century, social scientists have rarely taken up the challenge of weighing the relative costs and benefits of flexible behaviours within different

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scales and contexts (but see, for example, Davidson 1990; Fura˚ker 2007; Sayer and Walker 1992). In particular, the question about the relationships between the ‘flexibilization’ and ‘fluidization’ of socio-economic landscapes, on the one hand, and urban spatial formations, on the other, remains unanswered: how might the ‘geography of flexibility’ be manifested in different material sites? Even though the idea of ‘flow’ in society has been examined extensively by political economists and social researchers alike, a conceptual connection between political and economic mobility at the urban/national scale, on the one hand, and socio-spatial flexibility at the household scale, on the other, is still lacking. In light of such knowledge gaps, this chapter explores the different types of processes that test and affect household flexibility within the context of recent urban transformations in developed-world societies. Literatures about different aspects of everyday life in the city are investigated with reference to the ways in which households are required to articulate flexibility in relation to contemporary developments in the spheres of kin, friendship, citizenship, work, employment and daily mobility. There is a strong focus on the reasons for, and nature of, contemporary socio-demographic change at the level of the household, as well as the manner in which families negotiate the increasingly complicated pressures and requirements of the ‘geographies of quotidian’ in developedworld cities. In a broader sense, the primary aim of the chapter is to challenge the binary thinking that conceptualizes the behaviour of a household or individual as lying on an axis that varies from highly resistant to highly adaptable in relation to changing external social conditions. This kind of reasoning implies that there is a relationship between flexibility and deprivation, because households and individuals who are less territorially ‘tuned’ to the fluctuating demands of post-modern and post-Fordist societies may find themselves in a more difficult situation than others. Its implication, therefore, is that a household is at risk of becoming socially excluded if it is less spatially adaptable and ‘motile’ within the residential fabric of the city. I reject this perspective in the discussions that follow, emphasizing that the adaptive capacity and behaviours of households and individuals reside in a wide range of attributes, perceptions, understandings and practices. While I accept that, to a certain extent, flexibility ‘can be used to discriminate against some people’ because it has arisen as ‘a trait to be cherished and cultivated, from corporations and city governments to credit cards and shoes’ (Martin 1994: xvii). I also aim to explore the various ways in which the literature has identified diverse household practices of adaptability, resilience and change in their everyday life.

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Socio-demographic transformations: Towards flexible households and living arrangements Cultural changes in attitudes, beliefs and expectations have played a key role in the unprecedented transformation of the demographic structure of developedworld households and families. The decline of the ‘male breadwinner model’ and the traditional nuclear family would have been impossible without the growing individualization and atomization of society (Verdon 1998), and changing gender roles in the family. In addition, many authors emphasize that the stretching of human relationships across time and space has been contingent on the emergence of a new behavioural architecture of society, entailing the establishment of household structures that defy conventional definitions of kin and friendship (see Box 2.1). Analogous processes can be observed at the scale of the body, where physical abilities of flexibility and adaptability to change are being discursively constructed as advantageous and desirable (Martin 1994). These mutually inter-related socio-cultural changes have been underpinned by the relaxation of traditional norms and constraints, leading to a growing freedom of sexual behaviour and diversity of sexual partnerships (Bachrach 2014; Campbell et al. 2013; Coleman 2004). Anthony Giddens (1991) has offered an explanation of the causes of these developments through his ideas about the ‘plastic’ nature of identity and human relations in late modernity, which has radically altered ‘the nature of day-to-day life and affects the most personal aspects of my experience’ (p. 1). He argues that the reorganization of time and space has created ‘disembedding mechanisms’ which ‘radicalize and globalize pre-established institutional traits of modernity’ thus transforming ‘the content and nature of day-to-day social life’ (ibid.: 2). As a result, the last 30 years have seen a radical shift in the social geometry of human identities and relations in the developed world (see Box 2.2). Sociologists have been quick to take up the challenge of exploring the factors that drive changing cultural and social expectations at the level of the household. Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn (2002) provide one of the most comprehensive analytical frameworks in this regard, by comprehensively identifying the values and attitudes that drive these transformations. According to them, the recent changes in cultural behaviours and practices involve: .

.

an allegiance to the ‘new political left’, including post-materialist values, voting for Green parties or left-wing liberals, ‘protest-proneness’, distrust in institutions, and anti-authoritarianism more generally; secularization, especially the reduction of religious practice, the abandoning of traditional religious beliefs, and the decline in individual sentiments of religiosity;

DIVERSE GEOGRAPHIES OF FLEXIBILITY .

.

.

.

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egalitarianism, which involves the accentuation of symmetrical gender relations, tolerance for minorities, rejection of social class distinctions, and a preoccupation with North–South equity associated with world citizenship; unconventional civil morality and ethics, entailing a higher degree of permissiveness for forms of uncivil conduct, and a higher degree of tolerance for interference in matters of life and death, such as euthanasia, abortion and suicide; accentuation of expressive values, which leads to an enhanced preoccupation with individuality and self-fulfilment, as well as preferences for the intrinsic qualities of jobs instead of their material advantages (i.e., jobs are expected to be challenging and interesting while permitting social contact and initiative, rather than necessarily bringing better pay, vacations and promotion); companionship and unconventional marital ethics, stressing the quality aspects of a relationship – communication, tolerance, understanding, and an improved sex life – while tolerating deviations from strict marital morality, and being sceptical about the conventional institutional foundations of marriage and parenthood.

The social fluidization of human behaviours and relationships that has resulted from the growing importance of this set of values is one of the key tenets of the notion of the ‘elastic bund’ (Hetherington 1994): a community that depends on technology to overcome distance. Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift’s (2004) reaction to the strengthening of such perspectives has been to provide a further critique of the assumption that there is a spatial equivalence between the notions of community and collective. At the same time, they underscore the importance of mobility, post-sociality and ‘becoming’ in the production of contemporary social ties (p. 48). Flat-sharing households are among the best examples of transitory household: in a study of demographic character of these social formations in Leipzig, Annett Steinfu¨hrer and Anegret Haase (2007) emphasize the double conceptual problem posed by their existence, which challenges the definition of the contemporary household both as an economic unit and as a long-term living arrangement based on emotional and social ties. But the blurring of the boundaries between ‘flexible’ and ‘inflexible’ behaviours has also been affecting neighbourhood life, as evidenced by Jacek Kotus’ (2009) work on the socio-spatial differentiation of different districts in the Polish city of Poznan´. Ethan Watters’ (2003) theory of ‘urban tribes’ – a term that he uses to describe closely knit networks of friendship and support among young adults in developed-world cities – grounds these debates in the everyday reality of

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The second demographic transition

The destabilization of traditional household structures in developed-world societies has often been placed under the theoretical umbrella of the ‘second demographic transition’ (SDT), which is meant to capture a wider set of social trends in developed-world societies (Cliquet 1991; van de Kaa 1987; Lesthaeghe 2010; Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa 1986). This concept was first theorized in the late 1990s, with the aim of providing a framework explanation for the emergent group of population trends observed throughout North America and Europe in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It is particularly concerned with the causes and consequences of the relaxation of sexual norms, freedoms, relationships and behaviours that has been unfolding in developedworld states since the 1960s (Coleman 2004). This process has been attributed – not without disagreement, it should be added (Cliquet 1991) – to the idea that individuals are now seeking emotional self-fulfilment and a higher quality of life, rather than trying to meet the basic material preconditions for everyday existence (which was the driving force of the first demographic transition). The SDT entails a decrease in fertility and marriage rates, accompanied by a postponement of childbirth and marriage, as well as rising divorce rates, life expectancy, and the total number of households. Such processes are held to be irreversible and likely to become universal in developed societies. In their entirety, they provide a disincentive towards marriage and parenthood, while allowing for the emergence of unconventional family arrangements, such as one-person and cohabiting households (Buzar et al. 2005). The combined impacts of decreasing household size and the wider range of family and household arrangements have led to a growing diversity of household structures in developed countries (Kuijsten 1996). The rising number of one-person households, cohabiting couples and flat-sharers also mean that individuals now move through a broader array of social formations during their life course. Thus, many contemporary relationships of kin can be termed ‘flexible’ and ‘fluid’, because individuals who are in them possess multiple residential locations that have been split across time and space. Examples of such temporally and territorially stretched arrangements include ‘living-aparttogether’ couples, ‘dual location’ households (Duncan et al. 2013; Green et al. 1999; Kaufmann 1993), ‘astronaut’ families (Waters 2002) and, to a lesser extent, ‘shadow’ households (Caces et al. 1985). Socially fluid and transitory structures – such as, for example, step families and competing auspices – are also becoming more prevalent (Bornat et al. 1999). The internal social linkages at play in such structures have been reflected more broadly in society though the emergence of ‘flexible’ networks of friendship (Pedersen and Lewis 2012) and ‘virtual’ communities (Komito 1998). In its entirety, therefore, the unravelling of traditional household and family structures brought about by the SDT corroborates the pervasiveness of ‘flexible’ behaviours and decisions in contemporary lifestyle choices.

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Box 2.2

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Anthony Giddens’ Modernity and Self-Identity

This contribution by Anthony Giddens (1991) is particularly relevant in terms of understanding the destabilization of traditional social and political behaviours in society in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In it, he argues that modern life is ‘institutionally reflexive’, while being underpinned by a profound reorganization of time and space. Taken together, both dynamics lead to the expansion of ‘disembedding’ mechanisms that lift social relations from ‘the hold of specific locales’ and recombine them across wide time– space distances, thus transforming the content and nature of everyday existence. At the core of this claim lies the suggestion that self-identity ‘has become a reflexively organized endeavour, consisting of the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised biographical narratives’ (p. 6). This line of thinking results in the conclusion that ‘lifestyle’ is ‘increasingly important in the constitution of selfidentity and daily activity’. The dynamic character of modern social life is explained via a focusing on the factors that lead to the emergence of ‘the reflexive self’, entailing three interrelated dynamics: . the ‘separation of time and space’: in pre-modern settings, time and place were connected through the ‘situatedness of place’. However, ‘the development of an empty dimension of time allowed modern societies to organize the precise coordination of the action of many human beings physically absent from one another’ (p. 17). Although the ‘when’ of these actions is still directly connected to the ‘where’, this interaction is no longer mediated by place; . the ‘disembedding of social institutions’, which allows human relations to be ‘lifted out’ of local contexts and ‘rearticulated across indefinite tracts of time–space’. This process takes place through symbolic tokens such as money, which brackets time and space, while standardized value allows transactions between a multiplicity of individuals. Abstract systems have the same effect ‘by deploying modes of technical knowledge which have validity independent of the practitioners and clients who make use of them’ (p. 19). Importantly, both types of system depend on trust, which Giddens sees as a leap to commitment, a quality of ‘faith’ that is irreducible; . changes in the intimate aspects of personal life constitute the third component of this model. He argues that ‘they are directly tied to the establishment of social connections of very wide scope’ since ‘the level of time– space distanciation introduced by high modernity is so extensive that, for the first time in human history, “self” and “society” are interrelated in a global milieu’ (p. 32). Globalization means that ‘no-one can “opt out” of the transformations brought about by modernity’ (p. 22), which creates a situation in which ‘the individual feels bereft and alone in a world in which she or he lacks the psychological supports and the sense of security provided by more traditional settings’ (p. 34). The ‘pluralization of life worlds’ brought about by the new set of conditions is a central component of Reflexive Modernity’s theoretical framework. Giddens argues that contemporary social developments have brought down ‘the protective framework of the small community and of tradition’, replacing them with much larger, impersonal organizations. This results in the rise of ‘pure relationships’, which, unlike close personal ties in traditional contexts, are ‘not anchored in external conditions of social and economic life’ (p. 89). The consequent ‘free floating’ linkages among people mean that one stays a friend of another ‘only insofar as sentiments of closeness are reciprocated for their own sake’ (p. 90). Relationships are sought only for what they can bring to the partners involved, and are thus heavily focused on commitment, trust and intimacy, which is ‘a major condition of any long-term stability the partners might achieve’ (p. 95).

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urban life in the United States. He emphasizes the advent of a ‘society of friendship’, where individuals engage in a new ‘experiment in the meaning, boundaries, and nature of friendship’ (p. 118). The consequent model of the ‘urban tribe’ challenges traditional understandings of social capital. Rather than being located in formal institutions such as the community organizations – whose loss is being lamented by Robert Putnam (2000) in Bowling Alone – it is claimed that social capital ‘comes from much more fluid and informal (yet potentially close and intricate) connections between people’. This means that ‘social easily accrue among a tight group of friends yet still have an effect on the community at large’ (Watters 2003: 116). The members of the ‘urban tribe’ generation, having delayed marriage into their late twenties and thirties, now live ‘with a remarkable amount of personal autonomy to make up [their] lives as [they go] along’ (p. 27). This is underpinned by the growing fluidity and adaptability of partnership choices, social network and living arrangements: There was considerable flexibility in how I chose to mate. There was a multiplicity of socially acceptable options, from serial dating to serial monogamy to long-term relationships and marriage [...] I could live together without shame. Or I could keep separate apartments from my significant others and go ‘home’ to whichever place was close at the end of the day. (ibid.: 29) Building on Mark Granovetter’s (1973) positions about the importance of ‘weak ties’ in the functioning social networks, Ethan Watters (2003) connects urban tribes with contemporary change in the city, by claiming that the former are not a by-product of the urban settings, rather, ‘it was the urban settings that created the need for that multitude of weak ties’ (p. 107). Thus: I could have found dozens of activities to throw myself into, not just in San Francisco, but in any major city, on any given night. That activity might be as important as a meeting to plan a protest or as frivolous as a rave. Regardless, my network of weak ties made me feel uniquely connected to the swirl of city life in my modern times. (ibid.: 113)

Flexible citizenship The fact that flexibility is widely exercised at the level of households, social relations and everyday life, suggests that the behaviours associated with

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this practice or process can also be translated into the field of governance and politics. In this context, it is worth noting Aihwa Ong’s (1999) work, which explores the notion of ‘flexible citizenship’. She claims that ‘flexibility, migration, and relocation’ have replaced ‘stability’ as inspirational objectives in society. Her key argument is that contemporary ‘mutations in citizenship’ take place in an ‘ever-shifting landscape shaped by the flows of markets, technologies, and populations’ (p. 499). The re-alignment of the traditional components of citizenship with the ‘universalizing criteria of neoliberalism and human rights’ (ibid.), suggests that ‘diverse actors invoke not territorialized notions of citizenship, but new claims – postnational, flexible, technological, cyber-based, and biological – as grounds for resources, entitlements, and protection’ (p. 504). In this context, it is worth emphasizing the extensive tradition of anthropological scholarship on the articulation of human adaptation and coping strategies in relation to the biophysical environment (Chhetri 2006; Davies 1996; Ferraro and Andreatta 2010). Some of this work has emphasized that marginalized communities have sometimes managed to use ‘innovation, technological choice and social organization’ to ‘reduce their environmental impacts, sustain their livelihoods, and fight back against institutionalized poverty’ (Batterbury and Forsyth 1999: 6). The last few years, however, have seen the emergence of a new layer of empirical contributions that employ flexibility as an organizing conceptual paradigm for exploring the manner in which flexible practices and behaviours are entangled in environmental governance. For example, a case study of protected area management in the Pelister National Park in Macedonia has found that the nature protection authorities and the local population in the area have jointly developed a number of adaptive strategies that allow them to govern the area in a sustainable and efficient manner (Petrova et al. 2009). Its authors argue that this situation has transpired despite the fact that national-level decisionmakers have failed to develop a sufficiently context-sensitive and flexible legal framework for nature protection. Martin Evans (2009) reveals the multi-faceted interactions of material and psychological factors experienced by urban-to-rural returnees in Senegal, as they negotiate the informal cultural and spatial economies of the newly created rural landscapes. He uses this study to explore the broader transformations in village form and land tenure among displaced populations, underlining their security concerns and changed expectations of settlement layout. Similarly, Ben Mosiane (2009) uses the example of Rustenburg, South Africa, to examine the different meanings and expressions of flexibility in post-colonial urban landscapes. He investigates the extent to which the practices it expresses play a transformative role in the everyday lives of disadvantaged households, rather than leading to their

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marginalization. Sarah Gall (2009) takes these ideas into the urban domain, by questioning established ideas about everyday life in city spaces. Her work is based on a study of ‘everyday decisions about labour, consumption, commons and connections’ (p. 525) among a set of suburban dwellers in Brisbane, Australia. In this context, it is worth noting the emergent body of work on the expression of adaptability at the level of the body, which, according to Anthony Giddens (1991), has ‘become part of the reflexivity of modernity’ (p. 102). Some of the authors working in this vein underline the technological hybridization (or ‘cyborgization’) of bodies, and the consequent blurring of the distinctions between living and non-living beings (see, for example, Mitchell 2003). In part this is because: Both life-planning and the adoption of lifestyle options become (in principle) integrated with bodily regimes. It would be quite shortsighted to see this phenomenon only in terms of changing ideals of bodily appearance (such as slimness or youthfulness), or as solely brought about by the commodifying influence of advertizing. We become responsible for the design of my own bodies, and in a certain sense noted above are forced to do so the more post-traditional the social contexts in which we move. (Giddens 1991: 102) Some of the best evidence for this comes from Emily Martin (1994), who has explored the articulations of flexibility at the scale of the body. Based on her path-breaking study of the changing understanding of the human immune system within mainstream medical science, this author insists that biological immunity is increasingly being valorised as ‘field’ whose stability – and therefore, desirability – is being disturbed by diseases and infections. Thus, a conception of a new elite may be forged that finds the desirable qualities of flexibility and adaptability to change in certain superior individuals of any [author’s emphasis] ethnic, racial, gender, sexual identity, or age group in the nation. The ‘currency’ in which these desirable qualities will be figured is health, especially the health of one’s immune system. (p. xvii) The implication of this conceptualization of immunity, she argues, is that some individuals could be perceived to have less ‘flexible’ and adaptable

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immune systems, and may therefore be less desirable in economic or social terms. In its entirety, these developments suggest that contemporary social dynamics related to adaptability and flexibility are no longer confined to workplace, economic or demographic dynamics: they have come to describe a much wider array of political processes across different scales and contexts.

Negotiating work, care and everyday mobility The increased need for socially and culturally flexible behaviours at the household scale has been unfolding against the background of a much more widely publicized economic ‘fluidization’ of labour practices, not only in terms of the employers’ production or service process, but also with respect to the emergence of a more flexible approach towards the organization of working life (Buzar 2008a). This means that developed-world societies have seen an increase in ‘precarious’ working arrangements, such as temporary and ‘zero-hour’ contracts, annualized hours, overtime, shift work and timesharing. As a result, workers are now expected to be more responsive to the shifting labour market patterns and requirements by being able to implement quick changes to their job tasks and workplaces. Feminist theorists focusing on the implications of socio-economic change on gender, body and emotional identities have elaborated a comprehensive criticism of labour flexibility (Callaghan and Thompson 2002; Casey 1995; Durbin 2002; Du Gay 1996; Halford 2003; Kelly et al. 2010; Novarra 1980; Williams 2003). According to this body of work, the division between ‘high-touch’ and ‘high-tech’ jobs is leading to new divisions in society, mainly because the former involves low-paid, monotonous work in the service sector that does not allow for labour mobility on the basis of an individually constructed portfolio career (Autor and Dorn 2013; Brush 1999; McDowell 2004). Using one’s body for work is also creating a new ‘gender order’ at the level of the body, as it often places specific requirements on the external physical attributes of workers and clients alike. Thus, an in-depth study of the performances of labour in London hotels and hospitals (Batnitzky et al. 2008) found that male migrants construct a ‘flexible and strategic masculinity’ in order to negotiate their work performances in terms of either ‘women’s work’ or ‘lower class work’. Aside from the specific social consequences of employment restructuring – which include both the distribution of jobs and the supply of labour by gender, race and class – the spatial implications of labour flexibilization have often been explored in relation to wider relations of gender, identity and power, which mediate household decision-making and behaviours in

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everyday life. It has been repeatedly pointed out that contemporary demographic transformations have also pluralized and diversified social ties and household arrangements in society, leading to an increased number of challenges in the negotiation of work and care. The influence of the location of homes in relation to jobs and urban change has also been emphasized in this context (see Buzar 2008). The stances of many of the authors working in the field suggest that the emergence of fluid household structures is connected to the need to respond to changing work requirements in a prompt and dynamic way. They have helped unravel previously established notions of ‘home’ and ‘family’, as a result of the realization that kinship and co-residence do not always overlap: not only may multiple households live in one dwelling, but a single household may split its everyday life across multiple homes (Buzar et al. 2005, 2007a, 2007b; Duncan et al. 2013; Reimondos et al. 2011). In a critical discussion of the ‘conflict between the need for caring and economic maximization’, Rosemary Crompton (2002) therefore emphasizes the continuing need for state action in this field, because the relevant institutions ‘will not simply emerge of their own accord’ (p. 552). Helen Jarvis (2005a, 2011, 2011; also see Jarvis et al. 2001) provides a central contribution to the understanding of changing employment and economic practices as they relate to the social and spatial structures of everyday life in the city. She argues that the recent fundamental shift in the global economy ‘combines powerfully’ with the feminization of the labour force, and the emergence of a wider variety of household types as a result of delayed marriage, longer life expectancy and the advent of birth control. She also notes that there is very little work about the ways in which questions of work, care, space, society and gender overlap through various ‘social, economic and environmental structures of constraint’ (Jarvis 2005a: 7), although a ‘great deal has been written about the transformations which have occurred in these spheres individually’ (original emphasis). The same author also emphasizes that the household provides a key site from which ‘to unravel connections between home, work, the city and daily life’ (ibid.: 26). Many authors argue that the domestic implications of contemporary labour market structures require ‘well-informed, highly organized, stable families that can support all their members as they try to operate in a flexible work environment’, despite the fact that this also is associated with ‘greater job instability, causing family members to change their work situations more often, and new jobs may well entail having to acquire new skills, hence more education’ (Carnoy 1999: 414). Investigations of the ‘secret’ or ‘linked’ (Bailey et al. 2004; Jarvis et al. 2001) lives of inner-city households have used the

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multiple coping strategies that they utilize to overcome such challenges, including a complex set of migration and housing choices. It has been pointed out, for example, that dual location households (i.e., dual-career households who commute between work and home) provide evidence of a ‘two-way flexibility’ that optimizes flexible working practices for both employer and employee (Green et al. 1999).

‘Liquid life’ in the city In light of the developments discussed above, there is a growing indication that the built, social and political ‘landscapes’ of flexibility now extend into a much broader range of metropolitan and regional developments (Buzar 2008a). It can therefore be argued that flexibility is leaving a specific ‘imprint’ on the urban landscape. The rise of a new territorial logic of urban change in relation to the transformation of labour and economic practices was first noted by flexible accumulation theorists, who found that places and spaces are being constantly reinvented and redefined by the contradiction between historically produced and spatially fixed local contingencies, on the one hand, and the perpetually ‘versatile’ hyperspace created by contemporary economic flows, on the other (Moulaert and Swyngedouw 1989; Scott 1988b; Sklair 2006; Swyngedouw 1989). The resulting sea of economic transformations and institutional networks is destabilizing the ontological assumptions underpinning urban boundaries and meanings as such. As pointed out by John Urry (2000), we are facing a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order of off-centredness, as [. . .] multiple flows are chronically combined and recombined across times and spaces often unrelated to the regions of existing societies, thus following a kind of ‘hypertextual patterning’. (p. 36) The city is thus no longer defined by established cultural, social or spatial norms, but rather turns into a fickle, rapidly transforming entity, where identities, cultures and economies are dynamic and intermixed. However, the ensuing ‘flexibilization’ of urban landscapes is linked to spatial and temporal household mobility in the built environment. Households must constantly mediate their fluid everyday lives through the rigid spatial formations of the city. Just as Zygmunt Bauman (2000, 2005) has talked about ‘liquid life’ in the domain of human relationships, it can be argued that the perpetual contradiction between fluid social requirements and fixed housing structures

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is also ‘liquefying’ the urban: it is leading to the loss of order and hierarchy in the built environment, while fragmenting its social landscapes. The process entails deep transformations in the ‘grain of the city’ (Jarvis 2001: 160) through a ‘co-construction of spaces and social actions’ (ibid.). The relations between spatial flexibility and ‘liquid life’ are exemplified by the presence of fluid household arrangements, such as single professionals or flat-sharing adults, in the inner urban tissues of developed-world cities. Their growing concentration in such locations may be explained by the nature of the built environment in these areas, which, among other amenities, provide for residential, transport and work flexibility (Buzar and Grabkowska 2006). In this context, it should be pointed out that the underlying tenet of Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000, 2005) theories of ‘liquid life’ and ‘liquid modernity’ is that contemporary conditions for social action exceed the speed with which such action consolidates into habits and routines (p. 2). He remains highly critical of ‘liquid modernity’ and its associated developments, since they result in ‘a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty’, and haunted by ‘the fears of being caught napping, or failing to catch up with fast moving events’ (ibid.). This author argues that liquid life is experienced by the ‘spiritual lumpenproletariat’, whose existence is only concerned with instant consumption as a result of its fleeting, superficial nature. Basically, he offers a much more pessimistic take on the ‘kinetic elite’ (Graham 2002), which is grounded on similar assumptions. Debates about the emergence of a new class order through differences in individuals’ abilities to participate in time – space compression are closely linked to the emergent body of work on the intensifying flows of capital, people and ideas across different scales (Cresswell 2006; Hannam et al. 2006; Houben 2003; Jensen 2013, 2006, 2007; Kellerman 2006; Leung 2013; Migue´lez and Moreno 2013; Nowicka 2006). This is where theorizations of flexibility may be linked with the ‘mobilities paradigm’ (King 2013; Sheller and Urry 2006) in the social sciences, as both deal with the capacity of individuals and households to adapt to changing socioeconomic circumstances, albeit from different perspectives. Aside from focusing on the different ways in which social science has been ‘static in its theory and research’ (Sheller and Urry 2006: 212), this vein of work frequently emphasizes that ‘mobilities need to be examined in their fluid interdependence and not in their separate spheres (such as driving, travelling virtually, writing letters, flying, and walking)’ (ibid.), and that ‘activities are not separate from the places that happen contingently to be visited’ (ibid.: 414).

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The mobilities’ paradigm insistence on a framework that would unify the wide range of social science perspectives on the mobility of materials and bodies in contemporary societies represents a departure from earlier perspectives on mobility, where the focus has been on the relationship between globalization and deterritorialization. Its proponents draw upon a diverse range of perspectives, ranging from Georg Simmel’s (1997) understanding of temporal pulses in urban life, to science and technology studies’ focus on heterogeneous webs of entanglement (Law 1992; Whatmore 2002). They also emphasize that: New mobilities are bringing into being new surprising combinations of presence and absence as the new century chaotically unfolds. Methods and theories will need to be ever on the move to keep up with these new forms of mobilities, new systems of scheduling and monitoring, and new pervasive modes of mobilized social inclusion/exclusion. (Sheller and Urry 2006: 222) The suggestion of a ‘kinetic elite’, however, is also present in this body of work, as it is often emphasized that ‘richer people’ are the ones who chiefly participate in the creation of new spaces of presence and absence (ibid.). Michael Flamm and Vincent Kaufmann (2006) have aimed to operationalize the notion that some individuals have a greater potential to move than others by developing the concept of ‘motility’, which is defined as the extent to which ‘an individual or group takes possession of the realm of possibilities for mobility and builds on it to develop personal projects’ (p. 167). Basically, the concept tries to capture an individual’s spatial mobility potential within a unified framework, thus raising the issue about the extent to whether adaptability to external stimuli represents an independent form of capital that can be quantified through a single measure. In order to develop a coherent theoretical framework, these researchers suggest that: Motility is comprised of all the factors that define the potential to be mobile in space, whether these are physical capacities, aspirations to be sedentary or mobile, existing technical transportation and telecommunications systems and their accessibility, and acquired knowledge. (Flamm and Kaufmann 2006: 169) In this body of research, motility is explored qualitatively, through a combination of access rights portfolios developed by surveyed individuals, their aptitudes for mobility, and the strategies, values, representations and habits that

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define the cognitive appropriation of transportation supply. However, the rather optimistic and apolitical view of personal adaptability that often permeates such ‘nomad’ understandings of mobility has been critiqued by more ‘sedentary’ ways of thinking, which underline the loss of community cohesion and growing social alienation stemming from the accelerated circulation of capital and people across the world (Giddens 1991; Sennett 1998). Work on the articulation of everyday life in the built environment of the city has also contributed to the understanding of contemporary urban change as an inherently fluid and mutable process, by, for example, distinguishing between urban ‘armatures’ (linear systems that channel flows and link nodes through networks of distribution) and ‘enclaves’ (bounded sites of friction and slowness, which help define the functions of the city, see Shane 2002). Ole Jensen (2007) is one of the authors who has developed this classification even further, arguing that armatures should be given primacy over enclaves, since they constitute ‘meaningful spaces of interaction’ that can help understand how mobility is articulated through contemporary urban settings. As such, he is part of a growing theoretical trend that ascribes agency to sites of transit and mobility in the city. In this context, it should be pointed out that the loss of ‘solid’ territorial arrangements under conditions of flexible accumulation and post-Fordism has led to the emergence of new urban forms such as post-polycentric urban regions and ‘edge cities’ (see Bingham et al. 2013; Garreau 1991). Robert Lang (2004) uses the concept of the ‘elusive metropolis’ to explain these developments. According to him, this is a distinct and new urban form, which is a result of urban development policies, economic and political phenomena that have engulfed the United States during the last 30 years. Post-industrial city centres throughout the developed world have gained new life thanks to conscious urban regeneration efforts, and in-migration dynamics. However, growing processes of spatial segregation and social polarization imply that a ‘splintered’ and fragmented urban spatial demographic landscape is beginning to emerge in many such urban areas. World cities are also facing the result of a wide array of multi-faceted population flows and structures, deeply connected and stemming from spatial and institutional change. The impression of a fluid ‘net of mixed beads’ (Pivo 1990) in such places is reinforced by the finding that gentrification dynamics are taking place parallel to sub- and counterurbanization movements in the opposite direction.

Concluding thoughts The wide range of contributions discussed in this chapter has opened the path for unravelling the social and spatial contingencies of the urban dimensions of

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flexibility at the household scale. It has transpired that the individualization and atomization of society has been accompanied by the rise of a new set of cultural values, as well as the decline of the nuclear family and the ‘male breadwinner model’. There has been an unprecedented transformation – partly under the influence of the second demographic transition – in the features of developed-world families. The requirement for individuals to become more mobile, flexible and adaptable has also affected the nature of social relations and living arrangements: changing cultural, economic and social expectations have distended human relationships across time and space, creating ‘flexible’ and ‘fluid’ household arrangements that destabilize the conventional understanding of kin and friendship. The increasing importance of ‘flexible’ attributes in the conduct of family life has unfolded against the background of a broader shift towards postFordist and ‘post-materialist’ patterns of economic and cultural organization, including the flexibilization of labour markets and economic development policies. The demands on work flexibility stemming from these developments have often been accompanied by increased labour mobility, stretching the fragmented social landscapes of the city even further. It has been argued that the spatial consequences of the restructuring of relations of kin and friendship have been amplified by the transformation of work and employment transformation by bringing about, inter alia, the continued repopulation, ‘residentialization’, and ‘reurbanization’ of inner-city districts (Bouzarovski et al. 2010; Tallon and Blomley 2004). As ‘fluid’ household structures and individuals seek to exploit the locational and socio-cultural advantages provided by such areas, the inner city has often become a site of intense economic flexibility, in addition to being exposed to demographic fluidity. With such insights in mind, it is possible to conceptualize flexibility at the household scale as an intersection of multiple ‘planes’ of social change, requiring the possession of adaptive capacity and the performance of adaptive behaviours in a range of different ways (Figure 2.1). In line with this approach, flexibility in the residential environment of the home can be seen as the degree of ease with which a household can address a change in its housing needs, in a manner that is desirable with respect to that change from the household’s point of view. The advantage of this conceptualization is that it includes both residential mobility in the ‘traditional’ sense (i.e., relocation to a new dwelling; see Rossi 1955), and the broader relationship between life courses and ‘housing events’ in the built environment of the home. I rely on theorizations of the latter that focus on the adaptation of a household’s residential situation in line with a new set of needs and circumstances (Feijten and Mulder 2002).

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Different domains (‘planes’) of flexibility affecting households.

The idea that ‘desirability is not an inherent, objective property of some given variation or variability’ (Jonsson 2007b: 40) is another cornerstone of the analytical approach articulated in chapters that follow, especially in light of the fact that ‘flexibility and stability are thus contextually defined or relational concepts’ (ibid.). It is also worth noting that I sometimes employ the concept of flexibility in a wider sense, to denote the facility and speed with which a household’s everyday functionings are able to response to altered circumstances in the urban built environment. This is a wider, ‘socio-spatial’ understanding of flexibility, which comprises changes in the residential circumstances of a household (including the various types of housing mobility) as well as the shifting spatial patterns of its everyday life in the city. In the chapters that follow, I mainly examine the relationship between sociospatial flexibility and urban mobility across different spatial scales. However, two issues remain unresolved. In the first instance, it is worth noting that the idea of flexibility has rarely been brought in contact with the resilience approach, where it generally is reduced to a property of the organizational actors that define the resilience of a social-ecological system. Other relevant work on resilience – especially in psycho-social or urban contexts – has also failed to articulate an engagement with the significant body of knowledge regarding flexibility in social and economic formations. Therefore, Chapter 3 focuses, in part, on the multiple conceptual intersections between the frameworks of resilience, adaptive capacity and flexibility.

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Second, most of the studies outlined above – especially those on the design of ‘flexible’ dwellings – demonstrate an insufficient understanding of the complex relationships between households, flexibility and housing. In them, the home is treated as an objective, technical construct; independent of the social production of urbanity and domesticity (though see, inter alia, Holloway and Hubbard 2001; Lupton 1998). Other than the distinct body of literature on the home as a workplace, the effects of the flexibilization of the economy on the social (re)production of urban domesticity remain insufficiently explored from a social perspective, especially with regard to the adaptability of the built environment. These issues are examined in further detail in Chapter 4.

CHAPTER 3 SWIMMING THROUGH A MURKY SEA: A CONCEPTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF RESILIENCE AND ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

As I pointed out in the introduction, resilience has become something of an academic and policy buzzword in recent years. The properties and processes associated with this framework have acquired a wide range of uses across the social sciences, focusing on the ‘capacity of a system to retain its organizational structure following perturbation of some state variable from a given value’ (Perrings 1994; Reggiani et al. 2002: 213). A closer look at the theoretical underpinnings of social resilience, however, quickly reveals that several parallel understandings of the concept have evolved across different disciplines. Although many current applications of the resilience paradigm in the social sciences can be traced back to a distinct thread of contributions within ecology and environmental management, different definitions of the concept have operated within, inter alia, engineering and psychology. This is because social-ecological resilience emphasizes the existence of multiple steady states and the inherently diverse trajectories stemming from a system’s response to an external perturbation, while other schools of thought relating to the concept tend to focus on the factors that allow humans and nonhumans to return to stability in the face of stress and adversity, as well as the speed of recovery to a hypothetical stable condition. The key point of divergence between the two sets of approaches lies in the supposed existence of a unified equilibrium state in any given system; while this notion counters the conceptual foundations of the social-ecological view, it is often assumed in other perspectives on resilience. Another theme where consensus appears to be lacking pertains to the nature of the response to external

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shocks, and the conceptual relevance of the speed of recovery. As noted by Charles Perrings (1998): One [understanding of resilience] refers to the properties of the system near some stable equilibrium (i.e., in the neighbourhood of a stable focus or node) [. . .] The second definition refers to the perturbation that can be absorbed before the system is displaced from one state to another. (p. 505) It should be emphasized that unlike the first approach – mainly based on work by Stuart Pimm (1984) – the second definition is not contingent on the position of a given system in relation to an equilibrium state. Inherent to this line of thinking, which is otherwise attributable to Crawford Stanley ‘Buzz’ Holling (1973, 1986, 1992), is the notion that systems embody multiple stable equilibria that are locally specific. Thus, the measure of a system’s resilience becomes the extent to which a system can absorb shocks before moving from one ‘attractor’ (or ‘stability domain’) to another (Perrings 1998). If the perturbation in question fails to induce a change, it can be said that the system is ‘resilient with respect to that perturbation’ (Perrings 1998: 505). Social-ecological resilience researchers have emphasized that ‘Pimm resilience’ – often dubbed ‘engineering resilience’, as opposed to Holling’s ‘ecological resilience’ – cannot provide a sufficiently comprehensive definition of the concept. This is mainly because of the possibility of multiple stable states: ‘when considering the extent to which a system can be changed, return time doesn’t measure all of the ways in which a system may fail – permanently or temporarily – to retain essential functions’ (Walker et al. 2004: 5). Also: Engineering resilience focuses upon small portions of a system’s stability landscape, whereas ecological resilience focuses upon its contours. Engineering resilience does not help assess either the response of a system to large perturbations or when gradual changes in a system’s stability landscape may cause the system to move from one stability domain to another. (Peterson et al. 1998: 11) Nevertheless, analytical debates, empirical research and policy standpoints on urban resilience have often oscillated between the different understandings of resilience, choosing to adopt the more formal apparatus of social-ecological resilience in some instances, versus a more fluid and less conceptually grounded view in other cases. Urban researchers and policy practitioners have tended to assume a pragmatic, context-centred understanding of resilience, paying little

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attention to its problematic theoretical underpinnings. This has been the case, in particular, within urban resilience perspectives developed outside the framework of the social-ecological paradigm, which is predicated upon the reliance on a distinct set of analytical tools that do not always easily lend themselves to universal practical application. The relative marginalization of this perspective within recent empirical research on the articulations of social, political and economic processes in the city – despite its growing presence in social science more generally – has also contributed to the lack of clarity over the conceptual basis of urban resilience. Definitions and theories aside, there is little doubt that the ability to adapt oneself to a newly created set of circumstances is the main feature of being resilient in any situation. Therefore, adaptive capacity and the practice of flexibility lie at the centre of many debates on resilience. Here, too, however, one encounters a diversity of perspectives that are not necessarily congruent with each other or the rest of social theory. While the social-ecological approach has formulated one of the most elaborate explanatory frameworks about the complexities of adaptation in human and non-human systems, it has generally failed to take on board the wide body of critical research on the recent expansion of flexibility within political and economic structures. Other perspectives on resilience have also emphasized the importance of the constituent properties and processes of adaptation, but have generally not succeeded in explicitly engaging with them on a theoretical level. This chapter aims to bring some clarity to the conceptual underpinnings and intersections of social resilience, adaptive capacity and flexibility. It draws on a range of literatures on all three topics to highlight not only their contested conceptual and political dimensions, but also their ability to embrace the complexity and diversity of social change in all its forms. In addition to juxtaposing a set of knowledge that have rarely met eye to eye in a scholarly publication, my overarching aim in putting together such a review is to develop a common conceptual framework that will guide the subsequent explorations of social and built transformations within the everyday fabric of the inner city.

Ecosystem behaviour as a template for society: The social-ecological resilience approach As was noted above, a large part of current resilience thinking operates with a set of ideas that were initially developed within ecosystems science. Many of them can be traced back to Crawford Holling’s (1973) groundbreaking critique of ecological theory. He suggested that the behaviour of ecological systems can be defined by the properties of ‘resilience’ and ‘stability’. Unlike the latter, which in his view expresses ‘the ability of a system to return to an

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equilibrium state after a temporary disturbance’ (p. 17), he saw the former as the determinant of ‘the persistence of relationships within a system’ that would make it a measure of its capacity to ‘absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist’ (ibid.). This distinction is important in management terms, since the governance of ecosystems based on a resilience approach would focus on ‘the need to keep options open, the need to view events in a regional rather than local context, and the need to emphasize heterogeneity’ (p. 21), as opposed to the traditional preoccupation with equilibrium and the harvesting of excess natural resources. As pointed out by Aura Reggiani, Thomas de Graaff and Peter Nijkamp (2002), ‘resilience points out the “possibility to change”, while stability underlines the “impossibility to change”’ (p. 215, original italics). In essence, ecological resilience originates from the claim that ‘the basic framework underpinning our approach to environmental management has been based on false assumptions’ (Walker and Salt 2006: xi). Having expanded its title to include the ‘social’ in addition to the ‘ecological’ – since, as argued by its proponents, the dichotomy between the two is both false and flawed – this rapidly expanding paradigm has questioned the meaning of concepts such as ‘balance of nature’, linear progression and succession (such analytical instruments and constructs have guided the governance of ecosystems for more than a century, and are the cornerstone of classic environmental management). Social-ecological resilience pays particular attention to the notion of ‘thresholds’, which postulates that systems can exist in ‘more than one stable state’ (ibid.: 11). Thus, changing beyond a particular point means that the system starts ‘behaving in a different way, with different feedbacks between its component parts and a different structure’ (ibid.). Such ‘regime shifts’ are generally governed by a limited number of parameters, dubbed ‘slow variables’. This means that Managing for resilience is all about understanding a social-ecological system with particular attention to the drivers that cause it to cross thresholds between alternate regimes, knowing where the thresholds might lie, and enhancing aspects of the system that enable it to maintain its resilience. If you have some idea about the controlling variables in a system, and where thresholds lie along those variables, you have a head start. (ibid.: 59) By recognizing that non-linear responses implied by threshold effects are key to the evolution of ecosystems, resilience thinking has led to a veritable revolution

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in ecological systems science. The suggestion that ‘ecosystems do not have a single equilibrium with homeostatic controls to remain near it’ (Gunderson and Holling 2002: 26) has helped elucidate and operationalize this paradigm, by emphasizing that regime shifts are mediated by stochastic forces and movements of variables between states (also see Carpenter 2000; Scheffer 2009). Assumptions of predictability and controllability have been turned on their head, bringing into play the idea that ecosystems may possess a range of alternative ‘steady’ states (Berkes 2007). As pointed out by Peter Timerman (1986): Equilibrium myths are a way of picturing nature as natura naturata – i.e., nature as object, fixed or fixable. The myth of resilience, on the other hand, sees nature as natura naturans – nature naturing – i.e., nature actively altering and responding in various ways to predictable or unpredictable stresses. (p. 444) Scientists working in the field have insisted that in some ecosystems, ‘periodic flips from one state to another are mediated by changes in slow processes that suddenly trigger a fast-process response, or escape from a state’ (Holling et al. 2002a: 36). Such events, often termed ‘surprises’, can trigger changes in resource management, and ‘lead to extreme events not prepared for, such that reactive policies need to be available’ (Janssen 2002: 260). In other words: Ecosystems are moving targets, with multiple features that are uncertain and unpredictable. Therefore, management has to be flexible, adaptive, and experimental at scales compatible with the scales of critical ecosystem functions. (Gunderson and Holling 2002: 26) The theoretically novel nature of these ideas has fuelled their growing popularity across the social sciences during the past two decades. The resilience paradigm’s expansion beyond the domain of ecology has further been aided by the conceptualization of processes in social formations as the outcome of intertwined human, natural and built metabolisms, resulting in the development of ecosystem ‘services’ and ‘functions’, whose quality may vary over space and time (Girardet 1999). Viewing environmental, political and economic transformations in any given social system through an ecological lens has also provided a heuristic basis for developing the conceptual framework of sustainable development per se (Button 2002; van Dijk and Mingshun 2005).

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The exploration of social resilience from an ecosystems resilience standpoint has operated ‘both as an analogy of how societies work, drawing on the ecological concept, and through exploring the direct relationship between the two phenomena of social and ecological resilience’ (Adger 2000: 347). Work on this aspect of resilience, has focused on, inter alia, its importance for land degradation (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987), livelihoods (Go¨nner 2007; Peluso et al. 1994; Turner 2009), sustainability (Common 1995), the functioning of institutions and markets (Westley 1995), agricultural systems (Bayliss-Smith 1991) and regional economic differentiation (Reggiani et al. 2002). However, having concluded that ‘the concept of resilience has not effectively been brought across the disciplinary divide to examine the meaning of resilience of a community or a society as a whole’, Neil Adger (2000) is uncertain whether resilience is a relevant term for describing communities. His doubts also extend to the question whether ‘there is a link between social resilience and ecological resilience’ and to what extent ‘institutions exhibit resilience’ (p. 348). His seminal paper on social resilience points out that in addition to these issues, the concept of resilience is clearly related to other configurations of environment – society relationships such as vulnerability and criticality, some of which have an explicit spatial dimension to these social processes. Social vulnerability is the exposure of groups of people or individuals to stress as a result of the impacts of environmental change. Stress, in the social sense, encompasses disruption to groups’ or individuals’ livelihoods and forced adaptation to the changing physical environment. Social vulnerability in general encompasses disruption to livelihoods and loss of security. For vulnerable groups such stresses are often pervasive and related to the underlying economic and social situation, both of lack of income and resources, but also to war, civil strife and other factors. (ibid.) The role of institutions, whose level of resilience ‘is based on their historical evolution and their inclusivity or exclusivity’ (ibid., p. 351), has also been emphasized in this review, in addition to the different ways in which resource dependency influences the ability of communities to cope with shocks and hazards. Considering that the distribution of assets in the economic system is institutionally determined, the author argues that relevant variables in the temporal and spatial exploration of social resilience include the nature of economic growth, the stability and distribution of income, environmental variability, livelihood stability and demographic change.

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Complex adaptive cycles The manner in which social and ecological systems are transformed over time has been one of the central preoccupations of the social-ecological resilience approach. In order to conceptualize change, authors working in this field have claimed that three dimensions shape the responses of ecosystems, organizations and people to external perturbations: . . .

the potential available for change (often termed the ‘flexibility’ of the system); the degree of internal connectedness within the system; the resilience of the system as a measure of its vulnerability to shocks.

Based on their empirical observations, resilience researchers insist that the three properties change repetitively over time, resulting in a complex adaptive cycle that ‘describes how an ecosystem organizes itself and how it responds to a changing world’ (Walker and Salt 2006: 75). Using ideas borrowed from ecological science (particularly species population dynamics) and Schumpeterian economics (the notion of ‘creative destruction’), the complex adaptive cycle is said to contain four phases, involving: .

.

.

.

rapid growth (termed ‘r’ after the notion of ‘r-strategists’ in ecology); this normally takes place at the beginning of the cycle, when actors exploit the available resources of the system in order to prosper under conditions of high variation and uncertainty. Resilience theorists argue that to an economist, the ‘r’ function would be equivalent to the ‘entrepreneurial market’ (Holling and Gunderson 2002); conservation (or the ‘K’ phase), when energy and matter become stored in the system, as do the connections within it: ‘for an economic or social system, the accumulating potential could as well be from the skills, networks or human relationships, and mutual trust that are incrementally developed and tested’ (ibid.: 35); release (‘V’); the system becomes internally overconnected, to the point where a perturbation that exceeds its resilience can destroy the tight organization of the network, characterized by a closely knit web of mutually reinforcing interactions. Thus, ‘resources that were tightly bound are now released as connections break and regulatory controls weaken’, while ‘the loss of structure continues as linkages are broken, and natural, social and economic capital leaks out of the system’ (Walker and Salt 2006: 77); reorganization (‘a’), whereby a range of new options become possible, including a flip to a completely different state. This is because uncertainty,

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novelty, invention and experimentation dominate as a result of the loss of internal order and cohesion in the system, often allowing new actors to appear and seize control. It is often pointed out that this is where a system may collapse into a ‘poverty trap’ that prevents it from moving into a rapid growth phase. Table 3.1 Social analogies of the adaptive cycle, at different scales (according to Holling et al. 2002a) System type

Phase of adaptive cycle r

K

V

a

Institutions Individuals

markets sensation

conservation monopoly/ hierarchy bureaucracy, routinization hierarchies thinking

reorganization invention

Organizations

exploitation market, entrepreneur adhocracies

release creative destruction catalysts, heretics sects intuition

Ecosystems Economies

visionary isolates thinking

Even though the four stages originally referred to the behaviour of ecosystems, there have been numerous attempts to uncover their counterparts in the functioning of social systems at different scales (one of the clearest attempts of this kind is illustrated in Table 3.1). Akin to Lance Gunderson’s and Lowell Pritchard’s (2002) overview of ecological state changes resulting from human activity in a range of ecosystems, researchers working in this vein have emphasized the manner in which the combined resilience of social-ecological systems has been influenced by, inter alia, state changes in cultures (Berkes et al. 2003) and economies (Dasgupta and Ma¨ler 2004). Lance Gunderson, Crawford Holling and Gary Peterson (2002) have identified social parallels of the four phases in anthropology (Douglas 1978; Thompson et al. 1990), alongside – as was noted above – Joseph Schumpeter’s (1950) work and a host of other economic researchers. In such theorizations, the ‘r phase is designated as the entrepreneur, the K phase the caste of bureaucracy, the V phase the sects, and the a phase the ineffectual individual’ (Gunderson et al. 2002: 320). The scholars who have been advancing this line of thought point out that: A unique property of human systems in response to uncertainty is the generation of new types of social structures. Novelty is key in responding to surprises or crises. Humans are unique in that they create

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novelty that transforms the future over multiple decades to centuries. Natural evolutionary processes cause the same magnitude of transformation over time spans of millennia. (ibid.: 325) Despite finding a number of analogies and similarities in the adaptive cycles of ecological and social systems, such authors nevertheless point out that human groups have a much greater potential for both rigidity and novelty (ibid.). Based on previous work, they identify social attributes that are associated with the changes between the four phases of the adaptive cycle, including: . . . .

bureaucracy, local heretics, reformers and higher level decision bodies in the case of governments; implementation, destruction, the framing of new options and ‘resolution or transformation’ in the case of policy activities; ignoring and denying change, forcing change, creating new futures and compromising and reconciling in the case of responses to change; stability, anarchy, reconstruction and the reconfiguration of myths in the case of ‘guiding visions’ (ibid.: 328).

Arguing along similar lines, Lance Gunderson and Crawford Holling (2002) point out that the ‘adaptive cycle metaphor might suggest an interesting future agenda’ for economics, in light of its ‘search for optimal solutions – economic and social’ (p. 47). Neil Adger (2000), however, remains sceptical with regard to the direct correspondence between social and ecological systems that is implied in such thinking. Noting the existence between synergistic and coevolutionary relationships between social and ecological systems (Norgaard 1994), he emphasizes that the resilience of social systems is related in some (still undefined) way to the resilience of the ecological systems on which social systems depend. This is most clearly exhibited within social systems that are dependent on a single ecosystem or single resource. Simply taking the concept of resilience from the ecological sciences and applying it to social systems assumes that there are no essential differences in behaviour and structure between socialized institutions and ecological systems. (Adger 2000: 350) The varying levels of potential, connectedness and resilience within the different progression phases of the adaptive cycle can be mapped along a

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three-dimensional graph, revealing their contraction and expansion over time (Figure 3.1). It is notable that resilience decreases as the system moves along the ‘front loop’ between release and reorganization: the transition between the two phases makes the system more ‘brittle’ and susceptible to different future trajectories. This three-dimensional framework is often used by resilience researchers to indicate that systems do not necessarily progress along the cycle in an ordered way, meaning that phases may be skipped or reversed.

Panarchies Proponents of the social-ecological view of resilience argue that resilience embodies several properties, including ‘latitude’, which expresses ‘the maximum amount a system can be changed before losing its ability to recover’ (Walker et al. 2004: 6), alongside ‘resistance’ – ‘the ease or difficulty of changing the system’ (ibid.); and ‘precariousness’, where the emphasis is on ‘how close the current state of the system is to a limit or “threshold”’ (ibid.: 5). Also the resilience of ecological processes, and therefore of the ecosystems they maintain, depends upon the distribution of functional groups within and across scales [...] ecosystems are usefully considered not as fixed objects in space, but as interacting, self-organized sets of processes and structures that vary across scales [...] understanding interactions between the scaling of species and scaling of ecological processes should be a central goal of ecology. (Peterson et al. 1998: 13– 16)

Figure 3.1 A three-dimensional representation of the changing amounts of connectedness, resilience and potential in different stages of the complex adaptive cycle.

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With this axiom in mind, social-ecological resilience researchers insist that complex adaptive cycles are nested within scalar hierarchies. The phases proceeding within any given system can be seen as constitutive elements of processes that take place at lower- and higher-order material sites: ‘for example, external oppressive politics, invasions, market shifts, or global climate change can trigger local surprises and regime shifts’ (Walker et al. 2004: 5). The resilience approach has opted against using the term ‘hierarchy’ as a descriptor for these nested interdependencies, since it would deny their dynamic and transformative character, while burdening them with the ‘rigid, top-down nature of its common meaning’ (Holling et al. 2002a: 74). Instead, the concept of ‘panarchy’ has been proposed as a means of capturing the embedded and evolutionary nature of adaptive cycles. [It] draws on the Greek god Pan, a symbol of universal nature, to capture an image of unpredictable change, and fuses this with notions of hierarchies – cross-scale structures in natural and human systems. The term embodies notions that sustain the self-structuring capacity of systems (system integrity), allow adaptive evolution, and at times succumb to the gales of change (Walker and Salt 2006: 89). Resilience theorists emphasize the importance of panarchical connections as agents of transformation. While the rapid growth phase may act as an ‘engine of variety and the generator of new experiments at each level’ (Holling et al. 2002a: 74), the release stage at one level of the panarchy has the potential to precipitate a collapse in another, through a mechanism known as ‘revolt’. At the same time, the reorganization phase of a given system is often grounded in the conservation process of the larger system that contains it; this linkage is termed ‘remember’ as it reflects the greater level of experience – expressed through imprinted path-dependencies – within the more mature level of the panarchy. The multi-scalar connections implied by the ‘revolt’ and ‘remember’ channels bring out the temporal complexities of the adaptive cycle, as it has transpired that systemic transformations are slower in instances where the cycle is more deeply grounded in particular historical circumstances. Social science abounds with examples of the different speeds of transformation in human institutions and practices: from the triptych of allocation mechanisms, norms and myths (Westley 1995), to the distinction among operational rules, collective choice rules and constitutional rules (Ostrom et al. 1994). These distinctions are also

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illustrated by Ralf Dahrendorf’s (1990: 92 – 3) ‘clock’ metaphor about the different pace of evolutionary change in the post-communist states of eastern Europe, where the ‘fastest’ clock of politics – providing for major legal or institutional change – is followed by, respectively, the clocks of economics and civil society, which reflect the slower pace of changes in social practices, behaviours and values. Similarly, Stewart Brand’s (1997) theorization of global social transformation proposes that ‘the combination of fast and slow components makes the system resilient, along with the way the differently paced parts affect each other’, since ‘fast learns’ while ‘slow remembers’ and ‘fast proposes’ and ‘slow disposes’ (p. 34). In other words: the fast levels invent, experiment, and test; the slower levels stabilize and conserve accumulated memory of past successful, surviving experiments. The whole panarchy is both creative and conserving. (Holling et al. 2002a: 76) The heuristic of the evolutionary process associated with the adaptive cycle implies that learning takes place through either: .

.

.

gradual and incremental learning in the ‘exploitation’ phase of the cycle. This is when ‘models and schemas are assumed to be correct’ and the accretion of new knowledge is ‘characterized by collecting data or information to update these models’ (Holling et al. 2002b: 404); abrupt, spasmodic and revolutionary learning during the shift from ‘release’ to ‘reorganization’, involving ‘episodic, discontinuous and surprising’ change created by ‘slow-fast dynamics that reveal the inadequacies of the underlying model or schema structure’ (ibid.); transformational learning, which requires that ‘a unique combination of separate developments has to conspire together simultaneously’ (Holling et al. 2002a: 90). Resilience researchers insist that this type of learning is associated with the ‘most dramatic type of change’, as it is predicated upon ‘solving problems or identifying problem domains’, which involve ‘several levels in a panarchy, not simply one level’ (Holling et al. 2002b: 405).

In its entirety, conceptualizing adaptability through the concept of panarchies has important implications for the organization and evolution of space: in the eyes of resilience researchers, ecosystems are ‘lumpy’, since the adaptive cycle creates resource aggregations of different sizes, resulting in discontinuity and diversity across territorial formations. The resilience literature argues that the same principles can be extended to societies, citing

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empirical scholarship about the expansion of national economies and human settlements (ibid.), where patterns of growth performance across countries appear to be structured by movement toward a long-term ‘target’ rate of growth for each country, where the long-term target is determined by slow and medium time scale variables. Slow processes of governance establish the degree of flexibility, trust and freedom of institutional and political structures. Medium-speed processes set the general level of public physical infrastructure and education. (ibid.: 406)

Psycho-social resilience Parallel to the social-ecological view of resilience – where the property is ‘measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior’ (Holling and Gunderson 2002: 28) – a different understanding of the concept has also evolved within, inter alia, the domains of psychology and mental health. Resilience researchers from these disciplines tend to focus on the manner in which a social system can successfully achieve an organizational, technical and political adaptation of its internal organization in response to an externally induced perturbation. There is a strong emphasis on the time of ‘return’ after a perturbation, as well as the nature of exogenous stress, rather than the existence of non-linear trajectories and multiple steady states (Adger 2000; Holling and Meffe 1996). Focusing on psychological inquiry, Suniya Luthar, Dante Cicchetti, and Bronwyn Becker (2000) define resilience as a ‘dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity’ (p. 543). Scholarly interest in resilience within their field ‘has surged’ as a result of ‘the publication of early writings by major systematizers in the field’ (ibid.). These authors have traced back the origins of resilience thinking in their discipline to studies of maladaptive behaviour among severely disordered patients: ‘Although resilience was not part of the descriptive picture of these atypical schizophrenics, these aspects of premorbid social competence might be viewed today as prognostic of relatively resilient trajectories’ (ibid.: 544). Citing Norman Garmezy’s (1974) work, they find that the first explicit references to resilience within psychology and mental health were made within research on children with schizophrenic mothers. In the years that followed, they

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claim, childhood resilience became a ‘major theoretical and empirical topic’ (ibid.), gradually expanding to include questions of mental and chronic illness, maltreatment and catastrophic life events. Within psychology and mental health, however, the concept of resilience is most commonly used within studies of children and adolescents. Researchers working on these topics have underlined, for example, that ‘stress resilient’ children have a stronger self-reported ‘nurturant caregiver– child relationship and self-views as effective caregivers’ (Wyman et al. 1991: 405). According to Linda Winfield (1994): Resilient children also tend to have parents who are concerned with their children’s education, who participate in that education, who direct their children’s everyday tasks, and who are aware of their children’s interests and goals. Another important characteristic of resilient children is having at least one significant adult in their lives. (p. 38) Using educational involvement as a proxy for resilience, David Miller and Randall MacIntosh (1999) highlight the role of racial socialization and identity in allowing some urban African American adolescents to achieve good developmental outcomes in their lives by overcoming adverse influences and maturing into well-adapted individuals (similar conclusions can be found in Zimmerman et al. 1999). However, it has been pointed out that resilience is not a one-dimensional property, as children who may demonstrate a higher level of post-stress social competence based on one measure may be more vulnerable when it comes to other indicators (Luthar 1993). The diversity of outcomes and trajectories in this understanding of resilience thus bears striking similarities to the theorization of the concept in the social-ecological view: Protection does not reside in the psychological chemistry of the moment but in the ways in which people deal with life changes and in what they do about their stressful or disadvantageous circumstances. Particular attention needs to be paid to the mechanisms operating at key turning points in people’s lives when a risk trajectory may be redirected onto a more adaptive path. (Rutter 1987: 329) It has been often pointed out that labelling children as ‘resilient’ or ‘non-resilient’ makes it ‘easy to overlook the significance of this concept’ (Winfield 1994: 38), since ‘what makes a child “resilient” is the relative

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strength of individual characteristics and external protective processes’ within the context of ‘risks and vulnerabilities in the external environment’ (ibid.). As a result, research on psycho-social resilience has been strongly concerned with the protective factors and mechanisms implicated in individuals’ ability to withstand stress. Michael Rutter’s (1987) seminal contribution on this topic has emphasized that psychiatric research has shifted its focus from ‘risk variables’ to ‘the process of negotiating risk situations’ (original italics, p. 1987). In turn, this has moved scholarly attention away from protective factors, and onto protective mechanisms: The limited evidence available so far suggests that protective processes include those that reduce the risk impact by virtue of effects of the riskiness itself or through alteration of exposure to or involvement in the risk; those that reduce the likelihood of negative chain reactions stemming from the risk encounter; those that promote self-esteem and self-efficacy through the availability of secure and supportive personal relationships or successful task accomplishment; and those that open up opportunities. (ibid.: 329) In a later contribution, the same author uses the expanding body of research on the topic to refine his perspective on psycho-social resilience. He underlines its relevance as an ‘interactive concept that is concerned with the combination of serious risk experiences and a relatively positive psychological outcome despite those experiences’ (Rutter 2006: 2). This theorization is premised upon the ‘universal finding of huge individual differences in people’s responses to all kinds of environmental hazard’ as well as evidence that ‘in some circumstances, the experience of stress or adversity sometimes strengthens resistance to later stress’ (ibid.). But the conceptual refinement of resilience doesn’t mean that it is no longer controversial within psychology and mental health: researchers have frequently noted the lack of a consensus about its definition, accompanied by the existence of substantial variations in the operationalization and measurement of underlying and related constructs, such as ‘adversity conditions’, ‘positive adjustment’, as well as the relationship between ‘risk’ and ‘manifest competence’ (Luthar et al. 2000: 545). Given the multi-dimensional nature of the phenomenon, it is also unclear whether resilience is a trait or a process, and how one might approach and define optimal indicators of resilience within individual studies (ibid.). The robustness of evidence gathered through this framework has also been questioned, as ‘research findings on resilience may often be unstable’ (ibid.: 551). In order to deal with such criticisms, a greater

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level of ‘clarity and consistency in the use of definitions and terminology’ (ibid.: 544) has been proposed, in addition to a greater level of awareness about the multi-faceted nature of the concept: The term ‘resilience’ should always be used when referring to the process or phenomenon of competence despite adversity, with the term ‘resiliency’ used only when referring to a specific personality trait. In describing processes that alter the effects of adversity, the terms ‘protective’ and ‘vulnerability’ should be used to describe overall effects that are beneficial versus detrimental, with more elaborated labels (e.g., with suffixes to these two primary terms) employed to label different interactive processes in resilience. (ibid.: 554) Despite such internal controversies relating to the meaning of the term, analyses of psycho-social resilience have often been ‘scaled up’ from the level of individuals and families towards processes relating to community violence, socio-economic disadvantage, urban poverty and post-disaster stress in cities (Bonanno et al. 2006; Crabtree 2013; Garmezy 1991; Richters and Martinez 1993; Werner 1995). This application of resilience has developed in an almost entirely separate vein from the social-ecological paradigm described above.

Urban resilience: Intersections of security and everyday life Recent years have seen an expanding scholarly attempt to assess the ability of cities across the world to transform their political, economic and technical structures in line with the demands of a more challenging future environment (Coaffee 2010; Coaffee et al. 2009; Leichenko 2011; Schmitt et al. 2013). The use of resilience in this context mainly relates to specific empirical problems and challenges, without paying too much attention to the theoretical background of the framework. Academic research on urban resilience has often focused on the ability of cities to mitigate against, and cope with, hazard, risk and disaster. Scholars working in this domain have highlighted the durability and persistence of urban sites in the face of external destructive force, which has been attributed to factors such as the ‘nation state, which has a vested interest in the well-being of its cities, especially its national capital’ as well as the fact the manner in which the ‘ownership of private property’ has resulted in the emergence of a ‘virtually indestructible means of organizing space; even if a city is turned into nuclear ash, property lines can be recreated if the legal documents still exist’ (Campanella 2006: 142). Also of relevance in

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this context is the ‘concomitant rise of the modern insurance industry’ which ‘encourages speedy reconstruction’ in part by urging ‘property owners to rebuild in situ and as before’. At the same time, ‘layered networks of urban infrastructure’ add a level of inertia that facilitates the rebuilding of urban areas after major disasters, especially if ‘concrete foundations and deeply buried utilities’ have survived (ibid.). This is aided by the fact that ‘the geographic and economic advantages that led to a city’s initial development [...] often survive disaster’ (ibid.). Such work provides one of the most effective empirical corroborations of the claim that cities are more than mere collections of buildings. They represent living, fluid synergies of human and non-human actants: ‘the process of building is a necessary but, by itself, an insufficient condition for enabling recovery and resilience’ (Vale and Campanella 2005: 351). The sustainability of the relationship between human communities – the social and institutional components of the city, acting as the ‘brain’ which directs its activities, responds to its needs and learns from its experience – on the one hand, and the physical system – which comprises its constructed and environmental components – on the other, lies at the heart of a metropolitan area’s ability to respond to hazard, risk and disaster (Godschalk 2003). Research in this vein, therefore, has often emphasized the everyday dimensions of responses to disaster, as well as the importance of timely hazard mitigation. Building redundant capacity is commonly suggested as a useful measure of achieving the latter; this is where urban resilience touches upon engineering and planning principles associated with the use of the concept in technical disciplines such as energy network planning (Dias et al. 2013; Farrell et al. 2004). It is also worth noting the significant body of research that utilizes the principles of the social-ecological resilience approach in the context of urban land-use complementation (Colding 2007), urban water management (Muller 2007) and the socio-spatial problems, governance practices and tradeoffs associated with suburban sprawl (Allen 2006). Marina Alberti and John Marzluff (2004) have developed a conceptual model that links human and ecosystem functions in the context of urban development and growth. The results of the empirical application of their model have indicated that patterns of urbanization are critical in balancing the tension between providing human and ecological services and maintaining the unstable equilibrium created by planned development. They also indicate that ecosystem responses vary with various ecological processes and that thresholds may exist. This knowledge is critical to determine what

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processes need to be maintained in order to ensure that urban ecosystem services can simultaneously support both humans and other species. (Alberti and Marzluff 2004: 262)

Exploring adaptive capacity The different ways in which economic and social systems adapt to change have been subject to academic scrutiny for the best part of the last five decades (Eakin et al. 2010; Ricci 2014; Smit and Pilifosova 2003). Some of the earliest work in this domain within the context of human systems dates back to the ‘anthropologist and cultural ecologist Julian Steward, who used “cultural adaptation” to describe the adjustment of “culture cores” (i.e., regional societies) to the natural environment through subsistence activities’ (Butzer 1989; Smit and Wandel 2006: 283). Subsequent research in this vein has interrogated the manner in which biophysical processes – including exchanges on matter, energy and information – interact with human dynamics of adaptation (Odum 1970), as well as the role of ‘cultural repertoires’ in this process (O’Brien and Holland 1992: 37). More recent scholarship in the fields of political ecology, food security, social inequality and natural hazards has focused on a system’s capacity to adapt in its analysis of coping strategies in different geographical contexts (Acosta et al. 2013; Adger 2003; Adger and Kelly 1999; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Downing 1991; Eakin et al. 2010; Sen 1981; Walker 2005; Zurlini et al. 2013). Much of this work has explored the mechanisms through which relations of political and social power operating at a multiplicity of material sites affect the ability of individuals, households and communities to respond to an exogenous change in environmental and/or social conditions. Thus, Gary Yohe and Richard Tol (2002) use the notion of ‘coping range’ to describe the amount of short-term change and variability that can be absorbed by a system before ‘the consequences of experienced conditions become significant’ (p. 26). Building on the work of authors such as Ketsde Vries (1985) and Chrisde Freitas (1989), they emphasize that judging adaptive capacity in a social system is predicated upon the definition of a coping range, in addition to understanding how the effectiveness of coping strategies might be increased. This means that ‘working to improve specific coping capacities by working to enhance one or more of its underlying determinants can build adaptive capacity for reducing vulnerability to a specific stress’ (Yohe and Tol 2002: 39). The fact that adaptation is often described as ‘adjustments in a system’s behavior and characteristics that enhance its ability to cope with external stress’ (Brooks 2003: 8), indicates that a large part of the academic discourse

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on adaptive capacity is derived from the resilience literature in some way or other. Social-ecological resilience, in particular, often equates the loss of adaptive capacity with decreasing resilience: In ecological and socioeconomic systems alike, human activities can lead to qualitative shifts in structure and function, evidence that the system concerned has lost resilience: that is no longer capable of absorbing the stresses and shocks imposed by human activity without undergoing a fundamental change involving loss of function and, often, loss of productivity. (Levin et al. 1998: 224) The heuristic of the social-ecological view sees adaptive capacity as one of the three key attributes that describe and govern a system’s dynamics – alongside resilience and transformability – thus defining it as ‘the capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience’ (Walker et al. 2004: 5). Still, adaptability of the system is mainly a function of the social component – the individuals and groups acting to manage the system. Their actions influence resilience, either intentionally or unintentionally. Their collective capacity to manage resilience, intentionally, determines whether they can successfully avoid crossing into an undesirable system regime, or succeed in crossing back into a desirable one. (ibid.) Therefore, it is often stipulated that ‘a response system that is flexible and adaptive’ (Levin et al. 1998: 224), is necessary in order to reduce vulnerability to external stress among any linked set or combination of humans or nonhumans, since the early detection of shocks is not always easy or possible. When discussing the uncertain future of societies and communities in the face of challenges imposed by climate change, Marco Janssen (2002) uses the resilience model to suggest three possible ways of improving adaptive capacity in social-ecological systems: precaution – involving ‘new technology and behavioural patterns’ (p. 260) – adaptation, and reaction. Because of ‘the unavoidability of climate change, extreme events can occur’, in turn leading to ‘important damage of ecological and economic systems’ (ibid.). As pointed out by Barry Smit and Joanna Wandel (2006) ‘based on their timing, adaptations can be anticipatory or reactive, and depending on their degree of spontaneity, they can be autonomous or planned (p. 282). It has been emphasized that the adaptive capacity of a system can be changed in four different ways, corresponding to the four aspects of social-

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ecological resilience. By altering the latitude of the system, actors can ‘move thresholds away from or closer to the current state of the system’ (Walker et al. 2004: 5). They may change its precariousness, which will ‘move the current state of the system away from or closer to the threshold’ (ibid.). It is also possible to act on the ‘resistance’ of the system, thus ‘making the threshold more difficult or easier to reach’ (ibid.). Cross-scale interactions can also be managed, affecting panarchies and avoiding or generating ‘loss of resilience at the largest and most socially catastrophic scales’ (ibid.). Indeed, research on adaptation – particularly in the domain of climate change – often highlight the importance of social vulnerability in determining the ability of systems to cope with stress (see Adger and Kelly 1999; Bouzarovski 2014; Wisner et al. 2004). Some of the social science work on adaptive capacity has focused on the political dynamics surrounding the resolution of ‘wicked problems’: situations where the ‘use and abuse of power’ is possible in the face of alternative viable models of resource dynamics (Pritchard and Sanderson 2002: 156). Drawing on work that describes these challenges as juxtapositions that involve ‘a host of traditional academic disciplines or social perspectives’, which means that they cannot be separated from issues of ‘values, equity, and social justice’ (ibid.), this literature emphasizes that wicked problems ‘refuse to stay put in single arenas of action’ (ibid.). As such, the concept bears striking resemblance to the notion of ‘critical juncture’ in the theorization of path-dependency: this is a situation where historical dependencies create chains of conditions that shape possibilities and outcomes at decision-making moments through multiple causations (Krugman 1999). Even though a large part of current scholarship and policy on adaptive capacity is directly linked with the theorization of resilience and stability, the distinction between adaptability as a process and adaptive capacity as a property has received little theoretical attention. Considering that ‘some of the terms often considered to be synonymous with resilience are positive coping, persistence, adaptation, and long-term success despite adverse circumstances’ (Winfield 1994: 38), there is a clear need to distinguish between adaptability and resilience. This is especially true in light of findings that, ‘for instance, an agricultural system may be resilient to (able to recover from) occasional severe droughts, but it may not be able to adapt to a shift to a significantly drier climatic regime’ (Le´le´ 1998: 251).

Concluding thoughts In this chapter, I explored the theoretical questions and definitional debates surrounding the properties and processes of resilience and flexibility, as well as

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Critiques of social-ecological resilience

A number of authors have questioned the usefulness and applicability of the socialecological resilience framework, often citing its unclear definitional underpinnings and theoretical contribution as the main motivating reasons for their objections. Having emphasized that resilience is ‘currently too vague a concept to be useful for analysing socioeconomic systems’, Nick Hanley (1998: 248) believes that the framework has failed to offer additional insights other than those that have already been identified through more established concepts such as non-linear systems, feedback effects, policy and market failure, and paradigm shifts. He accuses the resilience paradigm’s proponents of bringing about a new level of unnecessary scientific jargon: One has to note that the introduction of some new metaphor, or underlying explanatory concept, always has a cost. This consists of the costs of knowledge previously held which now becomes irrelevant; and the transactions cost of learning a new language. (p. 248) Arguing along similar lines, Sharachchandra Le´le´ (1998) unpacks the theorization of resilience, concluding that stretching the concept ‘beyond all recognition’ or casting the debate ‘in terms of short-term stability versus long-term resilience’ (p. 252) is less helpful than simply relying on the notion of sustainability as a political metaobjective. He is fearful that resilience may ‘knock more pressing but politically inconvenient matters off the agenda’, given the reality of ‘limited attention spans and paltry environmental budgets’ (p. 253). Paul Nadasdy (2007) is similarly critical of the application of the ‘gospel of resilience’ in the articulation of adaptive management strategies, whose proponents have failed to address the ‘economic imperatives of modern extractive and agro-industries’, which lie ‘at the root of the management “pathologies” that lead to decreased resilience and ultimate collapse’ (p. 216). Rather than challenging established thinking, he argues, resilience ‘has the implicit goal of maintaining the social-ecological relations of capitalist resource extraction and agro-industry’ (p. 218). Building on his earlier work on ‘machine fetishism and value’ Alf Hornborg (2012) has provided a highly polemic rejection of the resilience approach and related concepts. He feels that unlike the call for ‘revolution’ – which characterized the start of the twentieth century – ‘resilience’ has become a rallying cry of the early twenty-first century, mainly because it advocates ‘pathways to sustainability that do not seem too uncomfortable or provocative’ (p. 21) by focusing on small-scale and ‘traditional’ ecological practices. However: These approaches, and the agencies that continue to promote them, seem oblivious to several strong research traditions in the social sciences that have persuasively shown that social-ecological systems are historically and currently characterized by structural problems of power, conflicts of interest, and unequal distribution. (ibid.) Elsewhere, Hornborg (2009) has pointed out that ‘the discourse on resilience is oblivious not only of power, conflict, and contradiction, but also of culture’ (p. 255) since it has failed to interrogate the role of cultural factors in shaping the

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development trajectories of ecological systems; in his view, the resilience approach treats ‘culture’ in a reductionist and instrumentalized manner. While a fully fledged published scholarly reaction to this critique is still forthcoming, it has nevertheless managed to spawn a range of less formal discussions on online fora and academic conferences. Such discussions have emphasized the fact that social-ecological resilience thinking does not attempt to provide an overarching explanation of social or ecological processes, since it takes a subjective view in which ‘neither ecosystems nor society are super-organisms’ while ‘social-ecological systems are different from ecosystems or social systems’ (Peterson 2009). Stephen Carpenter and William Brock’s (2008) description of the approach has often been cited in this context: Resilience is a broad, multifaceted, and loosely organized cluster of concepts, each one related to some aspect of the interplay of transformation and persistence. Thus, resilience does not come down to a single testable theory or hypothesis. Instead it is a changing constellation of ideas, some of which are testable through the usual practices of natural or social science. Although particular ideas may be rejected or supported, the program of research on resilience itself is evaluated in a different way. As long as resilience thinking produces interesting research ideas, people are likely to pursue it. When it seems empty of ideas, it will be abandoned or transformed into something else. (p. 1) Despite affirming the existence of a wide range of comparative studies, scientists working in this vein have furthermore affirmed their belief in the need for further research and data gathering, ‘in order to help people make better decisions under conditions of uncertainty’ (Peterson 2009). More recently, Marc Welsh (2014) has critiqued both the basic postulates and political consequences of the resilience approach, claiming that its governmentalization leads to the shifting of responsibility away from the state and onto individuals and institutions. His interrogation of such thinking also focuses on the ‘fetishization’ of the complex adaptive system, which, he argues, can create a postpolitical epistemology – as described by Erik Swyngedouw (2009) – that eradicates opportunities for radical transformations. A similar set of arguments can be found in Brad Evans and Julian Reid’s (2014) comprehensive and highly charged critique of the ‘resilience turn’ in government policy, whose political and philosophical implications are deemed to critically endanger the very nature of human subjectivity.

the notion of adaptive capacity. This investigation confirmed my initial impression that the mutual relationships and distinctions among the three concepts have received insufficient attention in the context of socio-spatial relations and networks: while the three sets of ideas are frequently mentioned in conjunction with each other, there has been little clarity or exploration regarding exactly how they are connected or mutually dependent in the articulations of societies and places. Within social-ecological resilience thinking, flexibility is mostly seen as a property of the institutions, organizations and practices of governance that are part of a wider system of

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Urban Psycho-social Social-ecological RESILIENCE

Complex adaptive cycles

HOUSEHOLD

Institutions

BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF THE HOME ADAPTIVE CAPACITY Social Psychological Biological

FLEXIBILITY Work / employment Economies Housing

Figure 3.2 Theoretical scope of the concepts of resilience, flexibility and adaptive capacity relevant to the relationship between households and the built environment of the home.

actors; other aspects of the property or process are not taken into account. The social-ecological approach has also formulated a distinct set of perspectives relating to the operation of complex adaptive cycles, which are among the few to engage with ideas of adaptation, adaptive capacity, and adaptive management. I have not been able to find an explicit theoretical link among the notions of adaptive capacity and flexibility, which often seem to be equated in the relevant literature (see Figure 3.2 for a visual depiction of these relationships). The conceptual boundaries and internal ontologies of the three concepts are also unclear. Resilience thinking has perhaps the clearest corpus of theorizations associated with it, thanks to the crystalization of several distinct perspectives within, inter alia, the social-ecological, psycho-social and urban approaches. However, these different paradigms have rarely communicated with each other and are themselves riddled with controversies and conflicting understandings. Flexibility, which has been used almost exclusively in the context of social and economic systems, has assumed a descriptive, rather than explanatory, connotation: despite the emergence of several distinct threads of work that employ the concept in different ways while focusing on different thematic questions (flexible accumulation, flexible specialization, flexible citizenship, flexible economies, flexible bodies and so on), flexibility has

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not been used as an overarching analytical or heuristic device in any of them. Finally, adaptive capacity has been subject to the least amount of theorization, having mainly been used as an adjunct to the remaining two frameworks. The vast terminological and definitional baggage associated with the concepts of flexibility and resilience means that they need to be used with theoretical caution and awareness. Critical thinkers have been quick to emphasize the lack of conceptual clarity that underpins them (also see Box 3.1), as well as the regressive political consequences of their onedimensional application in government policy. Nevertheless, with its elaborate delineation of the various circulations and interdependencies that underlie systemic evolution in nature and society, it can be argued that socialecological resilience can provide a useful way of theorizing the multiple nonlinearities, trajectories of change and adaptive capacities that are part of the relationship between households and the built environment of the home. This understanding can further benefit from an exploration of the different ways in which the ‘flexibilization’ of society, economy and politics relates to the resilience of households and buildings. Therefore, the chapter that follows is devoted to the synthesis of flexibility, resilience and adaptation in the context of built environment transformations.

CHAPTER 4 THEORIZING FLEXIBILITY AND RESILIENCE IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF THE HOME

In light of the conceptual lacunae identified in the previous chapters, I focus on the extent to which flexibility and resilience frameworks can be employed in a synthetic way towards understanding the nature of dynamic, bottom-up change in residential buildings. This chapter, therefore, investigates the multiple meanings and incarnations of home, power and residential mobility that arise as a result of the desire to adapt residential dwellings in line with changing household requirements. My principal aim is to develop a conceptual framework that will connect everyday life with the materialization of power in built form, by exploring and synthesizing the wide range of analytical approaches that have been used to explain the embodiment and performance of flexibility in residential buildings. In particular, the chapter scrutinizes some of the ways in which notions of multiple equilibria and adaptive capacity can accommodate the ability of artefacts to condition human subjectivities (Arendt 2013; Mitcham 2014). The need for a situated and engaged understanding of the ‘myriad of materialities with varying philosophical and theoretical roots’ (Tolia-Kelly 2013) as they constitute human-environment relations forms a central starting point of the chapter. Given the empirical objectives of the book, this has prompted me to rely on a range of concepts stemming from the sociology of technology and science (STS), actor-network theory (ANT) and assemblage thinking. The emergence and operation of sociomaterial configurations that enable a wide range of human and non-human actants to be enrolled in the construction and performance of the built environment (Edensor 2011) is of key importance here. As was outlined in Chapter 1, such thinking rejects the notion that socio-spatial agency in the city is something that is physically possessed or ‘stored’ by either artefacts or people: rather, it is practiced and

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performed through a dynamic relation between households and the built fabric, as ‘an action, an event, a way of being’ (Doel 2000: 125). I am therefore inspired by theoretical work that points to some of the mechanisms through which relational assemblages work together towards ‘practices of architecture’. Indeed, as underlined by Jane Jacobs (2006), the materiality of the building is the achievement of ‘a diverse network of associates and associations’ (p. 11). The essence of such claims is powerfully conveyed by Philip Pullman (2007) in The Subtle Knife – the second novel of His Dark Materials series: She felt the hairs begin to stir on the back of her neck, and she became aware of the whole of the building around her, the corridors dark, the machines idling, various experiments running automatically, computers monitoring tests and recording the results, the air-conditioning sampling and adjusting the humidity of the temperature, all the ducts and paperwork and cabling that were the arteries and the nerves of the building awake and alert [. . .] almost conscious, in fact. (p. 247) A building is always being ‘made’ or ‘unmade’, ‘always doing the work of holding together or pulling apart’ (Jacobs 2006: 12). But the mechanisms through which social and technical systems active in this context are socially co-constructed and imbued with agency remain unclear. There is a need for developing a micro-level perspective – operating at the scale of everyday life – in order to help unravel the myriad socio-technical contingencies that interact with household practices in the setting of the home. In the text that follows, I aim to employ, in part, the theoretical potential of resilience thinking towards this purpose, thanks to its emphasis on the contradiction between the dynamism and obduracy inherent in any system. The chapter thus commences with a discussion of the more firmly established theorizations of home, residential mobility and flexible infrastructure. I subsequently move on to less well-known issues: performances of power in the built environment, and the role of ‘functional blankness’ in the articulations of agency among non-human actants. These are used as starting points for the conceptual framework suggested in the conclusion.

Destabilizing the boundaries of home Initially developed by psychoanalysts and architectural scholars, the vast literature on the multiple meanings and functions of ‘home’ now mainly falls within the remit of feminist, post-colonial and cultural scholarship, in

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addition to housing studies, sociology and human geography. While for Carl Jung (1959) home is the archetype of people’s psyches, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton’s (1981) work affirms its importance as a site for self-expression and personal growth. The cultural aspects of housing consumption are of no less importance in this respect, as exemplified, for instance, by John Agnew’s (1981) insights into the role of housing as a status object, and the role of the domestic as an arena for affective expression. A substantial body of research produced during the last 30 years has drawn attention to the importance of domestic practices and representations in the social construction of empire, culture, gender and the city (Oberhauser 1990; Tolia Kelly 2004). Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling’s (2006) work is particularly significant in this context: it echoes the spirit of a long line of feminist research that rejects totalizing representations of domesticity, arguing in favour of a more contextualized understanding of the meanings and roles of home (Davidoff and Hall 1987; Hooks 1990; Morrison 2013; Spain 1992; Varley 2008; Young 1997). Much of their research argues that home is a spatial imaginary: a set of intersecting and variable ideas and feelings, which are related to context, and which construct places, extend across spaces and scales, and connect places. (Blunt and Dowling 2006: 2) These authors frequently emphasize that the domestic domain can serve as ‘both a physical location and a set of feelings’ (ibid.: 254). In their conceptualization, ‘home’ operates as a hybrid mix of domestic architecture, building design and material objects which are bound together, and interact with, a set of belongings, alienations, ideas and processes of ‘creating and understanding dwelling’ (ibid.). The two authors’ scholarly efforts are principally directed at unpacking the role that normative meanings, visual representations and verbal and written discourses play in reinforcing the imaginary of the ‘ideal’ suburban home, particular patriarchal and heterosexist gender relations, as well as the production and reinforcement of imperial politics. In articulating their critique of established understandings of home, they also wish to give a voice to the various movements and practices of resistance towards such established understandings. Much like the original aim of this book in destabilizing the binary conceptualization of flexibility in the built fabric of the city, they wish to unsettle a series of dualisms and oppositions that have been influential in thinking about home. For example, home has been understood to be

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part of the private rather than the public spheres, a space for women rather than for men, and bound to the spheres of social reproduction and the scale of the house rather than production and the global scale. (ibid.: 255) A significant body of work has emphasized the role of home as a site for women’s socio-cultural and economic oppression (Bammer 1992; Barrett 1988), taking as a starting point the designation of home as a closed, private space for women, as opposed to an outside, public space for men; a situation that results in limited opportunities for self-fulfilment among the former (McDowell 1983; Pru¨gl 1999; Sharistanian 1987). Indeed, Sherry Ahrentzen’s (1997) study of the life experiences and situations of 104 American women who use the dwelling as an occupational workplace has found that the ideology of home that encompasses ‘privatization and domesticity is deeply embedded in our public policies, built landscapes, and research endeavors’ (p. 77). But she has also established the existence of a ‘cacophony of voices’ and practices with respect to the meaning and articulation of home. Underlining that there is no singular definition or view of the domestic in theory and/or policy alike, she claims that by drawing together networks of friends and neighbours, the homes of the participants in her study acted as sources of contact, advice and assistance [. . .] networks of friends and neighbors [. . .] acted as sources of contact, advice and assistance. The household and the neighborhood became workplace and living place simultaneously. By doing so, these women altered not only the location of activities but also the social meaning and function of home, work and neighborhood. (p. 85) Instead of a negative and regressive trait, Ahrentzen sees this diversity as a chance to enrich existing urban policy with a broader theoretical understanding of the relationship between local community life and the functions of residential housing. Other authors also support this perspective: April Veness (1993) argues that ‘established, conventional ideas about home often preclude discussions of alternatives and perpetuate policies that maintain the status quo’ (cited in Ahrentzen 1997: 78). As a nexus between processes of identity-building and networks of power, the domestic arena is also an important site of political expression. In their thorough review of the role of indoor environments – including the home – in producing and conducting power and governance, Dawn Day Biehler and

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Gregory Simon (2010) underline that such spaces are dynamic settings for the manifestation of ‘human and non-human modalities of nature’ whose interactions are often guided and mediated by a range of technologies and built structures. Inspired, in part, by Nathan Sayre’s (2005) claim about the conceptual disconnection between the institutional production of indoor spaces, and their relational operation in everyday life, they argue in favour of an ecological engagement with this realm: The making of the indoors is much more than a straightforward act of enclosure, but rather represents the dynamic ways the state, capital, citizens, and non-humans impose, renegotiate, and resist boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces. (Biehler and Simon 2010: 186) One of the most vivid encapsulations of the role of the home in the creation of local political spaces is provided by Rachel Kallus’ (2004) account of the policy strategies, planning decisions, architectural practices and political discourses associated with the spatial production of the residential environment of the home in Gilo: an urban district constructed as part of the ‘Israelization’ of Jerusalem after the 1967 war, and subsequently fortified as a result of the second Palestinian Intifada. She identifies a number of relations through which the everyday environment of the home in this quarter has become ‘the guardian of national territory and hence, the center of geopolitical struggle’ (ibid.: 341). Her study provides convincing evidence to support the claim that ‘indoor spaces do not enclose the socio-natures in which they are entangled’ (Biehler and Simon 2010: 186).

Residential mobility and in-place adjustment Changes in the boundaries and roles of home have been partly fuelled by increased rates of relocations to new dwellings in post-industrial societies. Classic theories of residential mobility (Eades and Wormald 1994; Henley 1998; Quigley and Weinberg 1977) – are based on the premise that the choices and pressures associated with an individual’s decision to change his or her housing situation are predicated upon different stages of the ‘life cycle’. Such stages are underpinned by changes in the demographic features of the household, including age, family size, marital status and the presence of children. Individuals are meant to progress through the life cycle in a linear manner as they grow older, starting from birth and ending with death. The basic premise of the model is that moving from one stage of the life cycle to another generates new housing demand and creates incentives

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towards relocation, since the underlying demographic determinants of the household have changed. As an individual leaves the parental home, he or she typically requires a small dwelling that is suited to his or her educational and employment needs. An increasing income, changing cultural aspirations and childbirth are factors that may then prompt the same individual to move to an individual family home. But as people age, they tend to move back to smaller houses or flats. Thus, household needs and housing types evolve parallel to the unfolding of various life events, which in turn are principally defined by the expansion and contraction of families in relation to child-bearing and rearing. The second demographic transition has made this conceptualization less plausible, by destabilizing its basic underlying assumptions. Considering that households move through a wider range of family arrangements through their life course – many of which are themselves transitory and fluid – the normative understanding of ‘family’ in the traditional sense is of little relevance in contemporary conditions. Indeed, ‘the future of the family institution has been recently put into question’ (Weiss 1997: 120). The fact that ‘the nuclear family as it is now constituted, and is now ordinarily studied, will become a less central social institution’ (Kobrin 1976: 137) means that interpreting an individual’s temporal progression through the housing stock through the traditional lifecycle model becomes highly problematic. The growing number of nontraditional domestic arrangements in society – including cohabiting couples, flat-sharers and one-person households – has emphasized the need for alternative and more sophisticated explanatory frameworks. The emergent discipline of housing demography has been particularly helpful in addressing this challenge, by focusing on the residential implications of household-level demographic change. Dowell Myers’ (1990) contribution has provided leading insights in terms of overcoming the conceptual disconnect between population and housing. Having critiqued the failure of demographers to take on board housing issues, on the one hand, and the inadequate consideration of population dynamics in the theorization of urban change within geography, economics and planning, on the other, this author explores residential mobility, housing stock transformation, gentrification and neighbourhood change through a population-centred lens. He aims to develop a new theoretical framework by exploring the connection between individuals and their dwellings in the context of the housing choice behaviours and patterns. In order to achieve this, his work, inter alia, highlights the importance of the temporal dimension in housing demography, which is achieved by investigating people and housing in parallel, through a longitudinal progression that spans the period from birth to death in the former case, and construction to demolition in the latter.

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Dowell Myers (1990) also stresses that ‘housing provides the essential substructure for small-area demography’ (p. 13), thus placing the focus on small-scale spatial patterns in the analysis of population and housing. He notes that the territorial distribution of households in residential areas is of paramount importance in determining trajectories of neighbourhood change. This is because locational decisions are greatly constrained by the physical immobility of housing and the overall inelasticity of its supply. Taking some of these arguments further, Bill Randolph (1991) insists that households can provide the ‘missing link’ between housing and labour markets, considering that ‘the size and composition of a household affects its housing consumption in terms of the physical aspects of housing demand’ (p. 38). He notes that the demographic and labour underpinnings of household structures can explain some of the reasons why individuals with similar labour or occupational features often end up in very different housing circumstances. Moreover, housing choices are contingent on a number of household economic features, such as the number of wage earners, employment patterns and income levels (ibid.). Thanks to its comprehensive and critical focus on residential choices, household features, housing prices, consumption and tenure, the life course paradigm has provided a key operationalization of the basic principles of housing demography. This perspective views the life course as a series of household events, which are mutually interconnected and consequential. Household events can result from changes in marital status and childbirth – thus being family-related – or may stem from a shift in employment or income. Decisions about housing choice and tenure are a product of the sequence of particular life events, whose interaction stimulates relocation, since it boosts the interface between housing demand and supply. However, this paradigm also takes into account the manner in which external changes in the housing stock or socio-economic context may also affect housing choice and residential mobility. It is thus able to incorporate household, occupational and housing ‘careers’ under a single theoretical umbrella (Mulder 2013). More sophisticated conceptualizations of housing demography also demonstrate a pronounced awareness of the conceptual difference between residential mobility and migration. Basically, while the former is seen to involve local relocation within a contiguous settlement unit, the latter refers to moves involving supra-regional scales. While residential mobility is associated with ‘partial displacement’ – thus allowing social- and work-related ties to be maintained – migration tends to significantly weaken such connections. It should also be pointed out that residential mobility generally represents the majority of all moves, and that it is accounted for by the changing relationship between demography and housing. Thus, the ‘housing stress’ approach – a

FLEXIBILITY AND RESILIENCE IN BUILT ENVIRONMENT C L A S S I C

H O U S I N G

Parental home Young adulthood

M O B I L I T Y

Married life

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Old age

FRAGMENTED OR EXTENDED HOUSING EPISODES

Figure 4.1 The underlying dynamics of in-situ adjustments vs the classic residential mobility model: multiple housing ‘episodes’ and ‘events’ are experienced in the same dwelling.

regression model that takes into account housing size, age and tenure – is often used to quantify an individual’s residential mobility potential. Conversely, changes in employment constitute one of the most important migration-related variables. Migration is often analysed with the aid of the ‘human capital’ paradigm, which feeds a range of employment- and household-related variables into a regression model in order to quantify the factors that drive an individual’s decision to relocate beyond his or her local settlement. However, a number of studies (Awanyo 2009; Khan 2014; Littlewood and Munro 1997; Murie et al. 1976) have shown that ‘in-place’ adjustments of the home need not be an inferior option to moving, because they can significantly improve a household’s living conditions. Their contributions are based on the mounting body of evidence that suggests that residential mobility and/or migration to a new home, on the one hand, and in-situ changes and modifications of the dwelling, on the other, are two sides of the same coin. Numerous authors working within this vein have established that in-place housing transformations are often complementary to, or a replacement for, residential mobility and/or migration. As such, they challenge all the traditional assumptions of the life course model, which postulates that household events are closely linked to relocation (see Figure 4.1). Adapting one’s home in line with changing residential needs and circumstances means that a household will experience multiple ‘housing events’ (Feijten and Mulder 2002) in the same dwelling, as an alternative to residential mobility in the traditional sense (Rossi 1955). Scholarship within this vein has brought to light the diverse strategies that households may use to improve their housing circumstances in conditions where they cannot or do not wish to move to their new home following a change in their aspirations or income. In-place adjustments have been related to, inter alia, issues such as housing market

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dynamics, architectural settings, urban physical change, and ties and commitments over the life course (Altas and O¨zsoy 1998; Coulter 2013; Gosling et al. 1993). This body of work often emphasizes the importance of the structural conditions of the built stock, as well as the variegated forms that home improvements may take: from a complete reorganization and enlargement of the dwelling, to minor changes in its inventory. Besides identifying the demographic groups that are more likely to choose either approach, many of these authors argue that ‘moving-and-improving’ strategies may be undertaken simultaneously. This is best evidenced in William Baer’s (1990) examination of the transformation of buildings over time, where inventory changes are treated as an important aspect of ‘in-place’ housing adjustments. In-place residential transformations are particularly relevant in the postcommunist context, where – as noted earlier – intra- or inter-urban moves have been limited by low incomes, poor labour mobility and the inadequate developments of housing markets. Also, older households in this part of the world have an extensive experience of coping with conditions of economic scarcity and social constraint as a result of the legacies of communist central planning. One of the few exceptions is provided by the work of Srna Mandicˇ (2001). Some of her initial work on the subject has examined the length of housing episodes and type of housing events experienced by non-moving households, pointing out that when the ‘time dimension’ is introduced to housing choice, moving (mobility) ceases to be the only alternative to the current housing (housing consumption). Moving also ceases to be the only means of housing consumption dynamics. It is the possible future ‘in-place’ changes that may be a motive for remaining and not moving. (p. 70) She also underlines the importance of alternative market practices in this context: While ‘non-market options’ might have only a minor, yet varying, impact on what constitutes the basic housing choice situation across the most developed industrialized societies, they might be quite significant in transition, where market options are not well developed. (p. 70) Mandicˇ has stressed that in-situ physical alterations of the residential environment constitute an important component of housing behaviour, as ‘change in terms of either floor space, number of rooms and/or provision of shower/bathroom was reported to have occurred during the present housing

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episode by 26 per cent of interviewees’ (p. 71) within a survey of 1806 representative adults in Slovenia, undertaken in 1994. Nevertheless, such measures were disproportionately highly represented among populations ‘with a lower level of education, inhabitants of smaller settlements and residents in buildings with a smaller number of dwellings’ (p. 71). As a whole, her findings underscore the importance of incorporating ‘in-place’ promotion in housing careers within the framework of residential mobility. The ability of households to interact with their dwellings in a flexible and adaptable manner is a key aspect of the ability to experience multiple housing events without changing one’s residential location. More recent work by the same author, in co-operation with Andreja Cirman and Jelena Zoric´ (Cirman et al. 2013), has developed this research further by exploring the demographic, locational and socio-cultural determinants of housing renovation decisions in post-socialist multi-family housing estates. Using a quantitative exploration of the 2005 Slovenian Housing Survey, they find that policies aimed at encouraging renovation in the region need to address the physical, legal, organizational and financial preconditions of the process. This work builds on research by Adriana Mihaela Soaita (2012) in Romania, which argues that unregulated in-situ housing change has created a culture of housing privatism in the country (Figure 4.1). Also of relevance in this context is Terence Milstead and Rebecca Miles’ (2011) exploration of ‘do-it-yourself’ home improvements in Vilnius, Lithuania, based on quantitative data from the Large Analysis and Review of European Housing and Health Status (LARES) data and informant interviews. It has found that even though ‘perceptions of neighborhood quality’ played a role in determining such activity, variables such as location and socio-economic status played a less important role. The importance of residents’ perceptions is also highlighted by Nathaniel Trumbull (2014), who highlights the disenfranchisement of urban dwellers from the decision-making process of a housing renovation programme in St Petersburg, Russia.

Beyond obsolescence: The challenge of flexible building design One of the more interesting questions relating to the ‘flexibilization’ of residential dwellings is the manner in which the perpetual contradiction between allegedly ‘rigid’ buildings and ‘fluid’ socio-economic trends is played out in the built environment of the home. Buildings, after all, are solid structures that cannot easily be made to adapt or change in line with fluctuating social demands. How, then, does the tension between fluid social process and rigid building structures affect the articulation of domesticity, and the

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development of the city more generally? Such issues have already received some attention in urban design and architecture, as a growing number of theorists are arguing for the socio-demographic as well as economic need for the adaptability of buildings by establishing that flexibility is inextricably linked to sustainability and stability in communities. (Schneider and Till 2005: 1) It is being increasingly recognized that ‘the ever-changing demands of users make it unavoidable that both houses and offices must undergo structural modifications regarding their spatial, architectural and technical installation characteristics’ (Geraedts 2001: 2), because ‘flexibility, adaptability and changeability’ are ‘crucial concepts that cannot be ignored’ (ibid.). Indeed, numerous architectural theorists have noted the difficulties in bridging the apparent contradiction between the fixity of the built environment, on the one hand, and the fluidity of the social environment, on the other. As argued, notoriously, by Stewart Brand (1997: 178): ‘all buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.’ This echoes Rem Koolhas’ (1998) statement that architects are ‘like King Midas in reverse [. . .] the moment architecture begins to be interested in something, it almost means the death of that particular subject’ (p. 95). Inspired by ideas put forward by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1988), Ignasi de Sola`-Morales (1997) argues that the issues of mutability and changeability in the built environment can be addressed via the development of a ‘liquid architecture’ that represents space and time as open, multiple and non-reductive categories driven by a ‘composition of creative forces’ (p. 40). Thomas Markus’ (2013) contribution provides a valuable illumination of the material shapes associated with such an approach, if only by underscoring that a ‘classless yet responsive’ architecture includes flexible buildings that allow their users to change functions over time, while being associated with a formal language whose meanings can be widely understood. He develops a comprehensive discussion of the wide array of technical approaches that allow different types of buildings to be modified in line with changing functions. His study demonstrates how widespread and common flexibility in building design already is. Motivated by the ‘landscape of design stupidity’ created by the construction of housing which is likely to become structurally obsolete as socio-cultural preferences and economic dynamics change – such as prefabricated buildings whose internal layout makes subsequent alterations impossible, or cavity-wall buildings whose load-bearing partitions and

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timber truss-filled roofs do not allow for future extensions or conversions – Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider (2007) examine the past and present features of what they call ‘flexible housing’ using a wide range of empirical examples. At a broader level, their contribution is aimed at offering practical advice and guidance about the principles and approaches that building design needs to incorporate in order to develop architecture that is pliant to the evershifting nature of the spatial locations and social lifestyles of households. They argue that flexible buildings are direct in their construction and generic in their spaces; they tolerate change whilst still retaining an identity; they are modest and work in the background rather than asserting a foreground [. . .] Our broad definition of flexible housing is housing that can adjust to changing needs and patterns, both social and technological. These changing needs may be personal (say an expanding family), practical (i.e., the onset of old age) or technological (i.e., the updating of old services). The changing patterns might be demographic (say the rise of the oneperson household), economic (i.e., the rise of the rental market) or environmental (i.e., the need to update housing to respond to climate change) [. . .] Flexible housing thus works across the life of a housing development [. . .] [it] is housing that can respond to the volatility of dwelling. (ibid.: 4 – 5) Till and Schneider distinguish between the features and processes of housing adaptability – which revolve around issues of dwelling use – and flexibility, where the focus is on structural form and technique. They highlight the incorporation of these principles in the work of a long line of modern architects, starting from Mark Stam’s focus on polyvalence, Bruno Taut’s preoccupation with versatility, El Lissitzky’s emphasis on convertibility, as well as the work of Luwig Mies van den Rohe and Walter Gropius. More recent pioneers of flexible building designs and approaches include the Dutch architect John Habraken, Luc and Xavier Arse`ne Henry in France, the UK’s Nabeel Hamdi, Nick Wilkinson and Walter Segal, as well as Peter Hu¨bner, Peter Sulzer in Germany, and Elfried Huth and Ottokar Uhl in Austria. There is an explicit engagement with issues of democracy, participation and enabling citizenship in the work of some of these architects – particularly Ottokar Uhl and Nabeel Hamdi, who has even written a book on the subject (see Hamdi 1995, 2004) – thus allowing flexibility to move beyond the status of an abstract concept, becoming ‘an inherent part of a social context’ (Schneider and Till 2007: 29).

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Academic scholars have also explored the relationships between fluctuating housing needs and flexibility in the built environment. When describing the housing situation in Turkey, Nur Ezin Altas ¨ zsoy (1998) contend that ‘families live in their dwellings for a and Ahsen O long period of time, since they lack the economic power to change their dwelling to a bigger or more adequate one’ (p. 315). They thus try to ‘solve the emerging spatial needs by making some alterations in their existing dwellings, and thus adapting the space to their changing needs’. In such circumstances, it is natural to expect that spatial adaptability and flexibility are ‘one of the essential spatial features for residential satisfaction of dwellings of mass (standard) production types’ (ibid.). Flexible transformations are thus a key component of ‘in-situ’ dwelling modifications, where instead of moving to a new home in response to a housing event, a household modifies the built fabric of the home in order to continue living there – a frequent situation in conditions of housing shortage and financial constraint. Having concluded that future homes ‘will see an extended number of activities’ that ‘will vary during the day and the week’, Stefan Junestrand and Konrad Tollmar (1998) propose a wide range of design solutions to increase the spatial and technological flexibility of domestic environments, including: the division of inner spaces into ‘communication zones’ rather than fixed rooms, the introduction of movable wall systems to allow for changing uses across time, the visual and functional integration of physical and private areas through ‘open’ solutions such as glassed walls, and the increased use of media technologies that ‘in a semiautomatic way, based on preferences and physical controls, help the user to adjust to a suitable level of communication’ (p. 244). The ‘flexibility and adaptability’ features (Gann et al. 1999) achieved through the amalgamation of technology and built fabric in such structures has been examined – and to a certain extent, idealized – in the literatures on ‘smart homes’, ‘intelligent buildings’, ‘co-operative buildings’ and ‘barrier free homes’ (Balta-Ozkan et al. 2013; Gann 1992; Kamilaris et al. 2011; Martin 1993). In order to facilitate the design of ‘co-operative’ buildings, some authors have proposed the concept of ‘roomware’, which includes ‘computeraugmented things in rooms, like doors, walls, furniture’ that can help achieve an interactive ‘information and cooperation landscape’ in the home (Streitz et al. 1998: 9). Rob Geraerdts (2001) suggests 13 architectural principles to ‘increase the flexibility of both existing buildings and those to be developed’ (p. 2) although these measures are focused only on the technical aspects of building components and installations. This is contrary to approaches that offer an ‘integrated’ design and planning platform ‘based upon the metaphor

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of a dynamic building’ (Mu¨lle et al. 2000: 4) seen as ‘a component-based, spatial model supporting the cooperation processes not only by the spatial dimensions, but additionally, by various other aspects of the building life cycle’ (ibid.). Such thinking parallels ideas about the co-operative evolution of buildings, cities and networks (Aloi et al. 2014; Frazer 1995, 1998), or earlier theoretical concepts developed within, for example, the Archigram design studio (Cook 1999) and Doesburg Manifesto (1924). Architects have already developed a wide range of ‘flexible’ design solutions to accommodate new labour mobility and working life trends, often in response to the amalgamation of work and home. Many current innovations in building design are based on Archigram’s ideas for ‘walking cities’ and the ‘living pod’ concept (Cook 1999). They have been enacted in practice through the construction of – among other structures – live/work ‘shell’ units, whose occupants can easily change the physical structure of home in line with their individual requirements. Helen Jarvis (2005) observes that such structures closely resemble ‘the demand for flexibility we are accustomed to reading about in the labour market practices of the new economy’ (p. 76). Architectural practice has also been reacting to the new socio-economic realities brought about by the dissolution of traditional household structures. This is exemplified by models such as the ‘Single Hauz’, created by a group of Polish architects (http://www.frontarchitects.pl/portfolio-view/single_hauz/). It resulted in a heated public debate about the wider urban structural, political and economic changes that have to take place in order to house the rising number of one-person households in inner-city areas (Lilius 2014; Randolph and Tice 2013). One possible pathway for resolving the tension between employment needs and family obligations has been provided by the fusion of home and office, ‘the most flexible of flexiness’ according to Richard Sennett (1998). Working at home, however, embodies a spatial paradox because ‘it both unites [authors’ italics] “work” and “home” by providing an opportunity for more integrated narratives’ while also fragmenting them ‘by introducing different temporalities into the private realm’ (Tietze and Musson 2002: 330). It is thus ‘harder to commit in a meaningful way to either arena’ (ibid.). Much of the research in this field has focused on the multiple ways in which teleworking incarnates the ‘flexi-time, flexi-place world of the new economy’ (Hardill and Green 2003). Janet Salaff’s (2002) study of a Canadian telecommunications firm’s transfer of job tasks to its employees’ homes established that this new form of ‘flexible work’ extends beyond the mere change of work place, because ‘telework further deepens capital penetration in a sacrosanct area, the home as a private space’ (p. 19). As a result, the domestic domain – the ‘last frontier’ – becomes a factor of economic production and capitalist accumulation.

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Box 4.1

Retrofitting the city

In recent years, the need for in-situ transformations of residential dwellings has been heightened by climate change and energy security concerns, which have brought to the fore policies aimed at improving the energy efficiency of the housing sector. Scientists working in this vein have drawn attention to the need for developing integrated policies that will address climate change adaptation and mitigation concerns, while fostering an active dialogue among scientists and decision-makers from different disciplinary backgrounds (Crichton 2007). As a result, it has become apparent that ‘the development of urban infrastructure is always a highly political process’ (McFarlane and Rutherford 2008: 366) since ‘what is often at stake here is not simply the provision of infrastructure, but the conceptualization of the city, and the nature of social justice’ (ibid.). Of particular importance in the context of built environment interventions are practices of ‘retrofitting’ the structural tissue or heating systems in residential dwellings in order to improve their thermal standards. As pointed out by Danny Harvey (2009): Provision of a high-performance envelope is the single most important factor in the design of low-energy buildings, not only because it reduces the heating and cooling loads that the mechanical system must satisfy but also because it permits alternative (and low-energy) systems. (p. 139) Researchers analysing these processes have highlighted the multiple ways in which the built fabric can be improved from an energy consumption point of view via the use of various construction engineering solutions, the increased use of more environmentally benign materials and community-based renewable energy and smart grids, as well as changes in the stock of appliances (Gauzin-Mu¨ller 2002). Scientists have gone as far as suggesting that nanomaterials can be used for improving the thermal insulation of buildings (Rice 2010), having highlighted the use of compact city strategies at the entire urban scale. It has often been argued that building objects need to be seen in their entire life cycle in order to fully implement the principles of sustainable development (Sobotka and Wyatt 1998). This understanding has also been extended in spatial and social terms to the proposition that energy efficiency upgrades in the housing stock can only work if they are implemented in systemic terms, involving ‘facilitated engagement between occupants, housing providers, community groups, local authorities and construction professionals’ (Karvonen 2013: 563). The experience of post-communist states is of special relevance when discussing urban retrofits, given the poor state of the housing stock in that part of the world as a result of the legacies of central planning, and the extensive opportunities for sociotechnical interventions offered by the EU accession process (Balaras et al. 2005; Kara´sek and Ubralova´ 2012; Tuominen et al. 2012; U¨rge-Vorsatz et al. 2010). Experience from improving the energy efficiency of urban dwellings in Vilnius, for example, where ‘the values of thermal characteristics of panel apartment houses make only about a quarter of their specified values’ (Zavadskas et al. 2008: 586) has emphasized that ‘the retrofit of houses should be followed by the amelioration of their surroundings’ (ibid.: 573). It has also transpired that refurbishment ‘not only decreases energy consumption’ but also improves the overcall condition of the building, including ‘noise insulation conditions, exterior, and comfort’ while extends its life cycle and increasing its value (Mickaityte˙ et al. 2008: 64).

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Mutable energies: The agency of architecture Despite its theoretical depth and richness, the extensive literature on the transformation of social and material relations at the nexus of households and the built environment has generally marginalized the crucial question of whether and how buildings might have agency that extends beyond their immediate design features. This issue, however, has been explored by architectural theorists and practitioners working on the broader dimensions and relations of power associated with the construction and operation of built form (Bourdieu 1989, 1990; Haynen 2001; King 1996; Vidler 1992). Rem Koolhas (1994) is among the few architects who have demonstrated an acute awareness of the fact that construction of any built form necessarily embodies a contradiction between mutability, stability and agentic capacity. Speaking at a conference on future developments in architecture, he has argued that ‘there is an inherent paradox with regard to architecture’s interest in flow. Essentially flow moves, and architecture fixes or attempts to define a moment’ (p. 94). The implications of such thinking extend to his discipline’s theoretical past and present, since ‘globalization destabilizes and redefines both the way architecture is produced and that which architecture produces’ by ‘lending virtuality to real buildings’ and keeping’ them indigestible, forever fresh’ (ibid.). This suggests that time erodes the power of architects to encode particular temporal topologies and institutional arrangements in the nature of built form. One of the more useful perspectives on these questions is contained in Jane Jacobs’ (2006) concept of the ‘building event’. It can be seen as ‘a unique assemblage of acts of timing and spacing which work to bring the housething into being (or not)’ (p. 26). This author situates her analysis of the building event within new developments in the geography of architecture, which have been ‘energized by the recent emphasis on embodied materialities’ (p. 2). In this, they ‘share with older settlement geographies an interest in a building’s physical presence: its format and shape, architectural style and construction detail’. More recent work that engages with questions of architecture, building and buildings, in her opinion, provide critical accounts of a wider field of ‘construction’ (sometimes material, professional and technical, but also discursive), and model suggestive trajectories for how we might reconceive of the making and movement of built forms in space and time. In this model of a geography of architecture, the building and how it is made does not simply operate as the evidentiary field for a story about the cultural typology of settlement patterns. (p. 3)

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In order to develop this line of scholarship further, Jacobs (2006) foregrounds the different ways in which buildings have to harness allies in order to be formed and to function over time: Thinking of buildings or architecture as things, reminds us to always ask: how is this assemblage able to lay claim to the idea of being architecture or a building, and what work is needed for it to sustain that claim materially? This allows the various human and non-human allies that create building events [original italics] to come into view, including the varied fortunes of sustained materialization as well as dematerialization. (p. 22) Arguing along similar lines, Gregory Seigworth (2000) focuses on the importance of the ‘sticky’ force of human and non-human life whose energies ‘run through everything’ and produce an ‘excess of pure process’ (p. 237): the (human) everyday as an inextricable access to and immersion in ‘process’, intensity as a non-hierarchical, diffuse ‘excess’ of process, and the banal as a ‘pure’ processual plane where the always already accessible and residual meet the lines of escape and open into an overflow. This latter (the banal) is a plane moving in parallel (as side-real space) with the ‘actual’ existence of the human everyday, affording perpetual access to excess (in one form, as perception at its peripheries), precipitating, shifting, and accreting ever new moments and layers of residue in an everyday immersive process. Or, to borrow a line from an old commercial for Palmolive dishwashing liquid: the banal? ‘You are soaking in it right now’. (p. 234) Given that everyday life is ‘mysterious, substantial and fecund’, Michael Gardiner (2000) claims that a further investigation of its hidden and suppressed potentials may reveal the foundations of ‘higher’ activities of human beings, including ‘abstract cognition and practical objectifications’ (p. 168). He cites Michel de Certeau’s (1984) work, which has offered a useful distinction between the concepts of strategy and tactic: I call a ‘strategy’ the calculus of force-relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will and power (a proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated from an ‘environment’. A strategy assumes a place that can be circumscribed as proper ( propre) and thus serve as the basis for generating relations with an exterior district

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from it [. . .] I call a ‘tactic’, on the other hand, a calculus which cannot count on a ‘proper’ (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality. The place of a tactic belongs to the other. A tactic insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance. (p. xix) Within this context, the suggestion that humans are ‘disciplined through habit’ (Foucault 1977) becomes especially important, since ‘we cultivate habits, they are encultured’ and ‘we live our cultures not only through discourse, signs and meaning, but through the movements of our bodies’ (Wise 2000: 303). Such relations may also include movement and interaction with the built spaces of the city (Jensen 2007). Extending this argument to contemporary urban settings implies that ‘the city has no completeness, no centre, no fixed parts’, and should rather be seen as an ‘amalgam of often disjointed processes and social heterogeneity’ (Amin and Thrift 2002: 8). It also emphasizes that ‘the language of built form cannot be severed from dwelling or critique’ so that ‘buildings are seen as mobile and in movement’ (p. 49). In such conditions, a critical reading of ‘the power of the everyday’ (ibid.: 9; but also see Holloway and Hubbard 2014), reaching beyond and above structure/agency dualisms, becomes crucial for understanding the multiple ways in which clashes between the different rhythms of the city could ‘destabilize urban life-chances and life-styles’ (Allen et al. 1999: 4). The reading of agency implies a radically different interpretation of will and intentionality, which can be also applied to the performance of architecture in everyday life. In the case of the relationship between buildings and people, it might provide a first step towards the operationalization of Jane Jacobs’ (2006) claim that ‘the building thing is not a passive context, nor even a fully determining parameter, for the resident/user’ (p. 12) in the context of household behaviour. It also points to one of ways in which we may start to conceptualize building events in this setting: the relations that allow built forms to be implicated in the weaving of socio-technical webs between households and the architectural fabric can be interrogated through an investigation of the different articulations of flexibility at the level of everyday life, and in relation to the technological frames embodied in different structural designs.

Practices of power in the built environment Clearly, formulating a relational and subject-centred view of power and agency is a key precondition for understanding the performance

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Box 4.2

Performances of architecture

Contemporary academic research on the socio-spatial meanings and practices of architecture (see, for example, Jacobs and Merriman 2011; Llewellyn 2003, 2004; Strengers and Maller 2011) is often developed in response to the significant body of work on the performed and practised aspects of built form (Eisenman 1992; Kwinter 2001; Tschumi 2005). This draws, in part, from insights borrowed from nonrepresentational theory (Smith 2003; Thrift 2008; Whatmore 2002). There is an increasing recognition that ‘use matters’ in helping drive architectural invention and practice (Cupers 2013; Doucet 2012; Yaneva 2009). In this context, it is worth mentioning John Goss’ (1988) seminal work on the power geometries and topologies of the built environment, which itself was motivated by geography’s failure ‘to come to terms with the complexity of architectural form and meaning’ (p. 392). Having identified three spatial perspectives on buildings – whereby they can either be objects of value, signs, or spatial systems – this author has investigated the different ways in which the spatial configuration of the built environment incorporates economic, political, and ideological developments. This has helped him to conclude that ‘space can no longer be conceived as merely material, nor social relations as merely abstract’ (p. 402). Anthropological perspectives on the social and spatial construction of architecture have claimed that analyses and interpretations of building decisions must be placed within the context of social and economic forces that continuously influence actors since ‘buildings, especially dwellings, serve human needs as well as being the focal point of personal and social identities’ (Lawrence and Low 1990: 493) and the ‘processes by which decisions are made to build, remodel, or move are neither well documented nor understood in most of the societies where anthropologists have worked’ (ibid.). The relationship between residential formations and behaviours, on the one hand, and cultural, social and economic norms, on the other, has also received attention in research of Japanese house plans (Ozaki and Lewis 2006). They examine the ways in which ‘the social classifications that distinguish inside from outside’ produce boundaries that ‘leave their trace at the phenomenological level’ (p. 101), emphasizing that: Spatial boundaries are not merely functional. They embody social classifications which produce and are maintained by social and psychological boundaries [. . .] an understanding of psychosocial boundaries and the underlying classification system helps us to investigate the meaning attached to physical space and its organization. (ibid.) Earlier work in this domain (Hillier and Hanson 1989; King 1984; Sommer 1983) has also, through various theoretical perspectives, interrogated the ability of buildings to reinforce and reproduce power structures in society. It is striking how such arguments echo related attempts to develop a semiotics or ‘semiotology’ of the built environment, which focused on the existence of a ‘verbal crust’ of the city full of ‘semantemes’ and ‘urbemes’ such as paths, edges, nodes, districts, and landmarks (Goss 1988; Krampen 1979; Lynch 1960). However, much of this literature can be critiqued for conceptualizing the architect-building-household relationship via a rather one-dimensional lens. Rather than an active part of the construction of everyday life, the built environment tends to be treated merely as container or conduit of the agency vested in it by architects – a view of power typical for theorists like Max Weber (1968), Michael Mann (1993), and even Anthony Giddens (1984).

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of flexibility in the residential environment of the home. A particularly helpful contribution in this respect has been provided by Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison (2000). In contrast to theorizations that see power as a discrete property set in particular objects or conditions (see Box 4.3), they underscore the capacity of power entanglements to ‘set in train the relational encounters which are always replete with effects of power’ (p. 24). Thus, agency can be conceptualized ‘as an amalgam of forces, practices, processes and relations, all of which spin out along the precarious threads of society and space’ (p. 20). According to these authors, practices of relational power operate through four interrelated prisms: .

. .

.

‘forces of power’, which involve the use of power over others (coercion, persuasion, influence), or the ‘power to act effectively by individuals or organized groups within a particular situation’; ‘practices of power’, including ‘the use and/or application of strategic and/ or tactical knowledges within a particular situation’; ‘processes of power’, which can be seen as ‘particular methods of doing particular actions over time, which may develop, change, or adapt during the course of events’; ‘relations of power’, encompassing ‘the myriad social, economic, political, and cultural connections and networks within and between groups, institutions and organizations’ (ibid.).

Extending this approach to the performances of architecture in the urban environment, it may be argued, can enrich social science with the diagrammatic thinking of authors like Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, ‘where power is seen to constitute its own organization yet produce itself relationally from point to point’ (Allen 2003: 7), thus allowing architecture to be ‘conceived as text in the process of being created or produced’ (original italics, Frisby 2001: 19). Its merits have been demonstrated, for example, in empirical research aimed at interrogating the instruments and devices through which issues of power, regulation, ethics and citizenship are ‘spatialized’ within different urban tissues (Osborne and Rose 1999). One of the main themes to emerge from this literature is that all attempts to govern the material existence of urban form contain an imminent set of ‘diagrams that give consistency – though by no means homogeneity – to their elements’ (ibid.: 758). A diagrammatics of urbanisms can therefore be achieved by paying attention to the orderings of forces that lead to the emergence of difference and differentiation among cities. As a result, the patterns created by urban diagrams are not just a ‘collection of city plans, schemes or drawings, although the technical side should not be dismissed’

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(Allen 2003: 74), but are much more relevant to the way in which ‘certain “truths” about cities are generated to underpin particular kinds of urban existence’ (ibid.). As a result, the development of cities over time can be understood as the product of interactions among different diagrams of power. Moreover, it can be argued that a network-based approach allows the city to be seen as a ‘latent principle of mutability’ whose constitutive events, processes and activities are not only constantly changing in relation to each other, but also in terms of appearance, function and importance (Sheringham 1996). Thus: Monuments, streets, quartiers, utilities, institutions, customs are all, at any given time – that of any particular foray we might make – at some point in a process of mutation [. . .] this mutability makes the city a differential space made up of innumerable processes through which individual components are changing in appearance, function or importance but also changing in relation to each other. Seen this way the city is not so much the sum of its parts as the latent principle of a mutability whose impact may be registered the moment we decide to focus on it. (p. 104) Such a conceptualization of the articulation of agency and flow in the built environment is close to Bernard Tschumi’s (2000, 2005) idea of the ‘architecture of the event’, which can also lead to the creation of ‘an architecture that is materially liquid, that configures and is attentive not to stability but to change and is thus at one with the fluid and shifting nature of all reality’ (original italics, Sola`-Morales 1997: 36). Maintaining that Western culture has maintained the principles of ‘stability, permanence and spatiality’ as ‘the three defining features of architecture’, Ignasi Sola`-Morales (1997) contends that the stability of the past has now been abandoned ‘in order to embrace the dynamism of the energies that shape our surroundings’, since: In contemporary culture our first concern is with change, with transformation, and with the processes set in play by time, modifying through time the being of things. We can no longer think only in terms of solid, steady precincts established by lasting materials but must consider fluid, changing forms capable of incorporating; make physical substance not with the stable but with the changing: not search for a fixed and permanent definition of space but give physical form to time; experience a durability in change completely different from the defiance of time that characterizes the classical method. (ibid.: 38)

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This is where the emergence of modern urbanism ‘as an extraordinary complex and dynamic sociotechnical process’ (original italics, Graham and Marvin 2001: 8) becomes especially relevant, since it allows urban formations to be conceptualized through the geographies of enablement and constraint produced by technological networks. As a result, contemporary urban life becomes a ‘ceaseless and mobile interplay’ of dynamics at different scales (ibid.; but also see Thrift 1995a). Box 4.3

Power, space and society

The multiple ways in which dynamics and mechanisms of power are reproduced among institutions and individuals have been extensively studied and researched within the social science literature. Yet the theoretical richness of many of these accounts has rarely been translated into contemporary understandings of the interaction between structures of the built environment and multiple publics. In order to facilitate the theoretical exploration of the agencies and transformations that occur at the boundaries between non-human residential dwellings and their human inhabitants – one of the central themes of this chapter – it is worth revisiting some of the main geographical interrogations of the ways in which spatial formations are imbued with, and internally conduct, relations of domination, authority, coercion, seduction, manipulation and inducement in society. John Allen (2003) provides one of the most comprehensive and contemplative investigations of the complex systems of networked interaction that allow power to arise and be practised in society. Distinguishing between its instrumental (‘power over’) and associational (‘power with’) aspects, he argues that power is ‘always constituted in space and time’ (p. 8), rather than being a continuous substance transmitted across spatial and temporal formations. This author also stresses that ‘subjects are constituted by the spacing and timing of their own practices as much as they are by those who seek to shape their conduct’ (p. 9) which means that one must practise power before possessing it. Since subjectivity is ‘immanently produced’ through everyday geographies, he maintains, a grasp of the particularities of power is necessary in order to understand the difference that geography makes to its exercise. Allen (2003) also explores the different theorizations of the nature of power, classifying them into three principal categories: - ‘Power in things’: whereby power is seen to physically reside in particular institutions or the individuals who co-ordinate them. This approach mainly stems from Max Weber’s (1968) centred conception of power, which distinguishes between the capacity to act and the exercise of power itself. John Allen (2003) criticizes it for the apparent inability to see power as internally constitutive of, and constituted by, space and time, mainly due to the ‘very fact that power may be thought of as something which can be extended or distributed over space’ (p. 36). - ‘Power through mobilization’ where power is represented as an attribute or activity situated in an amorphous medium that is in a constant state of flux. John Allen (2003) stresses that this perception allows power to be ‘conceived as a fluid medium’ (original italics) which can ‘expand in line with the resources available to collective ventures, or [. . .] can diminish once collective short-term goals have been achieved’ (Allen 2003: 42), placing his views in the context of Michael Mann’s (1993) attempt to provide a ‘selective mapping of the logistics of power’ (Allen 2003: 47).

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- ‘Power as an imminent affair’: John Allen (2003) also draws on Michel Foucault (1977) and Gilles Deleuze’s (1992) ‘topological detail’ to draw attention to the functioning of power as a ‘molecular soup’ involving multi-directional relations and multiple outcomes. He is quick to stress, however, that the entanglement of connections that allows this type of power to be practised across space does not take place ‘from above’, but rather through the relationships ‘produced within [original italics] the various contexts and settings’ (Allen 2003: 69). This suggests that power is internal to its own agency and immersion in institutional contexts that allow for its mediation and interpretation, resulting in a ‘topology of relations . . . in which the discursive and the spatial messages remain constant, yet the setting itself is in flux’ (ibid.: 73). In translating his theorization of power into the politics of everyday life, this author relies on, inter alia, Derek Gregory’s (1984) work, which draws attention to the different ways in which ‘the possibility of the subversion, disruption and reappropriation of everyday spaces remains a constant threat and ever present tension to the superimposed order’ (Allen 2003: 167). The ability of power to situate individuals in the ‘rhythms and relationships of particular places’ leads him to argue in favour of a decentred view of power, where the focus is on everyday processes and functionings.

‘Functional blankness’, the technological and the social In order to start operationalizing the ways in which buildings ‘act’ upon the social formations around them, it may be helpful to turn to Kevin Hetherington (1997), Stephen Brown and Rose Capdevila’s (1999), and Kevin Hetherington and Nick Lee’s (2000) reading of the agentic capabilities of material artefacts. According to this set of theories, material structures exercise a specific form of agency, which despite being devoid of intentionality, are able to attract inscriptions of networks upon them. Such an agentic capability can be attributed to an object’s ‘functional blankness’, whereby what it ‘fails to say [. . .] forces the network to fold itself around the object in innumerable different ways’, in order to accommodate the disruption created by its semiotic silence (Brown and Capdevilla 1999: 40). Thus, the lack, rather than the possession, of meaning prompts the weaving of sociomaterial networks around a material artefact, in an effort to connect and order. It is often pointed out that humans also perform their own functional blankness, since it is precisely ‘when we fail to speak or act according to the programmatic directions of the networks in which we are embedded that our “agency” shines through most self-evidently’ (ibid.). It would be difficult to formulate an effective method for unravelling the skein of relations between buildings and people at the level of everyday life without possessing a thorough understanding of the social production of technological networks. One of the more useful explanatory frameworks for exploring the rise of hybrid assemblages at the society-technology interface has been developed by Wiebe Bijker (1987), who proposes the

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concept of ‘technological frame’ to explain their embeddedness in a combination of theories, tacit knowledge, engineering approaches (such as design methods and criteria), specialized testing procedures, goals, and ‘handling and using practice’ (ibid.: 168) within any given community. In Michael Callon and Bruno Latour’s (1981) words, a technological frame is ‘concerned with structuring relations, whether social or technical. It is also a bridge between structure and action’ (ibid.: 302). Bijker (1987), however, uses the concept in order to develop a broader theory of technological change. In her view, the notion of technological frame can provide a useful theoretical start for thinking in this direction thanks to its possession of the following three features. In the first instance, the frame is ‘heterogeneous’, by failing to belong to either the cognitive or the social domain. This characteristic stems from the composition of the frame itself, whose components include ‘exemplary artefacts as well as cultural values, goals as well as scientific theories, test protocols as well as tacit knowledge’. Citing, inter alia, Thomas Hughes’ (1993) work on the subject, Wiebe Bijker (1987) claims that the metaphor ‘seamless web’ has often been used to describe this underpinning of modem technical development, since ‘the web of modem society is not made up of distinct pieces of scientific, technical, social, cultural, and economic cloth; rather, whatever creases can be seen are made by the actors or by the analyst’ (ibid.: 120). The second feature of technological frames according to the same author is that they are not fixed entities, thanks to participating in the ‘stabilization process’ involved in the construction of artefacts. It is the constant need to be sustained by interactions, she argues, that makes a technological frame ‘intrinsically dynamic’, as ‘it would be very surprising if its characteristics remained unchanged’. In part, this is due to the fact that ‘a technological frame does not reside internally in individuals or externally in nature’, since ‘it is largely external to any individual, yet wholly internal to the set of interacting individuals in a relevant social group’ (ibid.: 123). She therefore proposes a conceptual framework based on the concepts of ‘stabilization’ and ‘closure’ in order to explain technological change and the lack of continuity in history, pointing out that: The more homogeneous the meanings attributed to the artefact, the higher is the degree of stabilization. These stabilization processes have a dual character: they include irreversible processes of closure that impose a steplike character onto technical change, but they are also continuous in-between, as is described by growing and diminishing degrees of stabilization. (ibid.: 122)

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The third feature of technological frames, as understood by this theorization, is that they offer the instruments and objectives for action. Although ‘the building up of a technological frame will constrain the freedom of members of the relevant social group’ (ibid.), it is also true that ‘a technological frame offers both the central problems and the related strategies to solve them’ (ibid.). The fact that it is both defined and constrained by multiple relations means that a technological frame can be seen through both a structure- and actor-centred aspect, which essentially means that the possibilities that remain ‘are more clearly and readily available to all members of the relevant social group’ (ibid.). As such, the concept embodies both ‘the strategies of actors and the structures by which they are bound’ (ibid.). Wiebe Bijker and John Law (1992) employ the notion of technological frame, as well as theoretical ideas proposed by authors who like to outline some of the devices involved in ‘delegating’ the process of ‘creating and closing an opening’ to a technological artefact, in order to ensure that ‘things will stay in one place once those who initiated them have gone away and started to do something else’ (Bijker and Law 1992: 294; also see Callon and Latour 1981). They argue that a central part of this process is the separation of ‘inside from outside’ not only by means of physical exclusion, but also through shifts in materials and media – such as plans, which ‘generate echelons of depictions and descriptions of ever-increasing simplicity, homogeneity and docility’ – or organizational orderings, which represent metaphorical barriers between inside and outside that are ‘inscribed in legal, organizational, discursive, or professional arrangements’ (p. 296). The ‘obligatory point of passage’ is the central part of this internalization process, expressed through what they term ‘strategies of obduracy’: People try to devise arrangements that will outlast their immediate attention. That is, they try to find ways of ensuring that things will stay in one place once those who initiated them have gone away and started to do something else [. . .] It is simpler to pass through a door than a wall. It is simpler, that is, to delegate the process of creating and closing an opening to an artefact than it is to knock down and rebuild the wall each time – simpler but not so very simple. (p. 294) The notion of ‘interpretive flexibility’ is a key aspect of the mutability of technological frames, since it embodies the suggestion that ‘any object, institution, or process may mean different things to different people’ (p. 298). It also opens the space for a more robust theorization of the temporal dimensions of technological frames, due to being often contrasted with the

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notion of technological momentum, which emphasizes that ‘certain technologies [. . .] and their carriers, which were malleable in their early stages, later developed to a point at which they were relatively insensitive to, but exercised great influence over, their environments’ (p. 303).

Concluding thoughts In this chapter, I explored some of the key strands of knowledge relating to the interactions between societies, economies, buildings and households in the context of the diverse landscapes of flexibility in built form. The broader questions of cultural change and the spatial articulations of power that underlie some of these relations, often reveal how ‘processes of fragmentation, inequality and crisis in the urban fabric are produced and contested, and highlight how different infrastructures in different places can become sites of negotiation, tension and struggle between a variety of interest groups’ (McFarlane and Rutherford 2008: 366). To a certain extent, this is because the spatial structures and power topologies of the built environment of the inner city are implicated in the flow of everyday life, placing restrictions on the spaces of household activity within the triptych of ‘capability, coupling and authority constraints’ (Golledge and Stimson 1997). The chapter also investigated the complex array of forces implicated in the articulation of flexibility in residential buildings, where agency arises as a result of the networked interaction between human and non-human ‘actants’ in the constructed environment of the city. The literature in this field has highlighted the ability of technological frames to constrain and enable household actions through varying levels of interpretive flexibility. There has also been a focus on the mechanisms through which the ‘functional blankness’ of buildings allows them to communicate with their users over time. In its entirety, there is evidence to suggest that the mutability of built structures is combining with other types of social flexibility to create not only a fluid and dynamic urban landscape, but also an entire host of pressures and perturbations on everyday life. In social-ecological terms, household resilience therefore arises and is articulated in relation to the ‘planes’ of flexibility described in Chapter 2, including domains such as work/employment, demography, citizenship, and buildings (Figure 4.2). The property of resilience in this context can be seen as a need to possess adaptive capacity in relation to the different planes of flexibility. Nevertheless, there is a need for a more empirically grounded understanding of the impacts of flexibility upon human relationships, households and communities, and the extent to which it is constructed as a form of capital in such relations. Even though the significance of ‘post-modern’ and ‘fluid’

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FLEXIBLE DEMOGRAPHY (LATs, ‘astronaut’ and dual location households, urban tribes)

FLEXIBLE BUILDINGS (Building events, functional blankness, multiple agencies)

FLEXIBLE CITIZENSHIP

Planes of flexibility
Household resilience

(Elastic bund, flexible bodies, flexible governance)

FLEXIBLE WORK (Removal of employment protection, changing work arrangements)

Figure 4.2 An outline of the different facets of household resilience (understood in social-ecological terms) within the context of a number of crucial planes of flexibility.

household structures within the context of metropolitan transformation is beginning to be recognized in the literature, the manner in which the ‘grain’ of the city may shape such contingencies remains under-researched and theorized. It is unclear how changes in lifestyles, housing careers, residential preferences, family structures and the everyday organization of time/space that are usually associated with the shift towards ‘post-materialist’ (Inglehart 1997) and ‘atomistic’ (Verdon 1998) value orientations is articulated through, and mediated by, urban tissues. The question is all the more interesting – and relevant – in light of the specific conditions of many developed-world post-industrial cities (including those in ECE), where the path-dependent nature of the socio-economic restructuring process may constrain or enable some actions and developments in highly specific ways, thus providing a unique window into the nature of the social processes that underpin them. In light of these challenges, the chapters in the second part of this book are focused on exploring, through a case study approach, the perpetual

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contradiction between fluid social needs and fixed built structures in everyday life. I am inspired by John Goss’ (1988) call for the formulation of an ‘invigorated architectural geography’ premised on the notion that buildings impart meaning and character to the space in which they are located (p. 402), aiming to take this premise into studies of household mobility and consumption patterns, particularly in relation to the domestic domain. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to contribute towards the creation of a conceptual framework that would connect household activity spaces with the materialization of power in built form. Interpreting urban change through such a lens might help us address the theoretical gap between the mainstream understandings of the production of urban built landscapes, on the one hand, and the spaces of everyday life, on the other.

CHAPTER 5 SITES, HISTORIES, POLITICS: FOUR CITIES AND THEIR TALES

As I noted in the previous chapters, the evidence explored in this book has been sourced from a range of European cities and neighbourhoods, where I have had the opportunity to undertake individual or joint research with fellow geographers, sociologists, economists and architects since 2001. The four ‘primary’ sites of research – Gdan´sk, Skopje, Ljubljana and Budapest (see Figure 5.1) – are all located in the post-communist states of eastern and central Europe (ECE), which have been undergoing a deep-seated process of structural change from a planned to a market economy during the past 20 years. In the text that follows, I argue that their experience is relevant to a much broader range of geographical contexts, precisely because the postcommunist transformation process provides an unprecedented window into the inner workings of society and space at a variety of scales. This chapter outlines some of the key morphological features, historic trajectories, political relations, economic structures and contemporary development struggles associated with the cities and neighbourhoods that have been used as a source for the evidence reviewed in the book. I also lay out the data-gathering techniques and analytical methods that were used in each city. The final part of the chapter outlines the key features of several additional European cities that have been used as sources of data for the book, thus providing a basis for a broader contextualization of the evidence from the four in-depth case studies. Throughout the chapter, the articulation of housing policy and dynamism is discussed within the context of urban governance regimes that aim to incorporate a given locale within the broader ‘space of flows’, in symbolic and economic terms alike. But before going on to describe the characteristics of each individual study site, it is worth reflecting on the broader theoretical relevance of the restructuring experience of post-communist states. In particular, I wish to

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Figure 5.1

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Locations of the case study cities and countries.

highlight some of the conceptual issues associated with incorporation of household-level dynamics within the theorization of the post-socialist urban transformation. Of special importance in this context is the flexibilization of post-socialist cities, which comprises both built (housing structures) and social (economic and political restructuring) aspects of the urban environment. Having surveyed the main literature on demographic and urban change in post-socialism, I argue in favour of incorporating issues of household and housing stock transformation in contemporary theorizations regarding the evolution of urban socio-spatial structures and governance patterns.

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Post-communist legacies in the ECE housing sector: A brief sketch The fall of communist central planning in the late 1990s was soon followed by a profusion of new research into the socio-economic, political and cultural dimensions of post-socialist cities. Geographers, sociologists and planners alike, many of them based in the region, developed extensive study programmes to investigate the changing nature of urban systems in ECE and the former Soviet Union (FSU). Thanks to this body of work, there is now an improved understanding of the legacies of, among other issues, the suburbanization of capital and people, the rise of new patterns of social exclusion and polarization, and the decline of city centres in post-socialism. The recognition that many of these problems are similar to those faced by other European or North American cities has led some authors to the conclusion that ‘the diversity of experience and the echoes and reflections in ECE and FSU of Western themes and concerns make the post-socialist city an important and fascinating place to study the process of systemic transformations’ (Stenning 2004: 105). Even though many of the finer facets of post-socialist urban processes remain poorly understood, the significance of ‘post-modern’ and ‘fluid’ household structures within the context of metropolitan transformation has already been acknowledged in the literature. There is evidence to suggest that the fluidization of household arrangements in post-socialism is paralleled by the destablization of traditional of urban landscapes in terms of the repopulation of easily adaptable inner-city housing, the spatial implications of new employment patterns, and the multiple enfilades of migration movements across the urban fabric (see, for example, Buzar and Grabkowska 2006). It has been suggested that ECE – and, to a lesser extent, FSU – societies are now rapidly moving towards the kinds of value orientations that have underpinned the second demographic transition already observed in Western societies (Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 2002). The changes in household formation patterns, lifestyles, housing careers, residential preferences, family structures and the everyday organization of time/space that are usually associated with the shift towards ‘post-materialistic’ value orientations are always articulated through, and mediated by, urban tissues. When communism fell in 1989, the spatial structures and dynamics of postsocialist urban areas were comparatively under-researched, especially in cities lower down the urban hierarchy. One of the most notable contributions included Ivan Szele´nyi’s (1983) seminal critique of socialist planning, which systematically established the ways in which communism, despite its claim to social equality, actually created unequal spatial patterns of capital distribution. According to his analyses, the socialist mode of economic development was

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doubly destructive, due to its unfavourable influence on the districts where investment occurred, and the steady deterioration of all remaining areas. To overcome the inequalities generated by this situation, he suggested a ‘mixed, selective, organic mode of urban renewal’, in which the ‘reconstruction of the deteriorating zones should be designed to achieve an increasing mixture of housing and social classes’ (ibid.: 151). His findings were later confirmed and further elaborated in the work of authors like O¨rjan Sjo¨berg (1999), Hill Kulu (2003) and Ludeˇk Sy´kora (2005). Such studies heralded the start of a whole stream of research into the ways in which wider structural change in society has shaped the ‘grain’ of ECE and FSU. Nevertheless, according to Zoltan Kova´cs (1992), the early days of communist rule in ECE were marked by a low degree of urban social inequality and spatial segregation, as planners aimed for a ‘compromise between equality and efficiency’ (also see Enyedi 1990). In many cities, the principal goal of 1950s postcommunist regimes was ‘the abolition of all the old forms of social inequality, and this policy was vigorously pursued with respect to housing’ (Kova´cs 1992: 113). Yet this situation gradually began to change during the 1960s, when residential segregation emerged as a result of the relative shortage of flats (due to centralized decision-making, long waiting lists and high black market prices), and the decline in housing construction. As a result, Kova´cs maintains that housing policy under socialism failed from both an economic and social point of view. To a certain extent, the shortcomings of central planning in this domain can be attributed to the overall poor economic performance of post-socialist economies during the relevant period. The economic inefficiency of the state housing sector also played a role, mainly due to the entrenchment of hidden rent subsidies and poor management practices. The maintenance of artificially low rents was one of the cornerstones of state socialist housing policy, as it was believed that the state had the obligation to provide affordable accommodation for all, because housing is a universal human right. As a result, wages did not contain an element for housing, which was instead financed from the state budget. Artificially low rents implied that a selected layer of society enjoyed generous accommodation subsidy from the state. Even though rents were significantly increased in the 1970s and 80s, they remained very low by Western standards. Communist-era housing policies were also unable to fulfil the broader objective of social protection, whose manifest aim was to reduce and eventually abolish the old forms of social inequality, while smoothening spatial segregation. In nominal terms, the state was expected to address the housing requirements of the working classes, because it was believed that managerial groups could solve their housing problems without state assistance. However,

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the socialist middle class – professionals, intellectuals, bureaucrats – was overrepresented in newly-built housing estates. Although many such whitecollar workers began to leave state housing from the mid-1970s onwards (parallel with the expansion of the private sector), de facto housing allocation generally favoured the better-off. It should also be pointed out that central planning brought a number of specific infrastructural legacies to the ECE and FSU region. With energy provision seen as a universal right, rather than a service associated with a specific cost, energy prices were indirectly subsidized and kept artificially low. At the same time, the state constructed large-scale district heating networks, which generated hot water by burning fossil fuels in combined-heat-andpower or heat-only-boiler plants. The water was then transported through complex and long pipeline networks to apartment, public and industrial plants. The networks suffered from a lack of investment and metering, meaning that excessive amounts of heat were lost not only through the transmission and distribution systems, but at the point of final use as well – since the only way in which users could regulate the system was by opening windows (Bouzarovski 2009b, 2010; Buzar 2007a, 2007a). The impact of socialist planning policies on patterns of social and environmental inequality in the city has received significant attention among urban geographers and sociologists alike. Ivan Szele´nyi (1983) argues that the ‘pattern of change in socialist cities is unique’, because ‘Eastern urban policies diverge decisively from Western urban models’ (p. 145). He developed a spatial model, applicable in the case of Budapest, which explains the unequal allocation of public resources created by socialist policies. Although city centres, and the new multi-storey housing estates, have attracted ‘the best new housing and [...] the best urban services’, the ‘poorer transitional zone’ between the centre and the inner-city has deteriorated. Planning and housing policies have forced these areas to deteriorate even faster. Socialist authorities believed that they should eventually be replaced by comprehensive redevelopment, including a replacement of the old street grid, very much along the lines of the ‘bulldozer’ school of urban re-development (ibid.: 145). On the other hand, while the outer suburban belt has seen substantial private investment in the form of ‘new family houses for working-class families’ they still needed ‘public investment in roads and urban services’, which they rarely got fully or punctually (ibid.: 146). Natasha Pichler-Milanovich (1994) maintains that ‘although similar inequalities occurred in capitalist and ex-socialist societies, they have different causes [. . .] they are neither wholly systematic, nor solely the result of belated development’ (p. 1102). And, although residential neighbourhoods in ECE did not generally show extremes of segregation, ‘it was more difficult to apply

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egalitarian principles in the older zones of the cities’ (ibid.). Thus, the main characteristics of the urban housing model under state socialism can be summarized as: (i) state dominance in ownership, especially in urban areas; (ii) extraordinarily high indirect housing subsidies to the consumer (taking the highest priority next to food subsidies); (iii) physical decline in the urban core and inner city; (iv) levels of segregation increasing through the socialist era, particularly as the new socialist middle class – professionals, intellectuals, bureaucrats – was increasingly moving into new mass-housing (Szele´nyi 1983).

Post-communist urban reforms: A kaleidoscope of change After 1990, ECE’s urban planning and management framework entered a completely new phase of development. There was a quick withdrawal of the state from the housing market, accompanied by a removal of state subsidies, which were replaced by private investment (Baross and Struyk 1993: 182). This was congruent with the main aims of post-socialist housing policy: to remove state subsidies on rent and mortgages, while replacing them with ‘specific targeted housing, or equivalent benefits for those who couldn’t afford to pay’, and to privatize housing construction, selling the public-rented housing sector to the tenants already in place (ibid.). As a result, the spatial distribution and quality of urban ecosystem services underwent fundamental changes under the influence of private investment, liberalization and marketization. However, the question remains as to whether the new conditions have increased the chances for housing rehabilitation in the areas that were declining during socialism. Despite the wide disciplinary and methodological basis of the discipline, post-socialist urban studies have been dominated by a distinct set of themes and concerns. In the early years, issues of housing restructuring often took precedence, as theorists were interested in the social, political and economic dimensions of housing privatization (Clapham and Kintrea 1996). Particular attention was paid to the wider urban implications of the abolition of communist restrictions on residential mobility and migration, brought about by the post-socialist political and economic transformation (see Sjo¨berg and Tammaru 1999). Under the centrally planned economy, the specific combination of administrative housing allocation procedures and policies during socialism had created an urban setting in which most inhabitants of ECE and Soviet cities were unlikely to move once their minimum housing needs were satisfied (provided that this were to happen, which was not entirely likely – see Buckley 1995; Gentile and Sjo¨berg 2006). But the postcommunist transition meant that households suddenly had the opportunity to freely operate on the liberalized housing market in order to improve their living conditions.

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Ludeˇk Sy´kora (1999) argues that the ensuing upward movement of households through the housing stock took one of three forms: (i) social mobility of households fixed in their residential locations, mainly with the aid of in-place adjustments of the present dwelling; (ii) internal migration within the existing housing stock, often directed towards recently renovated properties; (iii) out-migration towards new-build residential districts. In their entirety, these processes produced different paths of residential segregation and socio-spatial inequality in different neighbourhoods, depending on the particular mix of local circumstances. More recently, many post-socialist countries have seen increased rates of residential relocation as a result of the rising availability of long-term mortgages at low interest rates, coupled with improved living standards (Gentile et al. 2012; Marcin´czak et al. 2013; Nova´k and Sy´kora 2007; Ruoppila 2006; Zborowski 2005). This has been accompanied by other macro-scale patterns of urban morphological restructuring, involving dynamics of commodification and neighbourhood change, as well as the changing functions of city spaces (Fleming 2012; Golubchikov and Phelps 2011; Hirt 2012). As a result of such developments, it has gradually become evident that the restructuring process is bringing about major changes in the structure and form of metropolitan areas. Possibly the most visible material imprint on the landscape has resulted from dynamics of suburbanization, and their associated economic, demographic, political and environmental reconfigurations (Nefedova and Treivish 2003; Nuissl and Rink 2005; Ott 2001; Petrova et al. 2013b; Petrova 2014). In connection with this, theorists have begun to pay increased attention to the dynamics of socio-economic polarization resulting from the new patterns of economic investment, population movements, as well as social stratification and segregation (Hegedu¨s and Tosics 1994; Sy´kora and Bouzarovski 2012). A comprehensive and early review of the driving forces of such processes has been provided by Ulrike Sailer-Fliege (1999), who underlines the ‘take-off of the tertiary sector, the expansion of the CBD [central business district], the spatial decentralization of commercial and service functions and increasing street trading’ (p. 15). She also draws attention to the emergence of ‘comprehensive blight phenomena in the old industrial areas and, in parallel, the designation of new industrial areas on the urban fringes’ (ibid.). Studies of particular cities have highlighted the underlying reasons for some of these problems: for example, Vedran Prelogovic´ (2004) notes for Zagreb the negative impacts of unemployment on urban socio-spatial structures, as ‘parts of the city where that problem is very serious can be socially downgraded’ (p. 389). Parallel to such dynamics, it has been possible to observe an entirely different set of processes related to the symbolic restructuring and

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‘re-imaging’ of the post-socialist city. This has been as much a political project as one aimed at the physical and cultural revitalization of inner-city areas (Kinossian 2012). Alison Stenning (2004) points out that ‘as in the heady days of socialism, the towns and cities of ECE and the FSU are populated by cranes and construction sites as planners and architects rebuild cities to fit new realities and new discourses’ (p. 100). Craig Young and Sylvia Kaczmarek (2008) explore the implications of these processes for the Polish city of Ło´dz´, emphasizing the contradictory and contested nature of post-socialist cities’ efforts to create a new urban identity by, in part, reimagining the city’s past development, and the history of its relations with Russia and the Soviet Union. In a rare study of economic and political processes underway in Belgrade, Paul Waley (2011) outlines some of the controversies that have accompanied the effort to transform the northern part of the city (‘New Belgrade’) from a large, predominantly residential and centrally planned urban district involving a mix of modernist and socialist visions to a business-dominated centre concentrating retail, leisure and office functions. The socio-spatial transformation of ECE and FSU cities has been contingent on the restructuring of local and national government, as a result of broader trends of political, fiscal and administrative reorganization. In many ECE countries in particular, local governments have become the principal institutions responsible for urban planning and management while retaining statutory responsibility for the provision and maintenance of technical infrastructure and urban social services (Bennett 1997; Kimball 1999; Matthiesen 2005; Poputoaia and Bouzarovski 2010). This has been aided by the acquisition of the fixed assets of water and sewerage companies, district central heating systems and public housing (Petrova 2011; Tsenkova 2009). Such trends mirror the direction of public infrastructure reform observed in more advanced capitalist countries. Thus, in their entirety, post-socialist cities have followed a specific path towards postmodernity and post-Fordism. Ludeˇk Sy´kora (1994) summarizes this trend for the case of Prague, where he points out that if the change from modernity to post-modernity in Western society is doubted [...] then it can be argued that transition reconstitutes modernity in its capitalist fashion. Consequently, the present turbulence in the Czech Republic and Prague should be conceptualized as internal transformations within the project of modernity, an operation based in institutions and rules embodied in the democratic political system and the market economy. (p. 1163)

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Mainstream debates on the post-socialist city, therefore, are beginning to provide a wider range of in-depth, cross-cutting engagements with the urban consequences of urban change. Although the issue of urban demographic revitalization under the influence of ‘post-modern’ social change remains marginalized, a number of contributions have dealt with the implications of demographic ageing, particularly in the city core and in connection to certain social and demographic groups (Andrle 2001; Galcˇanova´ and Sy´korova´ 2014; Großmann et al. 2013; Hrast et al. 2013; Słodczyk 2002; Steinfu¨hrer et al. 2010; Temelova´ and Dvorˇa´kova´ 2012). Some of these ideas are explored further in the literature on post-communist gentrification, which has been shown to demonstrate more specific and localized features compared to Western countries (Cook 2010; Marcin´czak 2012; Murzyn 2004; Sy´kora 2005; Vasilevska et al. 2014).

Demographic and cultural transformations in the post-socialist city The intense polarization of the post-socialist city may be one of the reasons why Dimiter Philipov and Ju¨rgen Dorbritz (2003) argue that ‘understanding demographic processes plays a key role in political decision-making concerning economic development, social and health policies, education and regional and local planning’ (p. 9). The relationship between sociodemographic change and residential transformation in the city centres and adjacent built-up areas of ECE cities has been extensively studied by Annegret Haase, Annett Steinfu¨hrer, Sigrun Kabisch, Katrin Grossmann and Ray Hall (2011) who argue that ‘after years of decline and population losses, inner cities are regaining their residential attractiveness’ (p. 7). An important part of this process is the ‘refurbishment of the building stock’ and the ‘improvement of the quality of the residential environment’ (ibid.). Some of these authors have also produced seminal work (Haase et al. 2012) on the relationship between the transformation of inner urban areas and ‘transitory urbanites’: younger professionals, students, or cohabiting couples who choose to live in the city core, often on a temporary basis and in the private rented sector. By valuing the affective and practical features offered by city living, this demographic group has aided, inter alia, the stabilization of old, dilapidated and endangered builtup areas (ibid.: 324). Working in Gdan´sk, Maja Grabkowska (2012) has explored the attractiveness of several inner-city areas for groups that seek to exploit the locational and technical advantages of the historic housing stock in such areas. She outlines the different ways in which the built fabric of the inner city has shown itself to be structurally adaptable and responsive to changing individual needs.

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In an early paper about the connections between urban and population change in post-socialist Poland, Piotr Korcelli (1990) emphasizes that metropolitan areas in this country are subject to a wide variety of migration movements – an argument that undermines the claim that deconcentration is the dominant force of urban demographic development. Jacek Kotus’ (2006) comprehensive study of the multiple spatial contradictions that underlie the spatial development of Poznan´ highlights the multiple aspects of everyday life that shape the ‘grain’ of social process in the post-socialist city: changing housing preferences, social polarization, the temporal allocation of domestic tasks, negotiations of urban space, etc. Such dynamics highlight the multiplicity of population movements in post-socialist urban areas. In this context, it is important to underline Annett Steinfu¨hrer and Annegret Haase’s (2007) argument about the need for expanding the conceptual extent of demographic research beyond issues of ‘post-socialist transition’, even though ‘it still represents an important explanatory background’. They claim that post-socialist societies ‘need to be regarded first of all as facing many developments parallel to recent and current general European trends’, which means that ‘the transition-related research perspective’ should be combined with a ‘broader European one’ so as to ‘generate new research questions and, hopefully, innovative and mutually enriching theoretical insights’ (p. 192). Such views mirror Alison Stenning’s (2005a) call for ‘an area studies which is relational and connected, and which, despite focusing on eastern Europe, constructs geographies which call attention to the presence of the East in the West and the West in the East’. Therefore, scholarship based in ECE should ‘recognize the “transition” in the East as a process which also reshapes the West’ (p. 382). Indeed, as pointed out by Kathrin Ho¨rschelmann (2002) based on her work in eastern Germany, there is a need to move beyond the ‘inadequacies of a one-dimensional, teleological approach to “transition”’, while stressing the approaching ‘postsocialist change as a complex, differential process influenced by a wide range of forces which include the local, national and global’ (p. 63). To summarize, then, the last 25 years have been marked by a complex series of economic, political and social ‘transformations’ in the countries of ECE and FSU. Although the movement towards market-based economic systems has affected all aspects of everyday life, the main hotspots of change lie in the larger urban areas, which have acted as simultaneous engines and agents of the transformation. It has been pointed out that the restructuring of ECE capital cities ‘could be much more profound’ than that observed in western Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s, and that ‘social polarization could have inevitable consequences’ on the geographic patterns of urban development (PichlerMilanovich 1994: 1107). As a result, there has also been much controversy

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over the extent to which the unquestioned application of free-market policies can genuinely help post-communist cities to diversify their urban functions, without worsening the extremes of segregation typical for Western cities. Many authors have been concerned about the extent to which privatization, marketization and economic decentralization will exacerbate the previous rates of unemployment and poverty, adding more social inequality to existing urban landscapes. One of the key questions in this regard is whether inner-city revitalization gains have ensued as an unintended consequence of the extensive privatization of the housing stock (Kova´cs et al. 2013; Nagy and Tima´r 2012; Sy´kora and Bouzarovski 2012). One of the central dilemmas outlined by many authors working in this field refers to the extent to which post-socialist urban change bears similarity to processes that are already seen and/or have been analysed in other parts of the world. In particular, it has been unclear how and whether socialist era practices, combined with local environmental and political features, have contributed to the emergence of locally specific urban transformation patterns. Michael Gentile (2012) thus uses the term ‘heteropolitanization’ to describe the ‘complex, unpredictable, erratic, unruly and capricious nature of urban change in CEE’ (p. 299), while Sonia Hirt (2013) claims that the ‘potential emergence of several urban sub-types in East-Central Europe challenges the very idea that the “post-socialist city” is a meaningful term’ (p. S37). Such questions also feature heavily in work by Monika Grubbauer (2012), who, inter alia, is concerned about the outside perception of research on post-socialist cities as ‘area studies’ due to its ‘descriptive, ideal-type and often schematic’ nature (p. 42), while questioning the ability of existing analytical frameworks to ‘address culture, meaning and agency’ (p. 51) and the non-sequential nature of social and material changes in the fabric of the city. Yet such work itself still applies a post-socialist vocabulary to its empirical content, while being guilty of the same descriptive approach that it criticizes (also see http://societyandspace.com/reviews/reviews-archive/grubbauer/). The space for developing theoretically novel and globally situated accounts of present and past urban reconfigurations in ECE, therefore, remains open.

Theorizing path-dependency Understanding the nature of social, political and economic transformations in the post-socialist city can also provide important insights into the broader theorization of path-dependent behaviours and legacies in the built and social environment of contemporary societies. The concept of pathdependency is founded on the premise that actors are constrained by existing institutional structures, which limit some fields of action while favouring

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the selection of others. It points to an institutionalized form of learning, embodying ‘struggles over pathways that emerge out of the intersection of old and new’ (Smith and Pickles 1998: 15). The subject has been widely discussed in the literature on post-communist transition (see, for example, Chavance and Magnin 1997; Drahokoupil 2012; Pike et al. 2010), where it is often emphasized that the experience of the past 20 years provides a unique opportunity to study how this process occurs at a multiplicity of ‘critical junctures’. Path-dependency theorists underline the contingent and embedded nature of the post-communist restructuring process, which hinges on place-specific cultural and economic legacies. This relationship is reflected in specific development trajectories followed by post-communist cities, whose structural reconfiguration is constrained or enabled by built and social formations. Thus, the post-communist city offers an unprecedented window into ‘the relevance of path dependency and the historical approach, as well as to the fruitful results of combining different theoretical assumptions within them’ (Petrovic´ 2005: 21). Path-dependency is also linked to the organizational evolution of economic relations. According to Bruno Dallago (1999), ‘different economic systems may not converge simply because differences are reproduced, alongside adaptation, in evolving environments’ (p. 172). This suggests that the selection processes brought about by the economic transition may not necessarily produce the most efficient outcomes (Nicita and Pagano 2001). The existence of suboptimal institutional structures points to the existence of ‘path-dependency of the third kind’: a situation whereby agents make inefficient choices due to cultural, ideological and/or opportunistic reasons, although they are aware of the alternatives (Magnusson and Ottoson 1997). In post-socialist urban contexts, it has been established that paths of change are ‘contested and messy’ processes, in which ‘the versatility of language and narrative can mask the key actors’ unwillingness to change the political– economic fundamentals of government policies and business interests’ (Petrova et al. 2013a: 1455). A series of path-dependent decisions may often result in an institutional trap, whereby organizations and interests are locked into a vicious circle that in itself produces suboptimal results from a wider economic or social perspective (Buzar 2005). This is particularly pronounced in many FSU states (particularly Russia, Ukraine), where desultory reform attempts have created a similar condition, known as an ‘under-reform trap’. It implies that ‘high corruption drives the economy underground, and the resulting low tax revenues make it hard to control corruption’ (A˚slund et al. 2002: 92). The institutional trap in some post-communist states is manifested in the form of

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non-monetized exchanges and rent-seeking on the behalf of governing elites (Zaostrovtsev 2000). As such, these conditions exemplify Ludeˇk Sy´kora’s (2008) conceptualization of post-communist phenomena that are simultaneously path-dependent and path-shaping: they arise from the specific legacies of socialist central planning and the dynamics of post-socialism, while creating a dual social and spatial ‘lock-in’ that will determine the future development of their host societies. All of this suggests that what is happening in post-communist cities and households is not only relevant within an area studies framework, but can also help us understand global processes and generic theoretical problems. However, it also implies that any analysis of household-level developments has to be placed within the wider context of political change within the neighbourhoods, cities and countries that host these formations, as well as the superposition of economic systems that they have experienced.

Case study cities (I): Gdan´sk, Poland Post-communist Poland provided an ideal geographical setting for a large part of the background field research for this book. In moving from a centrally planned to a market system, the country has undergone a series of deep-seated social and economic shifts after 1989. The general neoliberalization of the economy and subsequent flexibilization of the labour market have been accompanied by a major change in the economic structure of employment, which is now dominated by services rather than industry. Despite facing major economic and political shocks in the early days of the post-communist transition, Poland subsequently took a firm path towards a fully market-based economy. It was one of the few European countries to successfully weather the 2008 global recession, even if the post-communist transition has exacerbated existing urban and regional inequalities in the country, while creating new layers of segregation and differentiation. Many of these processes are easily visible in Gdan´sk – the main port of the country, also known for hosting two of the arguably most important events of the twentieth century: the battles that marked the beginning of World War II, and the demonstrations that eventually led to the downfall of communism. In this city, the downsizing of one of the biggest shipyards in the Baltic and the general deindustrialization of the economy have resulted in growing rates of unemployment, social inequality and exclusion. At the same time, however, Gdan´sk has become a veritable gravity point for high-end service industries not only within the Polish context, but internationally as well. This, coupled with its pivotal urban status in the Baltic Sea region throughout the mediaeval period and the European Enlightenment, gives Gdan´sk a unique role in

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contemporary theoretical attempts – among geographers and non-geographers alike – to understand how different material and imagined legacies of a city’s past shape its modern urban landscape. Gdan´sk has a population of about 460,000, making it the largest city in the Pomerania (‘Pomorskie’) region. The town is situated at the mouth of the Motława River, which in turn is connected to the Leniwka: a branch in the delta of the nearby Vistula River, whose waterway system connects Gdan´sk to the national capital in Warsaw. The geographical position of the city thus gives it a unique advantage and makes it Poland’s principal seaport. After 1945, boosted by heavy investment in the development of its port and three major shipyards, Gdan´sk became the major shipping and industrial centre of the ‘Communist People’s Republic of Poland’. Although it suffered from the post-communist transition (especially due to its struggling shipyard), this city is now an economic powerhouse in this part of the Baltic, and attracts millions of tourists annually (To¨lle 2008). Of no less importance are the two smaller cities that link up with Gdan´sk towards the north: Sopot and Gdynia. The first, often dubbed the ‘Polish Monte Carlo’ has the highest property prices in the country (and eastern Europe more generally) and is well known as a key tourist destination thanks to hosting a large spa and seaside resort. Thanks, in part, to its rapidly expanding population – the figure stood at 40,000 at the last census – Sopot is currently undergoing a period of intense development, including the building of a number of five-star hotels and spa resorts on the waterfront. In 1979, the historical town centre was declared a national heritage centre by the government of Poland. Gdynia is an important seaport and industrial centre, with a population of about 250,000 inhabitants. The entire city was built in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, it is relatively uniform in architectural terms, consisting mainly of functionalist tenement blocks. As such, it is a unique example – in European and global terms alike – of a major urban centre built in the course of less than two decades. Gdynia was one of the most economically successful Polish cities in the early 1990s but has been lagging back recently. Its once thriving shipyard is now struggling to survive, and the city is looking for ways to rebrand itself. As a whole, Gdan´sk, Sopot and Gdynia make up the ‘TriCity’ urban agglomeration: the third largest metropolitan area in Poland (after Katowice and Warsaw) and a key economic, political and cultural centre in the Baltic region (Stankiewicz and Szremer 1959). Apart from a single light railway line that connects the three cities, however, the agglomeration does not possess a shared political, cultural or physical infrastructure. This is in part due to the major historical tensions and differences among the three cities that are very much alive today.

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History The region’s history has been anything but calm. The earliest signs of population settlement in the area date back to the Stone Age. Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, it was ruled by various Slavic mediaeval kingdoms, only to be followed by the Order of the Teutonic Knights over the next 150 years. During this time, Gdan´sk began to flourish economically, further aided by its membership in the Hanseatic League – a powerful international maritime organization. The Knights were eventually conquered by the Kingdom of Poland, which controlled the area for a further 250 years. The Kingdom was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which spanned most of eastern Europe (from the Baltic to the Black Sea coasts) and was characterized by liberal and democratic laws that attracted many persecuted groups (such as Jews) to the area. The creation of an ethnically Polish noble class (also known as the szlachta) dates from this period, although Gdan´sk itself became predominantly populated by ethnic Germans. However, as a result of internal problems and outside pressure, the Commonwealth eventually disintegrated towards the end of the eighteenth century, with its territories being divided among Prussia (Germany), Russia and Austria. The Gdan´sk region itself came under Prussian rule (Orłowicz 1921; To¨lle 2008). The end of World War I saw the re-establishment of a Polish state, with the territory that is now Gdynia being situated in the ‘Polish Corridor’, which divided East and West Prussia. However, Gdynia itself was only a small fishing village. Lacking any other access to the sea, the Polish state quickly developed the city into its principal seaport, moving around 100,000 ethnic Polish inhabitants to the area and constructing an entire new urban centre in the course of less than two decades. Gdan´sk itself (Danzig in German) became an autonomous ‘city state’ that competed with Gdynia in political and economic terms. However, on 1 September 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein started shelling a Polish garrison located in Westerplatte, just north of Gdan´sk, marking the start of World War II. The war brought heavy Allied and Soviet bombardment to Gdan´sk, which destroyed a large part of the city centre (Tusk et al. 1996). The end of the war led to a massive territorial reorganization of Poland as, basically, the whole country was shifted several hundred miles to the west. The territory of West Prussia came under Soviet rule, while Gdan´sk and Sopot themselves became parts of Poland. Gdan´sk and Sopot also underwent a major population shift at this time, as their 350,000 strong ethnic German population either emigrated, was expelled or murdered, while being replaced with about 150,000 ethnic Poles. This was accompanied by a major change in the TriCity’s political regime, which saw the establishment of central planning and Communist party rule, governed by Soviet political ideologies.

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However, the area (especially the shipyards) became the birthplace of the Solidarity movement (Solidarnos´c´), which under the leadership of Gdan´sk political activist Lech Wałe˛sa played a major role in bringing an end to Soviet rule. Thanks to Solidarity-led protests that started as early as the 1970s, Communism crumbled in 1989 and was replaced by the current market-based democratic regime. Key urban features The vagaries of its past development have left Gdan´sk with a specific urban morphology (see Figure 5.2). At the city’s heart lies an urban core whose layout dates back to the mediaeval period, though in reality it represents little more than a communist-era housing estate with vibrant leisure, retail and tourism functions. This is because, as mentioned above, most of the urban core was completely levelled by the heavy fighting sustained by the area during World War II: faced with an acute lack of habitable dwellings on the

Figure 5.2 Salient features of Gdan´sk, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

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one hand, versus vocal demands to revert the historic centre of the city to its previous appearance, on the other, Gdan´sk’s post-war authorities opted for a peculiar compromise in that they constructed modern residential buildings with facades and frontages that replicated the external features of the urban tissue that existed in the area during the days of the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth. In recent years, the urban core has been subject to dynamics of infill and residential upgrading, represented by new buildings whose architects have frequently opted for a modern reinvention, rather than a historicist copy, of previous structures. To the north of the core lies the vast area occupied by the port of Gdan´sk and a number of associated industries, both of which have suffered extensive downsizing, which in turn has created large derelict spaces. Although the city has an ambitious regeneration project for the area under the banner ‘Młode Miasto’ (Young City), its plans have been slow to come to fruition as a result of the lack of finance. Further out to the west and south one finds several densely built urban districts with multi-storey tenement blocks dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: having managed to avoid war destruction, they were subject to disinvestment, decline and neglect during communism. Yet they have gradually started to regain their residential and commercial attractiveness in recent years. Moving further north, these areas are flanked by a succession of vast housing estates constructed between the 1960 and 1980s, which host most of the city’s population. Also included within Gdan´sk’s city limits are several older villages that have been encircled by the city as a result of the rapid expansion of its external boundaries. Gdan´sk’s western edge also contains a set of leafy neighbourhoods with singlefamily homes which once represented suburban retreats and country estates for the city’s bourgeoisie. Gdan´sk is no less polarized and dynamic in economic terms. The early days of the post-communist transition were marked by massive economic downsizing and the closure of large industrial enterprises due to the inability of their managers to adapt to a market environment, and the loss of traditional trade connections and privileges with their Soviet bloc partners. The effects of this process are particularly pronounced in some of the inner-city quarters near the port, and the prefabricated panel housing estates where former industrial workers had been housed. The entire eastern part of Gdan´sk has significantly above-average unemployment rates, while recipients of social assistance tend to be concentrated in the inner-city districts around the port – mainly to the east of the city centre – and in the urban core itself. It is also worth noting that the demographic structure of Gdan´sk’s inner city has also been shaped by the changing lifestyles and family decisions of its younger inhabitants, who are increasingly choosing to either live on their

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own, or within ‘non-traditional’ household arrangements. As a result of such trends, the share of one-person households at the level of the entire city reached 30.9 per cent in 2002 (Grabkowska 2012). The proportion of oneperson households is the highest in the city centre and the inner city, due to the simultaneous concentration of elderly one-person households and young professionals in such areas. These districts also possess distinctively high shares of ‘non-nuclear’ households. However, the western and eastern parts of Gdan´sk have markedly different educational structures, as the inner-city residential quarters to the west of the city centre are generally inhabited by a better-educated population (ibid.). Study sites Much of the evidence that forms a basis for the arguments made by the subsequent chapters was gathered in three inner-city districts to the northwest of Gdan´sk’s urban core. The first of these – Zaspa – is a typical communist-era housing estate, with large prefabricated panel blocks (see Figure 5.3). In it, the transition in the post-socialist period has seen a resurgence of commercial functions, which are now present parallel to recreational and other facilities. The quarter lies on a site previously occupied

Figure 5.3 Prefabricated panel blocks in Zaspa. They are surrounded by green spaces that are well maintained. Most of the buildings have been subject to upgrading investment (photo by the author).

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by an airport, whose runway, rather than being dismantled, now forms the district’s central thoroughfare. Prior to the construction of the airport, the area was largely uninhabited due to the existence of sand dunes and a lake. Most of Zaspa’s apartment blocks were constructed during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and may range from 4 to 12 storeys (though the latter are more prevalent). The district itself consists of two sections – Młyniec and Rozstaje – which represent, respectively, its southwestern and northeastern parts. The former contains most of the district’s non-residential functions, including numerous shopping centres, schools, and an iconic modernist church. To the south and west, Zaspa borders Wrzeszcz Dolny, one of Gdan´sk’s oldest and inner-city districts. This is a true compact urban quarter in terms of both location and history, as it mainly consists of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century multi-storey terraced tenement buildings, interspersed with some individual family homes (see Figure 5.4). Formerly a prosperous suburban village, the district developed dramatically under the influence of road and railway links developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the growth of industrial concentration in the late nineteenth century (Orłowicz 1921; Samp 1992; Stankiewicz and Szremer 1959). Lower Wrzeszcz nowadays mainly consists of densely concentrated brick tenement houses with a regular street plan and a substantial amount of

Figure 5.4 One of the main streets in Wrzeszcz Dolny. Parts of the area have been subject to revitalization, although this is not always the case (photo by the author).

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green space. Having suffered little war damage, this part of Gdan´sk is now designated as an urban monument under a preservation order (Rada Miasta Gdan´ska 2005). Further north one finds Nowy Port, which is less densely built up, combining early twentieth-century terraced tenement blocks with some industrial uses and even agricultural allotments. Although Nowy Port was originally a small fishing village, it grew rapidly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century thanks to the expansion of the nearby port of Gdan´sk. Today, it contains a rich architectural ensemble of early twentieth-century tenement blocks and public buildings in the neoclassical and secessionist style, supplemented by an impressive lighthouse dating back to 1894. It is also worth noting that the district saw a second period of demographic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This was marked by the construction of prefabricated panel blocks of flats, some of which contained more than 2,000 tenants per building. However, Nowy Port then underwent a gradual decline (Tusk et al. 1996). As a result, the quarter is currently polarized into two zones: a northern one with carefully planned streets and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century apartment buildings interspersed with family homes, and the southern prefabricated panel housing estate from the socialist era. Despite the significant architectural value of the older quarters and the recent age of the socialist housing estate, both types of housing, and especially the former, have seen insufficient maintenance and renovation. Although the western part of Nowy Port is a prefabricated panel housing estate constructed in the 1970s, most of the district is morphologically distinct from the remainder of the city. The three quarters are a microcosm of processes unfolding at larger geographical scales. They have a mixed social structure, consisting of different types of family households and pensioners, although the population of Nowy Port is, overall, somewhat older than that of Wrzeszcz Dolny (Grabkowska 2012). All three districts are being gradually rejuvenated by a new demographic layer of incoming artists, single professionals, and young couples with children, who are seeking to benefit from the combination of low housing prices and locational advantages (see Figure 5.4). Nevertheless, they still have above-average rates of unemployment and social assistance beneficiaries. The physical landscape has recently started to change in all three districts and their broader environment. New developments in Dolny Wrzeszcz include two upscale housing estates situated at brownfield sites (20 ha of a former military area and 7 ha of a closed down brewery), as well as several new high-rise apartment and office buildings, and one of the country’s largest shopping centres. Zaspa, too, has seen the expansion of retail and, to a much lesser extent, office functions, while Nowy Port has received EU urban

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revitalization funds for the construction of an arts centre and a new square. Meanwhile, the district’s attractiveness has been boosted by its direct proximity of Letnica – the neighbourhood selected for the construction of a new football stadium for the Euro 2012 football championship. Methods In Gdan´sk, I undertook an ethnographic study of 60 households in the three study districts, in several stages between 2006 and 2014. All of the surveyed individuals lived in collective apartment buildings, because this type of housing stock reflects both the specific historical and spatial trajectories of the given districts, and the complex structural and technical issues associated with any attempts to change the use and function of the built environment in response to altered socio-economic conditions. The households, who belonged to different social strata, were surveyed on a number of points, including: age, gender, education and employment structures, housing biographies and investment, structure of the home, relationship to the neighbourhood, mobility patterns, and housing preferences. The ethnographies thus mostly consisted of one- to three-hour interviews, which paid particular attention to the ways in which households dealt with the multiple challenges of everyday life, such as the reconciliation of obligations of work and care, and the need to adapt the home to the housing needs of its occupants. Access to the interviewees’ homes was gained through informal personal networks. The interviews were tape-recorded with permission and later transcribed. The decision to rely on qualitative methods stems from the nature of the research subject itself, as the relationship between housing flexibility, spatial mobility and socio-demographic structures remains largely unexplored at the household scale. It was felt that an ethnographic approach would provide the most appropriate method for unravelling the multiple connections among, and mutual interdependencies of, different household decisions about the articulation of everyday life through structures of the built environment (Halfacree and Boyle 1993; Kvale 1996). In addition to the household ethnographies, the Gdan´sk study included 12 ‘expert’ interviewees including decision-makers from the city council, company representatives, academics and public advocacy activists. I also consulted a range of secondary written sources in Polish – including statistical data at the city level – with the aim of placing my analyses in a broader socio-spatial framework.

Case study cities (II): Ljubljana, Slovenia Ljubljana is the capital of the Republic of Slovenia – a country of 2 million people which, similar to Macedonia, became independent from the former

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Yugoslavia in 1991. Unlike Macedonia, however, Slovenia was the most developed part of the Yugoslav federation, largely thanks to its status as a prosperous Austrian province during the nineteenth century. Slovenia is now an EU and NATO member state, with a GDP per capita that currently stands at 84 per cent of the EU average. Still, the last 20 years have been marked by dramatic social, economic and political changes in this country. The post-communist transition destabilized Slovenia’s population and development patterns, as the Ljubljana region attracted disproportionately high amounts of economic investment while reaching record rates of female labour participation and workforce education. Economic development and population growth has mainly taken place in the suburbs and exurbs of Ljubljana, endangering the vitality of the city’s inner urban quarters and more remote rural areas alike (Mestna obcˇina Ljubljana 2009). History Thanks to its strategic position at the crossroads of the key natural corridors between central Europe, the Adriatic and the Balkan Peninsula, the Ljubljana region has a long history of human habitation. Settlements of pile dwellers, followed by Illyrians and Celts, started to appear in the area as early as the fifth millennium BC . The first recorded settlement on the present-day site of Ljubljana, however, is the Roman city of Emona, which was founded in the first century AD and existed until 452 AD , when it was almost completely destroyed by the Huns and subsequently abandoned. Emona was notable for containing up to 6,000 inhabitants and incorporating a number of prominent public buildings and centrally heated residential houses that were served by paved streets and a sewerage system. The sixth century AD marked the beginning of the first Slavic incursions into the area, which gathered increasing intensity during the three centuries that followed. Following frequent Hungarian raids, the region fell under German rule in the ninth century; the transfer of an estate near Ljubljana castle hill – which lies in the core of the city – to the Patriarchate of Aquilea has provided the first written record of the existence of a mediaeval urban settlement on this site (Jeraj and Melik 2011). Ljubljana became increasingly important as a trading and crafts centre during the thirteenth century, being granted city rights in 1220. It came under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty in 1278, following the fall of the Czech king Premysl Otakar II, who had conquered the city eight years before. Ljubljana’s increasing importance during the years that followed is evidenced by its designation as the capital of the Habsburg Province of Carniola in 1335, the founding of the Ljubljana Diocese in 1461, as well as the election of the first mayor of the city in 1504. Although the city was significantly

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damaged by an earthquake in 1511, it nevertheless became the centre of the Slovenian Reformation movement and culture in the decades that followed, obtaining its first secondary school, public library and printing house in 1550. The arrival of Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century, as well as the establishment of the Academia operosorum one century later, allowed the city to assume a Baroque character. Attesting to the technical and financial might of Ljubljana’s rulers was, inter alia, the construction of a 465 metre drainage canal through very challenging hilly terrain in the immediate proximity of the city centre, between 1773 and 1782 (Jeraj and Melik 2011). Ljubljana was briefly occupied by Napoleon in the early nineteenth century, during which time Slovenian became one of the official languages of the city. Having reverted to Habsburg rule, the city experienced a considerable change in its appearance during the late nineteenth century, in part thanks to the establishment of railway connections with Vienna (1849) and Trieste (1857); public waterworks, gas lighting and electricity were also introduced in the decades that followed. The damage wrought by yet another devastating earthquake in 1895 allowed much of the city to be re-built under the leadership of Austrian and Czech architects who relied on modern planning principles, constructing wide streets and numerous Art Nouveau buildings. Ljubljana’s importance increased even further after World War I, when it became the administrative, political and cultural centre of Slovenia within the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians. The city soon saw the foundation of the University of Ljubljana (1919), the National Gallery (1918) and the Academy of Sciences and Arts (1938), reaching a population of 80,000 by the mid-1930s. Ljubljana was subject to yet another process of residential expansion and modernization under the influence of modernist functionalism (Hrausky and Kozˇelj 1997). Following several years of Italian and German occupation, the city came under communist rule as the capital of the now socialist federal Yugoslav Republic of Slovenia. Several decades of rapid economic development followed, bringing mass industrialization, urban expansion through individual housing, exurban growth and peripheral housing estates, as well as immigration from the less-developed southern parts of the federation. This trend continued even after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the economic restructuring that followed. Although the official population figure for Ljubljana currently stands at 275,000 inhabitants (http://www.stat.si/ krajevnaimena/pregledi_naselja_najvecja_prebivalci.asp?tlist¼ off&txt Ime ¼ LJUBLJANA&selNacin ¼ celo&selTip ¼ naselja&ID ¼ 2370), the city is part of a much wider dispersed urban agglomeration that encompasses, practically, much of the western half of Slovenia due to favourable transport links. Its urban structure centres on a mediaeval core that is surrounded by a

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combination of densely built-up quarters with tenement buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and areas with family homes from villages that were incorporated into the urban fabric as the two cities grew beyond their original mediaeval boundaries (Figure 5.5). Peripheral zones tend to be composed of socialist-era prefabricated panel housing, or newly built districts with individual homes. Such areas have attracted disproportionately high amounts of greenfield commercial and housing investment during post-communism, as a result of processes of demographic and economic de-concentration. Key features In the very centre of Ljubljana, rising high above the Ljubljanica River which dissects the city in half, one finds a fifteenth-century castle; this is surrounded by a densely built urban quarter dating from the mediaeval era (see Figure 5.5). The western part of the urban core contains the city’s administrative and commercial centre, in an urban morphology that combines large public buildings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with a mixture of

Figure 5.5 Salient features of Ljubljana, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

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neoclassical villas and residential blocks. Nineteenth-century tenement buildings distributed along a grid street pattern can also be found north of the centre, in an inner-city district that is sometimes termed ‘Secessionist Ljubljana’ as a result of the concentration of residential blocks in this architectural style. Moving towards the outskirts, the city is a mix of industrial uses, green space, socialist housing estates and suburban settlements with individual family homes. In recent years, the urban core of Ljubljana has become increasingly attractive for young urban professionals, as evidenced by the fact that its population is, on average, the best educated in the city, and a large group of recent migrants to the area are young one-person households (Buzar et al. 2007a). Such in-migration dynamics are helping slow down the ageing process and the demographic decline of the city centre. The structure of the dwelling stock in this area suits small households, as it contains more oneand two-bedroom flats than large apartments (Mestna obcˇina Ljubljana 2009). The intensification of incipient processes of reurbanization or gentrification is furthermore aided by the growing concentration of high-end service functions and industries in the inner city. However, it remains unclear to what extent they can reverse the powerful ageing trend (Buzar et al. 2007). The peculiar development trajectory followed by Ljubljana during the post-communist era means that although the city itself lost almost 7,000 residents between 1991 and 2002, the broader conurbation may have grown by more than 20,000 inhabitants during the same period (Buzar et al. 2007). Most of the population loss sustained by the inner city can be attributed to ageing, although out-migration to the suburbs and exurbs have also played a role. Ljubljana’s demographic stagnation is also a product of the low rate of international migration, as a result of immigration restrictions, high living costs, and the limited size of the housing market. The only urban district with a significantly above-average share of ethnic minorities (almost 30 per cent) is a large housing estate in eastern Ljubljana, which was constricted during the 1980s to mid-1990s to house guest workers from the former Yugoslavia. Study site Considering that Ljubljana’s historic centre encompasses a relatively homogeneous area, I decided to work in the inner-city area surrounding the urban core, due to the wider diversity of processes that can be observed there. As a result, I focused my fieldwork in the western part of the district of Sˇisˇka, which extends to the north of Ljubljana city centre, being bounded by the forested hills of Tivoli to the east, the densely populated city centre to the south, industrial areas to the west, and suburban family housing to the north. As such, it occupies an area of high amenity value, due to the immediate

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Figure 5.6 A large part of Sˇisˇka’s pre-war urban structure still survives today, albeit many houses have undergone significant alterations, and the district now contains a much more eclectic mix of housing, including numerous apartment blocks along the main streets (photo by the author).

proximity of green space and favourable transport links with the city centre and urban periphery alike. Western Sˇisˇka is a mixed-use neighbourhood, containing pre-war tenement blocks and individual houses alongside socialist-era blocks and newer residential developments (see Figure 5.6). It was mainly constructed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the city began to expand beyond the immediate surroundings of its mediaeval core to encompass the two villages that were located on this site. Today’s Sˇisˇka is one of the few genuine ‘inner-city’ quarters of Ljubljana, where dense housing functions are supplemented by a wide range of shopping and recreation facilities (in most other parts of Ljubljana, there is a much quicker transition from the city centre to the suburbs, due to the relatively small size of the city). It should be pointed out, however, that most commercial functions are located along Celovsˇka Street, which represents the main transport axis of the quarter. The areas around this street contain a wide variety of housing types – ranging from 1950s apartment buildings to recently constructed individual family homes – while the southwestern and northern parts of the district feature several newly built condominium complexes (Figure 5.7). With 22 per cent of its population being over the age of 65, Sˇisˇka is also Ljubljana’s demographically oldest district.

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Figure 5.7 Sˇisˇka’s continued residential attractiveness is demonstrated by the extensive construction of new apartment buildings at its northern outskirts, either as stand-alone complexes or as infill among older blocks (photo by the author).

Methods The decision to include a Ljubljana case study within my field research was predicated on experience and knowledge gained from previous work in this urban context, which alerted me to the presence of a large cohort of pensioner households in the compact urban areas in and around the city centre (Haase et al. 2005a). My own research in the city – undertaken within the framework of the EU-funded research project described in Chapter 1 – had identified a distinct set of negative attitudes towards this group among local authorities and developers. Noting this discrepancy between the officials’ perspectives, on the one hand, and the rich everyday lives of similar types of households in other post-communist geographical contexts, on the other, the interviews that I undertook in this city paid particular attention to the spatial, social and economic contingencies contributing to the specific housing circumstances of older people. I focused mostly on households consisting of single older women, since they seemed to bear the brunt of the policy-makers negative comments; also, this demographic group tends to be over-represented in large turn-of-the century apartments in the urban cores of ECE cities. Having surveyed the literature on the subject, I soon established that decisions about housing modification within this demographic stratum have been understudied to date, despite their potentially significant long-term impact on urban development. I thus decided to undertake an in-depth study

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of attitudes towards, and the modifications of, residential dwellings among a group of older women in Sˇisˇka, in order to highlight the social, economic and political contingencies of this process. A total of 18 interviews focusing specifically on single older women were thus undertaken in Ljubljana. The interviews, lasting between two and three hours, were carried out in the respondents’ homes between December 2006 and January 2008. I attempted to include representatives of the widest possible range of housing situations within this stratum. However, the interview group could not be matched with the household structures of the study area, as a result of the lack of statistical data at that scale. Overall, about two-thirds of the surveyed women were widows, a quarter had never been married, while the rest had been divorced and never remarried. Approximately two-thirds of them lived in collective apartment buildings, while the remainder resided in family homes, mainly detached. Although this distribution roughly reflects the broader residential structure of the case study neighbourhoods, it is difficult to say whether the same is true in the case of their demographic composition. Thus, rather than providing anything like a comprehensive analysis, my research in Ljubljana was aimed at highlighting some of the generic social and economic issues faced by such individuals in the negotiation of their everyday lives through the spaces of home. The interviews were of a semi-structured character, covering issues such as: the housing and social biographies of the respondents, their residential housing situation, social ties, daily mobility patterns, consumption requirements, economic status and sources of income, involvement in community life, and subjective attitudes towards spatial, social and political changes in the urban environment. Access to the interviewees was gained through informal personal networks. The interviews were tape-recorded with permission and later transcribed. In addition, seven policy-makers, community activists and realestate agents were interviewed in Ljubljana, in order to get a broader sense of the manner in which other local economic and political actors understood the relationship between housing alterations and demographic events within this socio-demographic group. A range of secondary literatures in the local language – including statistical data at the city level – was also consulted, with the aim of laying the background context for the analysis.

Case study cities (III): Budapest, Hungary The Hungarian capital of Budapest – often dubbed the ‘capital of Central Europe’ (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992: 8) – is one of the largest and most centrally located cities in all of ECE. It has been hailed as a successful example of political and economic transition, having attracted a record amount of foreign investment and property development. The city concentrates

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approximately two-thirds of all foreign direct investment into Hungary (Zbida 2010). Budapest has been one of ECE’s most rapidly growing metropolitan centres, and a hotbed of intense entrepreneurial activity and economic change. It is at the centre of an economy, which, despite facing political problems and a global recession-induced downturn in recent years, has managed to achieve impressive levels of economic growth and foreign direct investment during the post-communist transition. Nevertheless, the city has been riddled with restructuring issues stemming from the legacies of socialism, the reform decisions taken during the early 1990s and the inequalities inherent in its historical morphology. History Budapest occupies the site of the once prosperous Roman city of Aquincum, which, while originally being a Celtic settlement, became the capital of the province of Lower Pannonia in 106 AD . Although the ancestors of Hungary’s present-day inhabitants moved to the area in the ninth century, their first settlement was largely destroyed by the Mongol incursions in 1241–2. The reestablished urban centre of Buda became the capital of Hungary in 1361, later developing into a hub of Renaissance humanist culture. The Ottomans occupied the then distinct neighbouring cities of Buda and Pest in 1541, managing to maintain their hold over the area for the next 150 years. During this time, Buda served as the headquarters of the Turkish military administration. Urban life in the area gradually began to expand again in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fusing the two cities and neighbouring Obuda into a coherent urban entity. The growth of the city was accelerated after 1867, when the Habsburg administration reached a compromise with the Hungarian nobility, giving Hungary a status equal to that of Austria within the joint empire. With its population trebling between 1875 and 1900, Budapest subsequently became a major economic, cultural and political hub in central Europe. However, the city’s development was stymied by the partition of Hungary after the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, as well as the heavy structural damage and loss of life it suffered during World War II. In 1949, the city was incorporated into the communist People’s Republic of Hungary. Even though Budapest witnessed a dramatic uprising in 1956 – which left more than 3,000 dead and prompted a Soviet invasion of Hungary – the 40 years of communist rule did little to change spatial hierarchy of urban inequalities in its inner city: Budapest’s urban structure remained stable, in spite of conscious anti-segregation policies in the 1950s. The city maintained the clear spatial relationship between residential differentiation and environmental quality, expressed through the wide divergence between the low-density, well-ventilated and well-vegetated hills of Buda in western

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Figure 5.8 Salient features of Budapest, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

Budapest, and the densely populated urban flatlands of Pest, to the east of the Danube (see Figure 5.8). During socialism, many white-collar workers emigrated towards the hilly areas to the north and west of Budapest, while the working class was mostly concentrated in the east and south sides of Pest (Compton 1979). However, communist central planning did lead to the construction of new industrial buildings and housing estates on ‘greenfield’ sites. Although nominally aimed at increasing environmental quality and social equity, many 1960s and 1970s estates have been physically and socially incongruent with the surrounding urban tissue. At the same time, environmental quality and social status remained low in the dense tenement blocks of the industrial inner city, and the family houses of the suburban areas of Pest, which saw little re-development and investment (Kova´cs 1992, 1994). This was particularly true in the compact residential areas of the inner city, constructed during the nineteenth century. The provision of public services was maintained at a satisfactory level only in the historic core, and the transition to the inner-city zone.

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Key features The Danube River is the central feature of Budapest’s urban landscape, forming a clear-cut boundary between Buda and Pest. The city centre includes parts of both, combining Baroque palaces surrounded by mediaeval street layouts in the former with commercial and business activities amidst nineteenth-century tenement buildings in the latter (see Figure 5.8). Further out to the north and south one finds a mix of communist housing estates, suburban settlements and villages with individual family homes, as well as several sprawling industrial, commercial, office and residential developments at the urban fringe. The end of socialism was marked by dramatic political and economic changes in Hungary. Economic and urban development policies embraced neoliberal principles, embodied in the quick implementation of housing privatization, which involved a direct sale of social housing to the former tenants. While some experts believed that this approach would help boost mobility and investment in the economy, others, however, maintained that the privatization process would aggravate the polarization and segregation of social groups, while leading to a further differentiation of housing classes and neighbourhoods. Parallel to the quick, ‘give-away’ privatization of public housing (Kova´cs 2009), Budapest has undergone an extensive process of land-use change under the influence of private capital. The new phase of post-industrial growth has been marked by high-profile re-development schemes, often stemming from public– private sector partnerships. The urban core in particular has attracted a great deal of foreign direct investment in the form of retail and office developments. The broader ‘reurbanization’ of the inner city has been aided by a combination of favourable spatial and ecological factors, inherited from the socialist period, including low rents, high social status, adequate infrastructure and good environmental conditions. Study sites My study area in Budapest consisted of a narrow transversal profile of the city, extending in the form of a narrow triangular strip of land by the Danube (see Figure 5.8). This territory encompasses parts of the administrative ´ jpest (no. IV), Angyalfo¨ld (no. XIII) and Lipo´tva´ros (no. V). districts of U These three neighbourhoods provide a condensed sample of the broader historical and geographic contingencies of social segregation in Budapest, because they constitute a transition zone between the affluent hills of Buda – located to the west of the Danube – and the industrialized, densely populated flatlands of Pest, towards the east (Compton 1979). Moreover, the same area also represents a north – south cross-section of the city, because it

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contains the northern edge of the mixed-use residential and commercial urban core of Budapest, as well as a wider range of historical residential and industrial areas in the inner city, and former industrial suburbs. The area is small enough (6 sq. km) to allow for a detailed examination of urban housing developments, while possessing high-resolution census data for the three districts. To achieve a balance of scale, all observations were related to the results of broader studies at the level of the city or region. ´ jpest are The morphological features of Lipo´tva´ros, Angyalfo¨ld and U highly variable, as a result of the historical development of the broader Budapest metropolitan area, which progressed in stages from the centre towards the suburbs. The most densely built-up parcels can be found at the southern end of the study tract, which comprises massive multi-storey apartment buildings, set around paved courtyards (see Figure 5.9). Their outer facades envelop the rectangular street grid, while the ground floors are occupied by shops and offices. Most authors classify this area within the urban core of Budapest, as it lies inside the first ring of streets encircling the historic centre of the city (Compton 1979).

Figure 5.9 The district of Lipo´tva´ros extends across the northern part of the historical urban core of Budapest. It contains a mixture of commercial buildings and residential space in addition to a range of services and public areas. Much of the area has seen re-development and improvement, though not at the scale seen in some other ECE urban capitals such as Prague or Ljubljana (photo by the author).

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Beyond the central parts of Pest, land-use becomes more diverse as one enters the inner-city areas of Vizafogo´ and Angyalfo¨ld, where residential, industrial, commercial and recreational functions are densely intertwined. Nevertheless, industrial land-uses dominate the area, with a fifth of Budapest’s industrial workers employed here. However, apart from the wide variety of industrial buildings (which in 1992 employed 70 per cent of the ´ jpest also contains several busy commercial streets in district’s population) U the local district centre, whose public spaces are lined with large residential buildings and shops. This vibrant area is surrounded by quiet residential quarters with small family homes, many of which have been built to a lowerthan-average standard, for Budapest terms (Kok and Kova´cz 1999). The ´ jpest are fringed by a set of socialist-era residential estates outskirts of U (mostly from the 1970s), which, as in other peripheral parts of the city, are in the form of multi-storey prefabricated apartment buildings. ´ jpest, Angyalfo¨ld and Lipo´tva´ros display contrasting The districts of U demographic features, despite occupying a small territory. A closer look at 1970– 90 population change data, as well as the structural demographic indicators for 1990 (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992), shows several distinct micro-patterns of population growth and distribution. In general, the study area can be divided into four groups. The first of these is represented by Lipo´tva´ros and U´jlipo´tva´ros, which were not very different from any central urban district of a western European city. There was a stagnation of population growth, mainly due to high mortality rates and ageing, rather than out-migration (Compton 1979: 468). At the same time, the shares of active earners and dependent children within the total population were less than 40 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively, indicating that these were some of the demographically oldest areas of Budapest. Moreover, the average household in both districts had 2.1 members, indicating that the second ´ jlipo´tva´ros, demographic transition was already well underway. Lipo´tva´ros, U and the housing estates by the Danube (up to the Hotel Therm) had some of the highest growth rates of highly educated inhabitants in the whole of Budapest, as evidenced by the 1.5 times increase in their share of the population since 1970 (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992). Population loss, ageing and low fertility rates also dominated the heavily ´ jpest, Angyalfo¨ld and industrialized suburbs of southern and western U Vizafogo´. At the end of communist central planning, this was demonstrated by the small size of resident households (2.2 persons on average) and the relatively low population shares of active earners and children (45 per cent and 17 per cent on average, respectively). The low rate of growth among highly educated residents (1.1 times since the 1970s) indicated the prevalence of unskilled labour (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992).

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Figure 5.10 The housing estate of Ka´poszta´smegyer consists entirely of prefabricated buildings, which largely remain in the same state in which they were built (photo by Vastalicska).

The inhabitants of the third group of areas – the socialist housing estates of ´ jpest, Ka´poszta´smegyer and north U´jlipo´tva´ros (see Figure 5.10) – south U were more likely to be active earners with children (with a 54 per cent mean population share), high-level graduates, or members of larger households (2.6 members on average) than any of the other districts within the study area. Population growth in these areas has exceeded 200 per cent since the 1970s, because the local prefabricated panel housing estates were considered prestigious at the time they were built. Their demographic structure is also a product of socialist policies, which failed to allocate these dwellings to those who needed them most, because ‘merits surpassed social criteria in the allocation process’ (Kova´cs 1992:165). A fourth demographic type is represented by the diminishing population ´ jpest. In general, the inhabitants of this of the old suburban quarters of west U district were more economically active than in Lipo´tva´ros (the share of active earners within the resident population exceeded 46 per cent), but the educational level was much lower (the ratio of university-level graduates fell by 25 per cent from 1970 to 1990). Both the average household size and the ratio of child-age dwellers were similar to the non-panel housing estate parts of the inner city, as these figures reached two persons and 15 per cent,

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´ jpest had a respectively. However, at 4,000 persons per sq. km, western U significantly higher population density than the industrial parts of the inner city (where this ratio barely exceeded 1,000). The most densely inhabited areas (with more than 30,000 persons per sq. km) were located in the transition zone between the urban core and the inner city, as well as the socialist housing estates throughout the study area (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992). The residential housing stock displayed an even greater range of spatial and structural segregation. In terms of the pace of construction, the largest increase in dwellings between 1970 and 1990 can be observed in the innercity and suburban housing estates. This figure exceeded 50 per cent, in contrast to all other areas, which have experienced a decline of approximately 20 per cent. The municipality of U´jpest managed to collect a higher-thanaverage amount of local taxes, more than 40 per cent of which came from new construction. This is another indicator of the accelerated urbanization of the area (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1994a, 1994b). More recently, Zoltan Kova´cs (2009) has found low levels of poverty and public housing, and high rates of ‘flats with enterprises’ in Lipo´tva´ros in particular (the eastern part of ´ jlipo´tva´ros has ‘medium level’ poverty rates, while conversions of dwellings U from residential to business use in the area are lower than in the urban core itself). The two areas – and particularly Lipo´tva´ros – are also notable for the high level of building renovation and new housing construction (the share of newly built, renovated or largely renovated residential buildings since 1989 ranges between 20 and 75 per cent, with the gradient generally increasing as one moves south, towards the city centre), although parts of Lipo´tva´ros – particularly its western part – have buildings that have seen very little or no renovation (up to 60 per cent of dwellings: see Kova´cs et al. 2013). Overall, the process has been driven by the influx of better-off households into the inner city (ibid.). Methods The principal aim of my field research in Budapest, undertaken in 2011 and 2013 following a pilot study in 1999, was to investigate the changing patterns of social and environmental segregation in the city, through in-depth interviews with 10 households living in the case study areas – approached with the aid of personal contacts – as well as eight local experts (decisionmakers, civil society activists, entrepreneurs). Just as in the other three studies, the interviews were recorded and transcribed, having not lasting more than three hours each. I was interested to know how the spatial structure of the human, built and natural components of the urban ecosystem at the onset of the transition had been transformed by everyday household practices and

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emergent urban residential inequalities. I placed this investigation within a literature review that focused on the qualitative features and temporal trends of urban spatial ecological differentiation in post-socialism, as well as a survey of policy strategies relating to the social and environmental problems embedded in the given spatial context.

Case study cities (IV): Skopje, Macedonia Skopje is the capital city of the Republic of Macedonia – a country of 2 million people and a total area of 25,713 sq. km. Macedonia is a former Yugoslav republic, having declared independence in 1991. At that stage, it possessed a well-developed urban network linked by relatively good-quality transport and utility infrastructures, alongside a corpus of technologically outdated heavy industry. But infrastructural service provision for approximately 30 per cent of the population that lived in rural areas was generally well below standard. Many of these problems stem from the policies of the Yugoslav period, which prioritized the development of the industrial sector, as well as the construction of large-scale energy, transport and telecommunications infrastructures. The civil wars in other parts of the former Yugoslavia had a major impact on the Macedonian economy during the early years of the post-socialist transition. The loss of traditional markets in other Yugoslav republics implied that the majority of large industrial enterprises – whose joint output constituted 42 per cent of Macedonian GDP in 1989 – were forced to either scale down or completely stop their operations, resulting in massive redundancies, structural inefficiencies, and the maintenance of socialist-era ‘soft budget constraints’. The mobilization of human and fixed capital by foreign investment was hampered by the political instability of the region (Stojmilov 1995). Economic recovery ensued only in the late 1990s, though in an erratic manner. Although growth was facilitated by persistent macroeconomic stability (due to the firm control on economic policy exercised by the World Bank and IMF), it was interrupted by the Kosovo crisis in 1999, as well as a brief armed conflict with the ethnic Albanian-dominated ‘National Liberation Army’ in 2001. But the economy quickly rebounded after these events, with annual GDP growth averaging 4 per cent. Becoming a candidate country for both NATO and the EU during the 2000s aided Macedonia’s stabilization. The widespread political consensus with regard to joining these institutions, as well as the powerful role of the two Bretton Woods institutions in the formulation of state economic policy during the 1990s, means that the country’s post-socialist transformation has been guided by neoliberal principles and ideologies. One of the most prominent consequences of this situation has been the rapid privatization of

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state-owned enterprises, as well as the inability of the country’s public administration to formulate and implement effective urban planning and social welfare policies (Bouzarovski 2011). History The earliest evidence of human habitation in Skopje has been traced back to 4000 BC , although the first records of systematic settlement at the present site of the city date from the fourth century BC . It came under Roman rule in 148 BC – a period associated with the founding of the ancient city of Scupi, which, however, was rapidly abandoned following a cataclysmic earthquake that destroyed most of the urban centres in the region in 518 AD . The area was subsequently settled by Slavonic tribes migrating from the north, while coming under Byzantine rule. The city became the capital of the Serbian Empire of Stefan Dusˇan in 1346, only to come under Turkish Ottoman rule in 1392, three years after the nearby Battle of Kosovo (Ajdinski et al. 1976; ¨ sku¨b) for Popovski 1968). The Ottomans, who ruled the city (then renamed U another five centuries, radically transformed its urban morphology, constructing numerous mosques, markets, public baths and caravanserais, while failing to rebuild the city’s Christian churches after they were destroyed in yet another catastrophic earthquake in 1555. Skopje’s fortune saw a rapid downturn in 1689, when the Austrian general Enea Silvio Picollomini burnt the city to the ground, following a prolonged campaign against the Ottoman army in the Balkans. The city was subsequently plagued by economic deprivation and political instability that reduced its 60,000-strong population to 5,000 inhabitants by the beginning of the early nineteenth century. But the revival of old trading routes and improved economic relations with western Europe allowed Skopje to gradually regain its importance during the decades that followed. The city centre began to lose some of its Ottoman architectural and morphological features thanks to construction of numerous neoclassical buildings in the urban core, accompanied by the emergence of planned suburbs along a grid pattern on the greenfields on the southern bank of the river Vardar. The establishment of railway links with Istanbul (via Thessaloniki, in 1873) and western Europe (via Belgrade, in 1888) further accelerated Skopje’s economic development. At the same time, the influx of a large Slavonic population from the rural hinterland allowed the city’s emergent merchant class to assume an increasingly Christian character (Ajdinski et al. 1976; Asim 2005; Popovski 1968). Skopje reverted to Serbian rule after the Second Balkan War in 1913, only to be incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later: Kingdom of Yugoslavia) in 1918, after a four-year Bulgarian occupation.

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In 1929, it became the administrative capital of the ‘Vardarska Banovina’ – Yugoslavia’s territorially largest and fourth most populous province – which further hastened its growth: the city’s population culminated at c.80,000 in 1939. The decades preceding World War II were also marked by a radical transformation of the city’s physical landscape under the influence of Serbian urban planning, which led to the demolition of a number of major structures from the Ottoman period, despite leaving much of the old urban core intact (Popovski 1965). Following World War II, Skopje became the capital of the southernmost constituent unit of the communist-run Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia: the People’s Republic of Macedonia. This yet again transformed the face of the city in an unprecedented manner, due to the aggressive policy of rapid industrialization and modernization pursued by national and urban authorities. Skopje’s development was dramatically interrupted by the catastrophic earthquake that struck the city on 26 July 1963, killing over 1,000 of its inhabitants and injuring a further 3,000 (Ajdinski et al. 1976). The earthquake also rendered 100,000 of the city’s residents homeless, while destroying 80 per cent of the building stock. In one of the few examples of concerted action at this level of governance, the United Nations General Assembly took a political lead in spearheading the rebuilding of Skopje, which was soon declared an ‘international city of solidarity’. This resulted in significant global interest and aid toward the reconstruction process, as governments, citizens and humanitarian organizations from over 80 countries contributed to the mitigation of the earthquake’s consequences. This, the decade after the earthquake saw, inter alia, the construction of 35,500 new dwellings, supplemented by 4,250 private family homes built by Skopje inhabitants with their own private funds. Jakim Petrovski (2004) has estimated that the reconstruction process cost approximately US$980 million in 1963 terms, which was equivalent to c.15 per cent of Yugoslavia’s GNP in 1963, and up to US$3 billion in 2003 terms. But public finance gradually started to dwindle during the 1970s, which led to the downscaling – and in most cases, cessation – of construction activities aimed at implementing the development provisions of post-earthquake reconstruction policies. Key features The rapid post-war expansion of the city’s manufacturing base resulted in the construction of sizeable steel, glass-working, metal refining, oil processing, cement, chemical, vehicle assembly, pharmaceutical and food industries, turning Skopje into Macedonia’s economic powerhouse. As a result, over a third of all jobs in the city’s host region remained in the industrial sector throughout the 1990s and 2000s, despite the downsizing and factory closures induced by

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the post-communist economic transition (Vlada na Republika Makedonija 2009: 29). However, the loss of industrial employment during this period was, to a certain extent, compensated by the expansion of the service sector, which has been mainly represented by construction, retail, trade and finance. Currently, Skopje hosts more than 80 per cent of the country’s banking industry, with total assets exceeding e3.5 billion. About half of Macedonia’s GDP is contained in the city’s host region, partly thanks to its ability to attract almost 90 per cent of all new investment in the country (http://utrinski.mk/? ItemID¼042878EEFE04054DBFA4D3BEE5B9BB10). Still, the official unemployment rate in the city remains above 30 per cent (State Statistical Office 2012). According to the latest (2002) census, Skopje has a population of 506,926; however, the de facto population of the city may reach 800,000 people, according to some of the higher estimates (see, for example, Kolar-Panov et al. 2007: 1960). Skopje’s intense demographic growth over the past six decades – as noted above, the city had 80,000 inhabitants in 1939 – was mainly fuelled by intense dynamics of rural-to-urban in-migration during the 1960s and 1970s (Institut za informatika 2006). Migrants from the entire southern half of Yugoslavia moved to the Skopje metropolitan area as a result of improved employment opportunities in its rapidly enlarging industrial sector, coupled with the availability of cheap housing. As a result Skopje’s population had already exceeded the post-earthquake projections by at least 50,000 residents in the early 1980s. The resulting shortage of dwellings transpired despite the fact that the total residential stock increased from approximately 37,000 homes in the years before the earthquake to more than 100,000 in the early 1980s (Home 2007). Skopje’s governing authorities have struggled to formulate a coherent and functional urban management policy for the city, in part due to the specific character of its territorial and administrative organization. The metropolitan area of Skopje extends across ten municipalities, which represent the basic units of local government in the country. Despite falling under the remit of the unitary local authority that roughly corresponds to the metropolitan area, the municipalities have individual powers to regulate a number of spheres of ‘local significance’, such as urban planning, education, and municipal services. In many ways, therefore, the municipalities are more powerful than the city of Skopje itself, since they exert influence over a much wider range of affairs, even if they cannot regulate issues of broader concern. Efforts by successive governments to change this unwieldy and convoluted division of competences through legislative reform have been unsuccessful to date, mainly as a result of the peculiar balance of power among different levels of governance that it has created (Rexallari 2008). Their efforts have been additionally hampered by

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Figure 5.11 Salient features of Skopje, including the locations of the study areas (map by the author).

the generally poor state of local government in Macedonia, which has been one of the most fiscally and politically centralized states in Europe (European Stability Initiative 2002). The poor co-ordination of local competences and power interests is visibly reflected in the urban landscape of the city (see Figure 5.11), which has seen the emergence of multiple struggles and contradictions. Skopje’s urban core centre and compact urban areas around it – mainly dating from the Ottoman period – have seen a dramatic process of residential infill and upgrading, often implemented without proper planning controls (Figure 5.12). In such areas, the older stratum of housing is being quickly replaced with new collective apartment buildings, office blocks and commercial uses. Many such neighbourhoods have become attractive for well-off households, particularly in areas bordering Mt Vodno in the southern part of the city, which already had a high social status during communism. Post-earthquake suburbs consisting of prefabricated family homes – built en masse thanks to in-kind assistance from various donor countries – have also seen the upgrading of their residential stock through horizontal and vertical extensions (Figure 5.13), and there is an active process of suburban sprawl – both industrial and residential – at the outskirts of the city. The areas between the outskirts and the compact city core contain a mix of industrial uses, Ottoman-era slums and housing estates dating from the postwar period, especially from the decades following the earthquake. While many such districts – particularly those located in the northern and eastern

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Figure 5.12 Skopje’s older urban quarters are undergoing rapid processes of housing infill and densification, with little planning control and oversight (photo by the author).

parts of the city – have been subject to further out-migration and decline, others have managed to maintain their residential significance. In addition to seeing the construction of new apartment blocks, such areas have also been subject to the emergence of ‘apartment building extensions’ (ABEs) to individual apartments, mainly built with the aid of separate construction frames constructed alongside the external perimeter of the apartment blocks. Study site The district of ‘Karposh IV’ in the western part of the city embodies the recent urban development of Skopje, as it contains 29 five-storey buildings that are frequently encased by ABEs. The blocks are built entirely from prefabricated panels that were put together in a specialized factory donated by the Soviet Union after the 1963 earthquake (Figure 5.13). The blocks, which resemble similar structures found throughout provincial cities in the FSU, have generally suffered from a lack of maintenance and investment since their construction in the early 1970s. The expansion of ABEs in this part of the housing stock may thus have contributed to its continued vitality. The district also contains 26 taller (7- to 9-storey) apartment blocks built in the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, in addition to two shopping centres, one office development and a primary school. The apartment buildings that belong to this group do not consist of prefabricated panels, and are thus populated by better-

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Figure 5.13 Many of the five-storey prefabricated panel apartment buildings in the district of Karposh IV have been extended via vertical additions (photo by the author).

off households due to the higher price of their constituent flats. They are located at the periphery of the district, where one can also find the two shopping centres (both constructed in the 1990s) although the significantly older primary school is at the heart of the neighbourhood. Given its specific combination of morphological and social features, then, the built environment of Karposh IV can be said to be broadly representative of the urban tissue in similar prefabricated panel housing estates in Skopje. This is despite the fact that – according to anecdotal evidence, at least – it is generally seen as one of the more upscale neighbourhoods of this kind, where the social mix is generally skewed towards middle-income households. Methods Since the primary objective of my field research in this city was to explore the articulations of housing dynamism with respect to a very specific urban phenomenon – ABEs – I relied on a methodology that combined a questionnaire survey with household ethnographies and interviews with decision-makers and experts. In order to undertake the survey, I knocked on the doors of all apartments with ABEs in Karposh IV during the summer of 2008, having previously established that there are 776 such dwellings in the district (either completed or under construction). The results of the questionnaire survey, to which I received 290 responses, are discussed in detail in Bouzarovski et al. (2011). In this book, more attention is paid to the

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evidence gathered via 15 ethnographic interviews with households living in apartments with ABEs (six in 2008, six in 2010, and three in 2014), aimed at exploring some of the survey findings in further depth. The interviewed households were not of a particular type, having included a wide range of social, demographic and housing situations. I was interested in finding out their housing histories, socio-economic circumstances, residential preferences and attitudes towards ABEs, while scrutinizing their experience of everyday life in relation to the extensions’ material and symbolic dimensions. Just as in Gdan´sk, the interviews took place in the respondents’ homes, and lasted between two and three hours (I tape-recorded and later transcribed them as well). I also interviewed five decision-makers from the city of Skopje, which allowed me to scrutinize various legal, regulatory and policy-related aspects of the ABE phenomenon and home improvements more generally.

A brief methodological note The text that follows features personal information – including family biographies, apartment plans and direct quotes – from interviewees in the four cities. In order to protect their privacy, names have either been omitted or changed; in the latter, I have used pseudonyms whose first letter corresponds to the name of the particular interviewee’s host city.

CHAPTER 6 ALLIANCES: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN PEOPLE AND BUILDINGS

As I pointed out in Chapter 4, urban resilience to social change is, first and foremost, predicated on the ability of the technological frame of inner-city dwellings to demonstrate interpretive flexibility in relation to the changing social and spatial makeup of society. However, the theoretical literature on the subject indicates that the development of a particular technological frame between people and buildings may proceed at the benefit and/or detriment of either party. It is precisely in situations where buildings are unable to effectively ‘bind’ themselves with the human actors that require their use – or form an operating alliance of some kind – that their continued survival becomes endangered. In other words, buildings have to constantly ‘search for allies’ in order to continue functioning within changing sets of external conditions. In this chapter, I explore some of the ways in which such associations have functioned through history in the different case study districts. I also investigate their present operation, which has allowed for the creation of new alliances in some instances, and the breakage of existing ones in others. The chapter applies the social-ecological resilience approach to such dynamics, by exploring the manner in which ‘building events’ that precipitate the creation or destruction of linkages between built and social formations in the context of the residential environment of the home allow their host systems to ‘flip’ into alternative steady states. Of crucial importance in this context, I would argue, is the notion of functional flexibility, which determines how buildings ‘speak’ to their human users under different external conditions. Therefore, the broader purpose of the chapter is to provide a more elaborate theorization

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and operationalization of the building event within the context of the functional flexibility of the constructed environment, while using the relationship between resilience and technological frame as a basis for a broader interrogation of the articulations of flexibility within the built environment of the home. The chapter shifts between scales when exploring the transformation of the residential housing stock of the inner city: although information about the weaving of different social and technical networks around individual dwellings is derived mainly from household interviews, archival information and building plans, the examination of the reasons for their emergence and subsequent operation is placed within the wider context of neighbourhood change in the case study districts. Rather than developing a narrative around any individual building, I treat the housing stock of the inner city as a collective entity, providing a joint account of the types of issues that its associated material and social actants have faced. Despite the inherent dangers that meso-level generalization brings, such thinking is premised upon the suggestion that a cumulative capture on the inner city can help bring out the formation and destruction of heterogeneous assemblages in a more effective manner (Bouzarovski 2009a). Most of the chapter adopts an historical exploration in developing its analysis, since the setting of technological frames is intimately linked with the wider development of urban areas over time. It focuses on Wrzeszcz, Zaspa, Nowy Port, Karposh IV and Sˇisˇka, where the construction of complexes of residential stocks has stemmed from the dynamism of their host cities during particular time periods, associated with an accelerated circulation of building materials, economic capital and institutional regulations. While being locally embedded, such flows have also been intimately connected with, and originated from, wider regional, national and transnational contexts. They have also influenced the manner in which the urban tissue functions with regard to current social formations, which is the second focal point of the chapter. Having described the evolution of builtsocial relations, I explore the various functions that allow residential buildings to continue to provide relevant social, environmental and cultural services. There is a special focus on the affective connections that allow them to exist even in situations where their material role has diminished.

Setting the technological frame The technological frames that form the basis for the current existence of built structures in the four study cities were established in different time periods. Even though their host city is not the oldest among the group of surveyed

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metropolitan areas (both Ljubljana and Skopje occupy sites that have featured urban settlements for significantly longer periods of time), two of Gdan´sk’s urban districts – Wrzeszcz and Nowy Port – contain the oldest coherent large-scale building ensembles among all case study areas. This is primarily attributable to their proximity to the historical core of the city, which has acted as a focal point for the in-migration of capital and people not only from the wider Pomeranian region, but the Baltic Sea, Poland and other parts of Europe more broadly. The attractiveness of the area has largely stemmed from its role as the principal port in this part of the Baltic sea ever since the days of the Hanseatic league in the fifteenth century (To¨lle 2008). The economic prosperity, population mobility and access to major trading routes associated with the port greatly benefited the development of the two districts, bringing in both working-class households from the surrounding areas as well as wealthier bourgeois families from further afield. In their entirety, such processes helped create the population pressure and housing demand that led to the expansion of building activities in Wrzeszcz Dolny and Nowy Port alike, as well as their incorporation into the city of Gdan´sk. Even though the earliest references about settlement in the area date back to 1263, the built stock that constitutes the current urban tissue of Wrzeszcz Dolny mainly originates from the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, when the district became one of Gdan´sk’s most vibrant economic hubs. This was mainly thanks to the establishment of a wide range of industrial plants in the area. They included a large brewery and several distilleries, which, like the remainder of the district, were predicated on the presence of the Strzyz˙a River (Strießbach in German) that rises in the moraine hills to the west of the district. The river was the focal point for the construction of various farms, mills and – later – burgher houses on this site throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to its physical geography, the expansion of the district at the end of the nineteenth century was predated by several key socio-political events and developments, starting from the construction, in 1768, of the paved Great Avenue (Große Allee) as a result of the efforts of Daniel Gralath, Gdan´sk’s proactive mayor. In a symbolic effort to demonstrate the area’s global reach, four rows of lime trees imported from Holland were planted along the Avenue (Figure 6.1). Wrzeszcz Dolny received a further boost in 1814, when it was administratively incorporated within the city limits of Gdan´sk. The early decades of the nineteenth century were thus marked by a rapid urban social transformation of the quarter, which started to attract workers employed in the numerous industrial workshops that sprang up in it. At the same time, the prosperous villages in the area located west of the Great Avenue – also known

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Figure 6.1 The Große Allee as it appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/ , tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

as Gorny, or ‘Upper’ Wrzeszcz – saw the replacement of burgher courts and farmsteads with luxurious villas inhabited by bourgeois in-migrants from inner-city Gdan´sk who sought to benefit from the locale’s fresh air and proximity to the forested moraine hills (Figure 6.2). The emergent sociospatial division between Dolny and Gorny Wrzeszcz was further reinforced in 1870, when a railway line connecting Gdan´sk to the Baltic sea coast was constructed along the boundary between the two areas, together with a new railway station (Orłowicz, 1921; Samp, 1992; Stankiewicz and Szremer, 1959). Two years later, Wrzeszcz Dolny benefited from the expansion of horse trams, which were replaced by electric ones in 1896. In their entirety, these developments resulted in the construction of an entire new street network accompanied by densely knit multi-storey tenement blocks in the secessionist and neoclassical styles (see Figure 6.3), allowing the district to reach a population of 53,000 inhabitants in 1929 (Rada Miasta Gdan´ska 2005). Nowy Port has followed a similar path of urban development, even if it has not attracted the scale of investment and prosperity seen in Wrzeszcz: the first historical references about it can be traced back to the thirteenth century, when the current site of the district was occupied by a fishing village at the mouth of the Vistula River. The settlement began to expand under Prussian rule, following the excavation of a new river canal (Neufahrwasser) in 1675. The first school was established in 1785 – with the first road to the city centre of Gdan´sk being constructed 20 years later – although it was only in 1807 that Nowy Port became an official Gdan´sk district. Following a change in the river’s course in 1840, the canal was further expanded and dredged, increasing

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Figure 6.2 Wrzeszcz’s central square as it appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/,tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik. htm.

Figure 6.3 A German map of the northern districts of Gdan´sk from 1930, indicating the morphology of the city; the empty area to the north of Wrzeszcz (then ‘Langfuhr’) is now occupied by the Zaspa housing estates (this is indicated by the black circle). Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/,tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

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Figure 6.4 The river port along the Vistula River canal in Nowy Port at the beginning of the twentieth century; the landmark Nowy Port lighthouse (dating from 1893) and some of the old fishermen’s houses are visible in the background. Source: http://www.chem.univ.gda.pl/, tomek/Gdan´skprzewodnik.htm.

the area’s importance in facilitating access to the port. The expansion of Nowy Port received a further boost in 1867, thanks to the construction of a train line connecting its centre to the main railway station in Gdan´sk. Inhabited mostly by seamen and workers from the large industrial plants situated by the river, the area flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, attracting as many as 30,000 tourists per year thanks to its seaside location. Most of Nowy Port’s richly ornamented secessionist-style tenement buildings date from this era; they were constructed in the immediate proximity of the old fishermen’s houses (see Figure 6.4). Unlike Wrzeszcz and Nowy Port, Sˇisˇka still contains remnants of the prenineteenth-century rural settlements that predated its modern urban grid. The fourteenth-century stone church of St Bartholomew the Apostle is one of the few remaining vestiges of the villages of Spodnja (Lower) and Zgornja (Upper) Sˇisˇka that occupied the site until their gradual incorporation into the expanding urban fringe of Ljubljana. The availability of fresh water from the Ljubljanica River, coupled with the development of railway and road links with Vienna, Trieste and Zagreb made the area highly attractive for industrial development already in the late nineteenth century. As a result, it soon became a chaotic patchwork of agricultural farmland, country homes and industrial buildings, albeit the former was rapidly lost as a result of the residential densification and industrial expansion that accelerated further in the twentieth century (see Figures 6.5 and 6.6).

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Figure 6.5

Lower Sˇisˇka in 1913. Source: www.stara-siska.si.

Figure 6.6

The centre of Sˇisˇka after World War I. Source: www.stara-siska.si.

Seen through the lens of technological frames, the built stocks of tenement buildings in Nowy Port, Wrzeszcz Dolny and Sˇisˇka were the product of a specific amalgamation of economic and political interests, design approaches and planning paradigms that brought together people and materials from their hinterlands and beyond. In their entirety, the networks of forces and ‘things’ implicated in these changes transformed the quiet rural settlements that previously occupied the sites of the three districts into thriving inner-city

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neighbourhoods. At the moment of their creation – ranging from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries – the buildings in all three areas had to enlist a wide range of allies to aid their existence, ranging from the city authorities to the local workers who benefited from the economic prosperity and development of the two areas. Thanks to this assemblage of interests, the three neighbourhoods and their built stocks survived and flourished well into the twentieth century. The manner in which building events have shaped the resilience of the study districts’ technological frames is also visible in Leopold Town (Lipo´tva´ros) – the oldest part of the Budapest study area, and one of the first parts of the city developed in a consistent and planned manner. The first built structures – opulent classicist palaces – were built in the late eighteenth century, when the city of Pest began to expand beyond its mediaeval walls (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992). Later they were largely pulled down and replaced by the present eclectic and neoclassical buildings. In the nineteenth century, the city expanded further north, resulting in the residential district of ´ jlipo´tva´ros (New Leopold Town), which soon became a Jewish middle-class U neighbourhood. The boundary between the two districts was marked by the Great Boulevard (also known as Szent Istva´n ko¨rut, or Nagyko¨rut), constructed according to the Master Plan of 1887, beyond which the late nineteenth–early twentieth-century district of U´jlipo´tva´ros (New Leopold Town). The architectural monotony of the tenement buildings framing the boulevard was refreshed by the Vı´gsı´nhaz Theatre (which combines early eclecticism with elements of romanticism), the cast-iron romantic-style Western Railway station, and the neoclassical Ja´szal Mari Square at the foot of Margit bridge (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992). The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw rapid industrial ´ jpest, immediately north of growth in the districts of Angyalfo¨ld and U ´Ujlipo´tva´ros. Some of Budapest’s largest industrial enterprises – the Ganz Shipyard and Crane Factory, the La´ng Engineering Works, Tungsram, as well as several leather plants – were located along Va´ci u´tca (the main road artery heading north), the old river port (Te´li kiko¨to˝) and the Ra´kos stream. This pattern of development created vast areas of interspersed family homes and factories radiating from Va´ci u´tca, resulting in a ‘real early twentieth-century industrial zone’, where ‘additional three- to four-storey blocks have been wedged into the spacious courtyards of the old factory buildings, inhabited by old working class dynasties’, employed ‘for generations in the Hug Steel and La´ng Engineering Works’ (Enyedi 1990b: 106). This is despite the fact that ´ jpest – otherwise a typical ‘former industrial suburb’ (Compton 1979: 475) U – had previously followed an independent pattern of development. This area, whose Hungarian name means ‘New Pest’, was created on a manorial estate in

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1839. Its population increased from 700 in 1850 to more than 150,000 in 1909, thanks to the parallel expansion of industrial uses at its southern boundary and the construction of new transport links with the centre of the city, including a railway, horse tramway and ferry service along the Danube. The working-class history of the inner-city area north of Budapest city ´ jpest’s central role in the violent centre is evidenced by Angyalfo¨ld and U workers’ ‘Red Thursday’ strike on 23 May 1912. During the strike in Angyalfo¨ld, the workers constructed barriers ‘as high as three floors, by piling up street cars and loaded carriages’ (Bender 1994: 103). The rapid demographic growth of the two areas was further accelerated in the inter-war years, when ‘the world economic crisis, and later the pre-war economic boom, generated mass movements towards the suburbs’ (Kova´cs 1994: 1084).

World War II and after: A temporal change in the buildings’ ‘conditions of possibility’ Although Wrzeszcz Dolny and Nowy Port largely avoided the war destruction that devastated most of Gdan´sk, many buildings were nonetheless heavily damaged by the intense fighting. The city’s ethnic landscape underwent a major shift as a result of the in-migration of about 150,000 ethnic Poles from former Polish territories that became parts of the Soviet Union, preceded by the expulsion of Gdan´sk’s 350,000 strong ethnic German population (To¨lle 2008). Underlying all of these transformations was the political change associated with the city’s incorporation in communist Poland, which saw the establishment of central planning and Communist party rule, governed by Soviet political ideologies. In its entirety, therefore, the war disrupted the intricate tapestry of material and social networks that had sustained the progress of the housing stock in Wrzeszcz Dolny and Nowy Port. In this context, it is worth pointing out that the process that ‘displaced’ residential buildings from their established networks and created a disruption warranting the formation of new hybrid entanglements was entirely temporal: it was the movement from one type of economic– political setting to another that allowed buildings to change their ‘conditions of possibility’, and extend their ‘network statements and translations’ (Hinchliffe 2000: 224) across space. The emergence of a new set of external political and economic circumstances meant that tenement buildings in Nowy Port and Wrzeszcz Dolny had to create a whole new set of allies and networks in order for their technological frame to survive in a radically different socio-economic environment. Their functional blankness forced social and material actants to form new heterogeneous assemblages, due to, among other contingencies, the

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new set of circumstances in the housing market and changing relations of economic production. The widespread presence of non-market building practices under conditions of low residential mobility meant that the development trajectories of the two districts gradually began to converge under communism. Broadly speaking, both districts stagnated in demographic and economic terms as a result of persistent under-investment and the slow out-migration of higher-income households to newly built housing estates at the outskirts of the city (Tusk et al. 1996: 199). They became parts of what is commonly termed the inner-city ‘transition zone’ (Sailer-Fliege 1999), where urban land was left to lie ‘fallow’ by the authorities through lack of investment, and a quiet policy of discouraging households to inhabit the residential stock that was suffering from a persistent lack of repair. The constant shortage of available dwellings, combined with the inefficiency of communist central planning, meant that once they had settled in their allocated or squatted dwelling, households had very few opportunities to relocate to a new home. With formal housing transactions firmly controlled by the state, moving house through official channels normally involved cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and long waiting lists. In such circumstances, in-place structural alterations of the dwelling stock became the only available method for residential mobility. They resulted in a situation whereby the buildings gradually came to host a wide range of ‘alternative’ building and economic practices. Relying on barter or gift exchanges of building materials and labour provided households with the ability to respond to a demographic event, or make the transition to a new housing episode, without moving to a new home. In response to existing household needs, the buildings enabled the creation of new heterogeneous entanglements (new domestic arrangements, new residential functions), which ultimately helped improve the households’ quality of life and the buildings’ durability. Even the households who had managed to obtain flats through the state system of housing allocations had used informal exchanges and/or barter to achieve residential mobility. For example, Graz˙yna was able to acquire her present 69 sq. m apartment by swapping it for another state-assigned, but better-located flat in the same neighbourhood: Under Communism, every citizen paid a monthly contribution for social housing to the state, which was recorded in a special booklet. If you were lucky enough, after some years you would get a flat ‘of your own’. In 1985, I was allocated an apartment not very far from here; it was in a newly built building. I managed to swap it with the people

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who had this flat [. . .] I liked its location – it was quite central, and close to a school and medical centre. The previous occupants were pensioners; they offered the apartment to me as they did not need so much space anymore, and were no longer fit enough to carry coal from the basement. The flat used to have a coal stove, but later I managed to install central gas heating. Thus, different types of non-market transactions allowed for the articulation of interpretive flexibility in the technological frame of the housing stock. But alternative economic strategies were not the only form of housing practice that ensured the continued viability of the surveyed dwellings: after World War II, illegal squatting allowed residential buildings to create linkages with the recently settled population of the city, prompting the emergence of new building events. Having been badly damaged by the Red Army, most tenement blocks in Nowy Port and Wrzeszcz were spontaneously inhabited by displaced families who arrived in Gdan´sk from territories further east and who were practically homeless up to that point. This prompted the state to become another ally of the residential buildings; faced with major housing shortages, it allocated many of the existing dwellings to the new in-migrants. Later, some of the initial in-migrants moved to larger or more conveniently situated apartments by offering their existing flats to households from other parts of the city or the rural hinterland. One of the most potent illustrations of this situation was provided by Gaja’s personal and housing history. Her family, having been expelled from the city of Lviv (in present-day Ukraine) moved to a 66 sq. m apartment in Wrzeszcz Dolny after the war: ‘it was a very nice flat, but with coal stoves’. After living there for 39 years, she swapped the Wrzeszcz Dolny apartment for a newly built one in Zaspa, a decision that she deeply regretted at the time of the interview. According to her, in the old house there were seven families, living like one big household, but here my neighbours are worse than strangers. I never met such malevolent people as the ones living on this very floor [. . .] I don’t like Zaspa. I was so related and attached to Wrzeszcz, my female neighbours, and the parish. If they would not see me for a day or two, they came immediately to check what happened. Indeed, many interviewees felt that the collective experience of moving to a new set of buildings after a traumatic migratory experience provided them with a sense of community and solidarity, which was further augmented by the need for sharing resources and creating neighbourhood support networks

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in the years of scarcity that followed. It also transpired that the relatively large size and flexible floor plans of the dwellings offered many possibilities for altering the housing stock in line with their changing requirements. This was confirmed by Gabriel, the inhabitant of a twentieth-century terraced block. He emphasized that the structure of the apartment is one of the main factors contributing to his quality of life there: These flats were built for German officers between the two wars, and they are very well planned and constructed. Before World War II there used to be two flats on each floor, which were subsequently halved to make room for four households, but they are still very functional. In our flat we closed the door between the living room and the bedroom in order to create separate rooms for me and my mother [. . .] when I inherit my grandmother’s flat downstairs I will pull down the wall between the two rooms, I would like to have one big space where I can do creative work. The kinds of strategies and solutions that may be used to overcome such difficulties were illustrated by a Nowy Port couple in their mid-80s. The authorities assigned their current flat to them at the end of World War II, when they had to leave their original home in Vilnius (in present-day Lithuania) due to its inclusion in the Soviet Union. The apartment had a very specific room arrangement: it consisted of a living room and a kitchen, with a storage room and a shared toilet in the external staircase. The large room served both as a bedroom and living room, while the entrance was located in the kitchen, which was also a place for preparing and consuming food. Despite the creative use of space, however, this arrangement was still uncomfortable: The toilet is on the lower floor and the stairs are very difficult [. . .] it is hard to climb them, once you are old everything stands in your way [. . .] the layout of the flat is simple but difficult to negotiate. Clearly, households mobilized these relations with the aid of socio-economic networks developed in relation to the functional blankness of the dwelling stock, whose role changed over time to match residential needs. The historical layering of technological frames (which had produced the buildings in the first place) and interpretive flexibility (which allowed the transformation of their roles and uses) led to the emergence of multiple building events that allowed these structures to harness human and non-human allies. I encountered a similar situation in the case of Gabriela’s family, whose two children were no longer living with her and her husband – the son

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1 Bedroom Corridor

Bedroom Corridor

Kitchen

Living room

Kitchen

Living room

2

Figure 6.7 Stylized sketch of the home of Gabriela. (Left) original room plan; (right) changes implemented in response to different demographic events: 1 – illegal conversion of part of the corridor to a bathroom once the flat was occupied; 2 – construction of a partition wall in the living room upon the birth of a second child; the wall was removed after the children moved out (sketch by the author).

moved to the upstairs flat 10 years ago with his wife in anticipation of the birth of their first child, while the 28-year-old daughter now lives and works in London. This family had made several modifications to their 55 sq. m apartment in the centre of Wrzeszcz Dolny during the 1960s and 1970s, including converting part of the corridor into a bathroom (as otherwise they would have had to share one with their neighbours), adding fitted cupboards, and constructing a partition wall in the main living room, ‘to give the children some privacy as they were growing up’ (see Figure 6.7). However, the wall was pulled down after the children left the parental home, allowing them to make the transition into a different housing stage, where the living room was returned to its original function. As Gabriela and her husband pointed out, nearly all their neighbours had illegally added bathrooms to the corridors, while the shared bathrooms in the staircase were now being used for storage. Sˇisˇka, too, experienced similar structural changes after World War II, although they were of a much lesser scale owing to the lack of major physical urban destruction during World War II, as well as the institutionally ‘softer’ nature of Yugoslav socialism, where market-based transactions were present to a significantly greater extent. Also, the district saw the establishment of yet another technological housing frame during the 1950s and 1960s, when new – mainly low-rise and individual – housing was constructed to house the great number of in-migrants from Ljubljana’s rural hinterland. At the same

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time, much of the previous housing stock of the area continued to thrive. As pointed out by Lavra: This building dates from the 1930s – we moved here after the war from a small village in the west of the country, as my husband got a job in a local factory. I think the building had a single owner before that, but then it was nationalized and split up into various apartments in order to house the workers who came here from rural areas and smaller towns. Many of the neighbouring buildings were built then, as well. The post-war period in the Budapest study areas was marked by the construction of several large prefabricated panel housing, interspersed with new parks and recreational areas on the shore of the Danube. One of the most prominent developments from this period is the new Hotel Therm, built in the place of a medicinal bath that was destroyed during the war (Enyedi and Szirmai 1992). The hotel marked the northern boundary of the inner city, beyond which one finds the suburban housing estates that saw the greatest amount of state investment in new housing and industry. This part of the city had previously been subject to an inflow of low-wage unskilled workers from the surrounding agricultural provinces, as a result of which it was often called ‘red’ U´jpest. The district was administratively attached to Budapest after World War II, ‘in part to counterbalance the right-wing bourgeois city’ (Kova´cs 1992: 161). The availability of cheap labour was one of the reasons why the post-war period was marked by the rise of a new area of industrial concentration along the Budapest– Va´c railway line, mainly represented by pharmaceutical and railway repair companies.

The urban development policies of the centrally planned economy: New actants enter the stage The expansion of the industrial base of Poland, Yugoslavia and Hungary, as well as the continued pressure on housing demand created by intensifying rural-to-urban migration and the break-up of traditional household structures prompted all three states to embark on massive house-building programmes throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In Gdan´sk, this was mainly expressed though the construction of a wide belt of housing estates to the north of the historical core of the city. The estates – including Zaspa, which was among the first ones to be built – contained a variety of multi-storey blocks, some of which were more than seven or eight storeys high. The blocks were arranged according to the Soviet ‘micro-rayon’ model, with relatively good access to public transport and concentrations of retail, education, culture

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Figure 6.8 Nowy Port’s prefabricated panel housing buildings can be seen in the background, having been obscured by older built tissues which constitute the urban heart of the district (photo by the author).

and recreational amenities in central axes or points (in Zaspa, one such zone was hosted by the former civilian airport of the city of Gdan´sk). Nowy Port also saw its fair share of newly built housing estates, thanks to the construction of several prefabricated panel multi-storey apartment blocks in the southern part of the district. The area quickly managed to attract new migrants, as some of the newly constructed buildings came to house more than 2,000 tenants each (Figure 6.8). The estates offered modern amenities that were unprecedented in the older housing stock of the city and were seen as a significant improvement of a household’s quality of life, even if it meant severing old social ties and support networks. The effects of relocation on the transformation of everyday lives are illustrated by the experience of Galia, who lived in a 45 sq. m apartment in Zaspa, although she spent most of her life in an old house in the nearby district of Brzez´no, where she worked as a cleaner. In her own words the flat in Brzez´no was a bit larger than this one, but it was very damp, there was mould on the walls, and the toilets were outside. I had to leave because it was designated for demolition because of its poor technical

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condition. Initially, I did not like living here in the blocks of flats, but the standards and utilities are much better here. But I miss the people and social relations. As a result of the poor construction quality and the ubiquitous lack of maintenance, however, large parts of the estates began to deteriorate very quickly. Considering that the general lack of residential mobility also applied to this part of the city as well, it is worth mentioning that most of the households that I interviewed there insisted that such buildings were less adaptable to changing household needs, compared to older tenement buildings and terraced houses. As pointed out by Gajusz, whose household had made major alterations to the home in order to add a separate room for their second daughter, in the socialist housing estates, which consist of prefabricated panels, it is difficult to pull down walls or change the arrangement of rooms. The older buildings are much more flexible. In Skopje, the residential expansion of the city into the rural greenfield site that is presently occupied by the Karposh IV housing estate was mainly a result of the urban development policies that followed the 1963 earthquake. Karposh IV was part of an entire set of similar estates that were built in a continuous zone extending west of the historical urban core. As such, most of the estate was constructed in a period of less than 10 years, and contained only three types of housing blocks – two of which are five-storey prefabricated panel buildings using construction technologies imported from the Soviet Union and locally sourced materials – in addition to a primary school and limited retail facilities (Figure 6.9). The blocks were quickly inhabited by young households and families from other parts of the city and country. According to Katerina: When we moved here the neighbourhood was teeming with children, since almost every apartment was inhabited by a young family. There was a segregation among the blocks – the flats in taller ones that were not in the Russian style were significantly more expensive and much nicer to live in. Sˇisˇka also saw a massive expansion of its housing stock during communism, although the process unfolded in several stages and did not involve the massive and standardized approach that can otherwise be seen in Karposh IV, Nowy Port and Zaspa. The district thus evolved into a diverse combination of

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Figure 6.9 Much of Karposh IV is comprised of five-storey prefabricated apartment buildings constructed during the 1970s, now almost completely covered by external extensions and additions.

housing types – with individual homes prevailing – which allowed the residential stock to form a variety of associations with its users over time. It also resulted in the compression of a wide variety of housing trajectories and everyday life patterns in a relatively small space. ´ jpest became fringed by a set of In the 1970s, the outskirts of U large housing estates, which, as in other peripheral parts of the city, are in the ´ jpest, form of multi-storey prefabricated apartment buildings. As a result, U which ‘only two decades ago had the image of a county township’ (Enyedi 1992: 105) started to represent a complex amalgamation of commercial areas, socialist housing estates, declining factories and suburban family homes. In general, the reviewed evidence indicated that the built stock of the four districts managed to survive and grow in the new set of post-World War II conditions by enrolling an entire new set of associates, consisting of new residents who moved to the area after the war, state housing authorities, as well as a wide range of building materials that helped sustain in-situ residential mobility. In the case of Wrzeszcz Dolny and parts of Sˇisˇka, these materials were mainly provisioned informally and from local sources, while Zaspa and Karposh IV were constructed through centralized state policies. The Budapest study areas contain a combination of all of these dynamics. In all areas, however, building events during Communism were shaped by the manner in which older technological frames embedded and created within the built fabric allowed the environment of the home to be transformed in response to changing household

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needs. In this respect, there were significant differences between dwellings that were constructed in different historical periods, and according to different architectural principles. The design features of the buildings – which embodied different construction approaches, ideologies and systems – interacted with household decisions in the formulation and implementation of housing strategies.

Post-communist urban transformations: When buildings lose allies The process of post-communist social, economic and political change placed the buildings in all case study areas within a new set of external conditions, creating a new burden on the ability of their technological frame to exercise interpretive flexibility. The slow development of housing markets, alongside low housing affordability, meant that housing alterations gained growing importance as a housing improvement option – thus increasing the potential number of allies and the resilience of the dwelling stock. Yet new geographies of difference and differentiation have emerged in response to wider trends in society, particularly due to the fact that many local residents have been unable to implement housing alterations, despite being residentially immobile. Financial problems were the most commonly cited reason for the lack of housing improvements among a large portion of my interviewees in Gdan´sk, Ljubljana and Skopje. For example, although the home of Genowefa’s household was ‘in an extremely poor state, I mean, look, the wallpaper is peeling of the walls’, she did not have the money to make ‘any kind of investment [. . .], plus it doesn’t make any sense to invest in such a dilapidated dwelling’. A similar situation existed in the case of Gaweł’s household, whose two-bedroom flat was in a very poor state of repair at the time of the interview: the windows were old and draughty, and plaster was peeling off the walls. Aside from financial problems, Georgina, who worked as a social counsellor in a school and had to support a family of four, complained that the family’s ability to improve the quality of the flat was also subject to time constraints. She and her three sons had to spend a significant part of the day commuting to, respectively, her jobs and their universities, which were scattered throughout the TriCity agglomeration. One of the most common restrictions on in-place housing investment and improvement stemmed from the lack of clarity of property rights. In addition to council-owned and rented flats, this was often true in situations where dwellings were owned by co-operatives, were legally contested, potentially subject to restitution, or had not been privatized by their occupants. For example, one of the reasons why Gracja’s household was suffering from

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exorbitantly high energy costs stemmed from the fact that they had not upgraded the ageing heating installations and energy insulation in their apartment. They were reluctant to invest in a dwelling that they did not own: ‘We would like to buy it from the council, but our financial means do not allow it at the moment.’ Similarly, Gedeon’s reluctance to undertake housing investment in his Nowy Port apartment was because ‘the process of establishing the legal status of our apartment is still underway’. I encountered a similar situation in the case of Gerald, whose flat was owned by the army – a common situation in Nowy Port due to the district’s traditionally strong military links. Gertruda was in a specific situation in this regard: the dwelling that she lived in was owned by her aunt, who had moved out to her grandmother’s home to take care of her, she is single, has no family of her own and was kind of delegated to help my mother when her health started worsening [. . .] however, we don’t pay her any rent, we are family [. . .] plus we also renovated the flat at our own expense, so there are benefits for both sides. She is also glad that there is somebody living there because in the past a break-in occurred, when it stayed empty for weeks. Nevertheless, they were not planning to undertake any further investment in the home: ‘We will wait until we buy our own place.’ The interview with Gina indicated that the adaptability of dwellings may also be constrained by structural and technical factors. She lived in a tenement building over 100 years old, and in ‘a very bad condition [. . .] roof tiles are falling off, the facade is crumbling, and the basement is in a horrible state’. When describing her own flat, which was at the top of the building, this interviewee pointed out that ‘plaster is peeling off the walls, the roof is leaky’. This is partly because her household had insufficient income for housing investment, as all monetary earnings were provided by her husband, who worked as a plumber. However, the inadequate architectural design of the building was also causing them significant problems. Much of the apartment was taken up by a spacious corridor, which could not be connected to the adjacent living room as the wall between them contained the structural supports of the building. Also, the form of the corridor did not allow for the addition of a bathroom or toilet, which meant that the bathroom was actually located outside the apartment, in the shared staircase. The members of Gerazym’s household experienced similar problems because their flat was

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not very functional [. . .] it should be at least 50 square metres in size [. . .] there’s not much you can do in such a small space [. . .] the everyday living room of our family is very restricted because of this. My field research also indicated that energy infrastructures are able to shape everyday life by virtue of their positionality and structure in the built fabric. They affected domestic energy expenditure, and the ability of households to switch to a different heating system. This issue is related to the broader postcommunist transformation of the everyday lives of eastern and central European households in the domain of heating systems and practices. Basically, the restructuring of energy operations has led to rapid increases in electricity, gas and district heating tariffs over the last 20 years (Buzar 2007b). Household energy prices during communism were heavily subsidized by the state as part of the social policies, industrial strategies and political ideologies of the centrally planned economy. Thus, the post-communist transition has brought to the fore the importance of the associative link between buildings and households in the case of technical networks for energy supply within the built fabric of the home. Patterns of energy expenditure reflect the interactions between ‘inplace’ housing investment and the residential needs of a household, since the lack of thermal insulation (or inability to introduce it due to technical or legal limitations), inadequate heating systems, as well as the mismatch between daily occupancy needs and heating regimes can often have a dramatic effect on a household’s energy expenditures and quality of life. Aside from Karposh IV and Sˇisˇka, this was particularly true in large parts of Nowy Port and some buildings in Dolny Wrzesczcz, where buildings were equipped with coal stoves and not connected to the gas or district heating networks. The households who found the stoves too inconvenient or impractical to use had no option but to rely on electric heating, which is one of the most expensive sources of energy. It is worth noting that the entire district of Karposh IV lacks a gas connection. This is despite the fact that almost all buildings are equipped with district heating, which has become increasingly expensive in recent years, triggering a spate of disconnections (see Figure 6.10). As a result of these conditions, Lena spent more than half of her pension ‘to heat the house, partly because the coal stove is very old and doesn’t to the job’. At the same time, Gaudencja’s energy bills were ‘about 40 per cent of household income because electricity is so expensive’, while Stamen stated that his family’s energy costs were ‘extremely high, more than 60 per cent of earnings, since we have to use electricity to heat the flat’. Similar problems were also present in the buildings whose inhabitants were unable to connect their heating systems to existing gas installations. According to Gerwazy,

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Figure 6.10 The heavy fuel oil-burning plant that supplies Karposh IV with district energy.

‘even though we heat the water with gas, we still use electricity and coal for heating, which raises the costs a lot [. . .] we can’t afford installing gas pipes and stoves.’ Conversely, households who used gas for heating – or were able to switch to it from other fuels – were in a relatively favourable position. This was evidenced by Gavin’s case: his household replaced the old coal stoves with gasfired central heating in the early 1990s, managing to bring down its energy costs by more than 30 per cent. Yet even this group of interviewees had financial difficulties paying their energy bills, as did those who had gas installations for heating, but ‘not enough money to improve the insulation’. The architectural configuration of many buildings often prevented the introduction of new heating systems into the home simply by virtue of the structural rigidity of their technological frame. In this case, the lack of interpretive flexibility limited the range of networks and associations that the buildings could create, in order to ensure their continued viability and survival. According to Geralda, the specific structural features of prefabricated panel blocks – which ‘are very long, they sometimes run for kilometres’ – can heavily influence the type of modifications that could be undertaken in apartments contained within them, since the networked infrastructure inside the buildings (heating, gas, electricity, water, sewage) is also organized in a specific manner (see Figure 6.11). In particular, district heating systems in such buildings follow vertical, rather than horizontal pipes, thus preventing the installation of individual energy consumption

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Figure 6.11 A housing block in Gdan´sk’s district of Nowy Port, just north of Zaspa, known for being one of Europe’s longest. Numerous such structures can be found in the area, albeit they are not as long in Zaspa.

meters for each flat (which were not necessary under Communism because district heating was subsidized). Still, the very fact that most such dwellings were connected to gas, district heating and hot water networks often helped reduce the interviewed households’ energy costs. Greg, who lived in a two-room flat in a prefabricated panel estate in Nowy Port, felt that his heating bills were brought down by the availability of district heat – one of the more affordable methods of obtaining residential thermal comfort in Poland – as well as the fact that he and his wife had extensively improved the wall and window insulation four years ago, after the birth of their daughter. Gosława, who relied on district heating, thought that this was a very comfortable and affordable arrangement, given her and her husband’s old age and limited financial means. She did nevertheless point out that the structure of the building – a pre-war terraced block in the centre of Wrzeszcz Dolny – was probably increasing their running energy costs, especially because of the high ceilings. I found a similar situation in Gilbert’s family, who had recently installed thermostats in their heating system. Despite the numerous positive meanings and uses of home, it also transpired that an individual’s attachment to his or her residential space is often a key driving force of indebtedness and poverty, as the dwellings are too large and difficult to maintain in relation to the housing needs of the respondents. This was particularly true in the case of spacious, turn-of-the

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century flats in Wrzeszcz Dolny, or apartments in socialist-era panel housing in Sˇisˇka and Zaspa. While many such dwellings were difficult to heat in the first place – due to their high ceilings and large rooms – they also suffered from above-average losses of useful warmth through heating installations and the building fabric, due to their poor upkeep and construction quality, particularly in Zaspa. Although most of the energy-related housing problems appeared to be concentrated in apartment buildings, all of the interviewed households consisting of older single women living in detached or semi-detached homes were suffering from energy poverty (a condition where a household is unable to achieve a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home: see Bouzarovski 2014). Linda – who lived in a private detached house at the outskirts of Sˇisˇka – faced such conditions. Her two sons had moved out 10 years ago, and Linda’s husband died in 1995, leaving her alone in the house. The dwelling was of poor structural quality, with thin brick walls and draughty windows. She had decided to heat only one room: the spacious dining/sitting area in the middle of the house, which was equipped with a coal stove. She also used this for cooking and eating, choosing to move into the kitchen only during summer. Of the two bedrooms on the eastern side of the house, only the northern one was used in winter, during occasional weekend visits of her grandchildren. However, the temperature in the heated area during the time of the interview was 17.58C, at an outside temperature of 48C. She did not feel that the sub-optimal level domestic warmth was a problem, ‘if it is cold inside, I’d rather put on more clothes than turn up the heating [. . .] I do not wish to have arrears on my energy bills’. In Wrzeszcz Dolny, one of the more interesting examples was provided by Greta, who lived in a turn-of-the century flat with a total area of 65 sq. m, and three rooms. She received a moderate pension that allowed her to pay her utility bills on time, giving utmost priority to their prompt payment. However, her income was insufficient to cover her energy needs, which were disproportionately large because of the high occupancy rate – she spent most of the day at home – and low efficiency of the building. Although the apartment appeared to be relatively well kept, it was clear that this person had been unable to undertake capital investment, as evidenced by the age of appliances and stoves in the flat. She also tried to minimise the use of district heating, for fear of running into energy debts. In addition, she complained that the heating system was often unable to compensate for the loss of useful warmth through the poorly insulated walls, particularly in the northeastern bedroom, which was at the corner of the building. She had thus decided not to heat that room, choosing to spend her time in the kitchen and living room instead.

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The experiences of such households illustrated some of the mechanisms through which the emergence of poverty and social exclusion is predicated upon the consumption of housing and energy. This is because many of the reasons for the economic difficulties faced by the relevant interviewees resided in the size, structure, and use of their residential quarters. A smaller and more efficient dwelling would have allowed them to reduce their energy bills, leaving a greater amount of disposable income. However, the ability to change their present housing situation was restricted by the structural rigidity of the housing stock that they occupied (for a wider discussion of the mismatch between housing design and housing needs, see Ahrentzen 1997), as well as the unwillingness or inability to move to a different home. As a result of this combination of factors, they found themselves in a housing arrangement that contributes to poverty by stripping them of the necessary income for relocation or housing investment.

‘Illogical’ alliances: Older households and their attachment to home Clearly, the collision of two economic systems in post-communism, accompanied by the rise of poverty and deprivation as well as the deep transformation of urban space, led to a deep restructuring of the agency of built structures and their occupants. Households whose apartments were of aboveaverage size but were unable to implement housing alterations were facing disproportionately high energy bills as a result of the inability to modulate the level of warmth in different rooms in line with their occupancy patterns. In their case, the ‘overconsumption’ of housing hinged upon a specific subjective attachment to the residential environment of the home. In other words, the built stock of the study areas managed to create an alliance with its occupants beyond and above the limitations of the technological frame. It is worth dwelling upon this relationship in further detail, since the interviews indicated that it was particularly strong in the case of pensioner households, which, due to demographic factors, mostly consisted of older women (see Box 6.1). It has been observed in the literature that many eastern and central European households, particularly older persons living alone, are ‘income poor but house rich’ (Schnepf 2007). In other words, the consequence of the discrepancy between below-average social welfare levels, on the one hand, and the aboveaverage housing circumstances of such individuals, on the other hand, has been the use of housing as an asset, compared to other goods, during the postcommunist transition. This is evidenced by the high share of housing expenditure within the total incomes of pensioner households, which has reached as much as 25 per cent in some countries (for example, see SSOR

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Older women in post-communist cities

The urban cores of many ECE cities feature disproportionately high concentrations of elderly women living on their own. This situation is a legacy of the housing policies implemented under communist central planning, and more recent processes of demographic ageing and ‘shrinking’ cities (Großmann et al. 2013; Haase et al. 2010; Hirt and Stanilov 2007; Kova´cs 1999; Kulu 2003). However, the unusually large presence of such households in inner-city areas that are otherwise undergoing rapid economic, societal and territorial changes has opened up a plethora of socio-spatial conflicts and discrepancies: municipal governments have often tried to forcibly relocate them to less attractive parts of the city, while the influx of younger and more affluent residents has strained local community relations. There is evidence to suggest that one of the reasons for this group’s strong connection to the inner city lies in its specific understanding of the meaning of domesticity, due, in part, to the way in which socialist policies constructed gender roles and identities (Pine 2002; Stenning 2005b). Kathrin Ho¨rschelmann and Bettina van Hoven’s (2003) qualitative study of the transformation of women’s everyday lives in East Germany provides important insights into the social, economic, and gender dimensions of social marginalization and displacement in relation to the domestic domain, which, as they stress, can occur without a change in residential location. For the majority of their respondents ‘the changes in their social and cultural positioning had led, not to increased flexibility and openness in identities, but to a confinement in highly stereotypical models of femininity’ (p. 756). As a result, East German women have been placed at the marginal spaces of the nation, in material and symbolic terms alike. To a certain extent, the results of this study echo Frances Pine’s (2002) and Alison Stenning and Jane Hardy’s (2002) findings about the relationship between gender, work and home in contemporary Poland. Statistical survey-based analyses of the feminization of poverty in post-socialist countries has found that gender inequality in poverty is higher in ECE than in OECD countries, although, to a certain extent, this is a pattern inherited from the socialist period (Schnepf 2007). Older women are one of the most disadvantaged groups in the post-socialist transition, with poverty rates that have exceeded national averages by more than 300 per cent in some countries. This situation can be partly attributed to their low incomes, resulting from the gender gap in earnings during the socialist period, and the retirement benefit calculation method in the cases of widows who inherited their husbands’ pensions (Klimentova´ 2001). Pensioners in general have been more vulnerable to poverty than other groups in ECE. This may reflect trends inherited from communist central planning: through econometric scrutiny of national statistics, Branko Milanovic´ (1991) showed that the elderly were already among the main victims of the economic crisis that affected eastern Europe between 1978 and 1987. With its price shocks, inflation, and real income losses, the post-socialist period has exerted a dramatic impact on the welfare of this group. Even though pensioners have often used their voting power to influence social security decisions to their advantage, it has often been claimed that people with low pensions have not been protected from poverty by the social security system, while those with higher benefits could feel their entitlements ‘accumulated through a life’s work, becoming devalued’ (Fajth 1999: 47). They have thus been deprived of part of their ‘citizenship assets’ (Burawoy et al. 2000). As a result of these trends, Ladislav Rabusˇicˇ (1998) contends that the pensioner population of ECE has been extensively dependent on public institutions, via oldage pensions, housing allowances, the health insurance system, as well as ‘policies of

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special care for ageing citizens’ (p. 22). He hopes that this situation will change in the future, when newer cohorts of pensioners will be able to take advantage of a wider range of survival strategies, while enjoying the security of private pension plans and owner-occupied homes. The scarcity of economic support networks among older pensioners has also been highlighted in the context of several post-socialist countries (Galcˇanova´ and Sy´korova´ 2014; Klimentova´ 2001; Lokshin and Yemtsov 2001; Szołtysek 2012; Vos and Sandefur 2002). Still, it is difficult to find a consensus in the post-socialist literature as to the ability of the elderly to develop effective coping strategies and alternative economic practices. Most mainstream contributions to this field have highlighted the need for developing context-specific studies sensitive to the particular conditions of a given locale. It is worth noting that many of the social, economic and cultural issues faced by older single women in the post-socialist countries have already been researched in other geographical contexts and literatures. The need for developing a specific understanding of the ageing process among women has been highlighted by studies focusing on their career development, health issues, social ties, and the demographic aspects of household change and housing issues among this group (Engelhardt and Greenhalgh-Stanley 2010; Kramarow 1995; McMahon et al. 2010). As part of the broader literature on ‘the geography of fear’ (Pain and Smith 2012; Valentine 1989) there has been a distinct strand of work on the multiple relationships between gender, ageing, and neighbourhood change – especially fear of crime and violence (Pain 1997; Wahidin and Cain 2013). A key finding within this analytical corpus is that ‘older women evidenced a far higher degree of independence and resistance than the picture of helpless victims of fear painted by both the media and academic research’ (Pain 1997: 240). The need to move beyond the conceptualization of older women as socially passive and problematic has also been recognized by Paul Luken and Suzanne Vaughan’s (2003) ethnographic study in Phoenix, Arizona, which found that ‘constructing older women living alone as a social problem reinforces ruling relations and reorganizes the political bases of social action by disassociating women from class and gender relations organized extra-locally’ (p. 130). Their work provides a powerful basis for challenging the discursive formulation of housing policies related to single older women in particular, and living on one’s own more generally. Similarly, Diane Gibson (1998) argues that the ‘unremitting negativity’ that has come to characterize both the study of older women and their image in society at large has been produced through a phallocentric, ageist lens. There is hence a risk of ‘reinventing and reinforcing a self-concept and a societal concept of old women as a dependent group with little to offer society and much to demand’ (p. 142). She highlights the greater longevity, stronger social networks, personal coping capacity and wider diversity of economic activities of this group as starting points for a theorization that would recognize both its social heterogeneity and ‘the aspects of being old and female that are a source of celebration and strength’ (p. 132).

2005a). As pointed out by Martin Lux (2004) for the Czech Republic, the lack of interest in moving to smaller dwellings is ‘partially an inheritance of the state socialist period, when mobility was restricted and first housing was often perceived as a home for life’ (p. 33). However, he claims that the residential mobility of this group is also hampered by the ineffective operation of the

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housing market, the decreasing share of public housing stemming from privatization, the absence of counselling and information agencies for elderly people to help them with the administrative arrangements necessary for relocation, and the slow integration of pensioners into community life. A quick look at national economic and demographic statistics for the case study countries immediately reveals the fact that pensioners – and older women in particular – in Poland and Slovenia have not been immune to broader trends in the post-socialist space. Slovenian statistical data confirmed the difficult income situation of this group. Although approximately 10 per cent of all Slovenians (8.6 per cent of men and 11.4 per cent of women) were estimated to be at ‘risk of poverty’ in 2003 – meaning that their total income was less than 60 per cent of national-level median income – in 2003, the equivalent figure in the case of persons older than 60 was 40.8 per cent for single women, and 26.0 per cent for single men (Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia 2005). It is not easy to ascertain to what extent this was true in Poland, due to inaccessibility of gender-disaggregated poverty data, although pensioners in that country appeared to be in slightly better circumstances, at least in income terms. For example, non-agricultural disability and family pensions increased by, respectively, 116.2 per cent and 122.5 per cent in 2000, compared to 1992 (Kalaska 2002: 16). Despite the fact that the combination of household needs and technological features placed many pensioners in a difficult position with respect to energy costs, field research in Ljubljana and Gdan´sk revealed an entire host of additional reasons for their apparently ‘irrational’ – in the view of many local officials – desire to keep occupying these dwellings. In particular, it transpired that the homes of the interviewed households were deeply implicated in the construction of economic livelihoods and social connections in the community, mainly by serving as a focal point for the performance of alternative economic practices, and the plaiting of ties of kin and friendship. They provided an important site for politically marginalized communities of pensioners (especially women) to coalesce and connect, creating an alternative to the increasingly restrictive and ‘neoliberalized’ public spaces of the neighbourhood. It can be argued that such relations allowed the interviewees and their homes to actively transform the spaces of their local districts, and the city more broadly. In the words of Lojza: I know that this flat is too big for me, I know that it is difficult to maintain with one pension only, I know that I can’t heat it in winter. But all my friends live nearby [. . .] they come here regularly to visit, we drink coffee together, we talk. There aren’t many places we can do that outside of our homes.

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Some of the residential dwellings in my study gained a further level of importance thanks to their role as a container for coping strategies and non-capitalist economic practices located outside the bounds of the formal market (this a widespread situation across the post-socialist space: see, for example, Sik and Redmond 2000). Informal economic activities provided a source of income and/or non-monetary support for the interviewed women’s children and friends: several of the interviewees were involved in helping their families in non-financial ways, especially with respect to childcare and domestic tasks. In five different examples, these practices also provided an additional source of income for the interviewees: ‘I am quite skilled at sewing, and sometimes I earn some extra income from that’ (Lucija), ‘I cook and take care of the neighbours’ children, it helps me to supplement my pension’ (Lavra), and so on. I also found situations where the space of the home itself provided an alternative source of income, with parts of the dwelling being partitioned off and sublet to other residents. For Gertruda, who lived in the centre of Wrzeszcz Dolny, illegally renting a room in this way helps ‘me to make ends meet, as my pension barely covers half of my living costs’. In social terms, it is worth noting that the close spatial proximity of family and kinship networks was often the main reason why these women continued to live in the inner city. Many of the interviewees stated that they would have found it impossible to conduct their everyday lives without the close support of younger family members living in the same neighbourhood. As pointed out by Liza, a 70-year-old woman who lived on a seventh-floor apartment on one of the main streets in Sˇisˇka: I don’t know how I would survive without my children, younger sister and her husband. I cannot leave my home, so they do all my shopping for me. At least one of them comes to see me every day. I am so fortunate to have them. In Gdan´sk, Gustawa, who was 93 years of age and lived in a 34 sq. m flat in a Zaspa block from the 1970s, received help from her daughter, who comes everyday, does the shopping and spends approximately three hours with me. My son visits me on Saturdays, but my grandchildren and great-grand children also come here. In her case, the fact that next generation of kin lived nearby – and were pensioners themselves – allowed for a greater intensity of social contact. But I also found several situations where the women themselves provided care

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Figure 6.12 The disproportionately high number of pensioners’ clubs and associations attests to the extensive presence of their age group in Sˇisˇka.

for other women and weaker family members: ‘I take care of my older sister, who is ill and bed-ridden. She lives in the block next door’ (Ludvika). In several cases, the respondents’ families were either unwilling or unable to take care of them. This circumstance underscored the importance of support networks based on friendship and companionship. In general, I found stronger links in Ljubljana, possibly due to the fact that the surveyed residential neighbourhoods are older and have been more socially stable over time (see Figure 6.12). As stated by Ljubica, who lived in a five-storey apartment block on the main street in Sˇisˇka, although many younger people have moved in here recently, most of my older neighbours from the past are still here. I am constantly together, they are like family to me. At the same time, Lena pointed out that: I have many friends in the surrounding buildings. I meet often, they visit me, I visit them. They also help me with the shopping. They are much more useful than my family, with whom I have much less contact. Indeed, when talking about what a hypothetical ‘ideal’ neighbourhood would look like, elderly households (.60 years of age) in the city centre of Ljubljana placed ‘living with people with the same lifestyle and of all generations’ at the top of the list (Haase et al. 2005: 21). This indicates that interpretive flexibility in the context of post-communist urban transformation also includes social and cultural factors that often extend beyond the

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technological frames of the built stock. The functional blankness of the residential dwellings that I studied had managed to elicit an effective response among its human occupants, thus increasing the durability and resilience of the built environment.

Socio-technical responses to the loss of mutually beneficial linkages between buildings and people The buildings’ technological inability to provide a set of functions and capabilities that would match the demands of contemporary lifestyles, pressures and aspirations were often countered by a variety of household strategies that attempted to compensate for the inflexibility of their technological frame. Many families and individuals, for example, supplemented the absence or rigidity of heating systems by introducing new, more flexible technical networks into the home. I found such examples throughout all the case study areas. In many cases, households had installed storage heaters with thermostats, which allowed them ‘to regulate the heat levels in each room individually, and to use off-peak electricity’ (Godfryd). This was of particular benefit to pensioners, who spent a large part of the day at home, while living in apartments of above average size that require expenditures on domestic warmth. Some interviewees had minimized their energy costs by using mobile electric heaters that allowed for heating only those rooms that were used more frequently: ‘we don’t heat the kitchen and bathroom at all’ (Linda); ‘we keep the kitchen cold in order to minimise costs’ (Senka). Thus, the functional blankness of buildings had effectively led to the introduction of new socio-technical devices into the home, leading to a new set of relations between household structures and heating systems. Aid from state organizations often helped maintain the durability of the alliance between buildings and their occupants. The improvement of the energy efficiency of Lovro’s apartment would have been impossible without a local council-led renovation of the building’s exterior, which included the addition of a new layer of insulation. Godzimir felt that the heating bills for his two-room flat in a prefabricated panel estate were brought down by the availability of district heat, as well as the fact that his household undertook extensive investment in wall and window insulation four years ago, after the birth of his daughter. It also became obvious that most families had placed a great deal of effort – within their own material constraints – to maintain their dwellings in good condition. This was in contrast to the poor state of the shared parts of the buildings, which, according to Godzimir:

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Are generally in a tragic state [. . .] plaster is falling off the walls, there is trash everywhere, the flooring is coming apart [. . .] we keep making appeals to the local council but it’s like throwing peas against a brick wall. The contrast between public and private spaces was particularly pronounced in Nowy Port; almost as if households resorted to the appropriation of their private spaces in response to the lack of spatial mobility. While this was hardly the case in Sˇisˇka – where common spaces were maintained at a level comparable to private ones – we found a similar situation in Karposh IV. Despite significant local investment in the improvement of public spaces in the neighbourhood, the shared parts of the apartment buildings often remained in a poor state of repair, as Simon explains: You will experience a huge change from the moment when you step into the building and then into our apartment. The staircase is in a very poor condition – it is not cleaned often enough and it needs a fresh paint job. We try to maintain the area in front of our flat but we can’t do much more, unfortunately. But we do our best to keep our own apartment in the best possible condition. Still, the interviewees’ attachment to their homes created a range of sociospatial tensions in the articulation of urban dynamics. I return to the wider implications of the relationship between households and built fabric in the home in Chapter 8, which explores the new material networks, neighbourhood relations and public spaces created by this set of developments.

Concluding thoughts: Resilience as process In the novel Gridiron by Philip Kerr, a skyscraper kills off its designers in imaginative ways with the aid of ‘sentient technologies’. While I would hesitate to ascribe such a degree of intentionality to architectural formations, it is with little doubt that the neighbourhood histories, life stories, housing biographies and residential arrangements observed in the study cities and neighbourhoods reflect the rich co-expressions of agency between households and buildings. They act like building events that grow out of the creation and performance of heterogeneous networks between residential dwellings, on the one hand, and, inter alia, households, city planners, governing authorities and building materials, on the other. The ability of the surveyed housing stock to survive several major changes of policy and regulation regimes through time stems from the interpretive

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flexibility of their technological frame. In every moment when the buildings were placed in a new set of political and economic circumstances, they managed to create a new set of allies. Prior to World War II, various dynamics of capital accumulation helped create the material and social base for their existence. In the post-World War II period, massive migratory movements, conditions of housing shortage, and the subsequent internal modification of the buildings in accordance with housing needs and restrictions on residential mobility ensured their viability and survival. Despite wider processes of urban commodification and gentrification, the buildings continued to thrive during the post-communist transformation. The emotional attachment of many residents to them, as well as the intensification of alternative economic practices in this type of housing stock came to their aid in this instance. However, this period also made it obvious that interpretive flexibility has its own limits, especially when it comes to the structural rigidity of heating systems. The inability of household requirements and the sociotechnical structures of the buildings to always successfully ‘resonate’ in tune with each other started to undermine the ability of the latter to outlast their technological frame. It is the dynamic articulation of building events in relation to different actants associated with the dwelling stock, I would argue, that allows resilience to be practised and performed at the level of the home. Each temporal change in the underlying political, economic and social context of an area places new demands on the technological frame of the built environment. The new circumstances force buildings to create new heterogeneous alliances and networks. In the urban districts that I studied, the translation process that stemmed from this dynamic allowed the built fabric to act over social dynamics at the household scale, and the lived experience of the city more generally. Livelihoods became deeply affected by the extent to which buildings could be flexibly transformed to suit housing needs and host non-market economic practices, as a result of constraints on incomes and the housing market, as well as the establishment of relations of affective appropriation between some individuals and their residential dwellings. The wider spatial dimensions of these processes are explored in Chapter 8, where I explore the articulation of building events within the neighbourhood context. Before discussing the relevance of alliances between buildings and people to broader issues of urban evolution and development, however, I would like to explore their affective and economic aspects through a residential mobility lens.

CHAPTER 7 MOBILITIES: ARTICULATING RESIDENTIAL FLEXIBILITY IN THE HOME AND BEYOND

Unlike the previous two chapters – where the focus was on the coexpressions of power between social and built actants within the context of home improvements and neighbourhood change – this chapter focuses on the everyday practices associated with household articulations of flexibility in the residential domain. Taking further the argument that agency in the built environment is practised and performed through a dynamic relation between households and the built fabric, I explore the relationship between the power dynamics inscribed in different building types and spatial arrangements, on the one hand, and the micro-geographies of everyday life, on the other. I am interested in investigating the relationship between residential mobility and in-situ improvements in the context of built-social relations in the environment of the home: why do certain households transform their dwellings, instead of moving to new ones? And why are others not only residentially stationary, but also unable to alter their homes as well? As a result, there is a special focus on the residential features and factors that enable and constrain the transformation of residential dwellings over time. Considering that the chapter focuses on the driving forces of household decisions to transform their dwellings in line with evolving needs and everyday practices, I also develop a further exploration of the emotional, material and cultural bonds between household and home, in the context of residential mobility aspirations. In part, this is motivated by the findings of previous chapters, where it was established that even though some individuals see the ability to change or adapt their everyday spaces to new circumstances as a key priority in everyday life, others emphasise the attachment to place, habit and stability. Therefore, the chapter interrogates the different domestic

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situations and arrangements that arise as a result of the diversity of residential mobility choices and decisions observed in the study area, with a particular emphasis on the manner in which everyday life is influenced by decisions about relocation and/or housing alterations. The overarching aim in this regard is to establish how various types of flexibility at the level of the household enable the transformation of the built environment of the home. In a broader sense, I am interested in the operation of the ‘release’ phase of the social-ecological resilience cycle in the context of the relationship between the built environment of the home and residential mobility. As such, the chapter also aims to address the theoretical gap between the mainstream understandings of the production of urban built landscapes, on the one hand, and the spaces of the quotidian, on the other. This is motivated by the realization that Goss’ (1988) call for the development of an ‘invigorated architectural geography’, premised on the notion that buildings impart meaning and character to the space in which they are located (p. 402), has not been adequately answered in studies of household mobility and consumption patterns. Having explored the socio-spatial power dynamics associated with architectural forms, I focus on the different ways in which buildings mould and connect with the social fabric of everyday life.

Beyond traditional understandings of residential mobility Unlike the previous two, this chapter is exclusively based on field work in Nowy Port and Wrzeszcz Dolny – the only two sites where the household interviews that I undertook were focused on exploring the relationships between residential mobility, the built environment, and housing alterations. The interviews uncovered significant differences among the surveyed households, in terms of the ability to change one’s residential location in response to wider demographic or economic events. They highlighted the wide variety of strategies and approaches used by different individuals when deciding to move to a new housing location, as well as the inability of many of the interviewees to do so despite other significant changes in the life course. In particular, it emerged that in-situ housing alterations – understood in the context of the definition provided in Chapter 1 – and ‘traditional’ residential mobility play parallel, and mutually complementary, roles in shaping the duration of building events and the flow of housing careers. This is because the interactions between housing needs, house moves, and the built fabric of the city produce different types of housing arrangements and processes, depending on a household’s propensity towards continuity or change in the domestic domain, on the one hand, versus its attachment to

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High residential mobility

Residentially fluid

No interventions in the home

Spatially immutable

Attached to home

Internal housing dynamism

‘In place’ improvers Low residential mobility

Figure 7.1 Household categories according to the relationship between classic residential mobility and in-place adjustment.

place or desire to participate in a population flow, on the other. In earlier collaborative work (see Buzar and Grabkowska 2006; Grabkowska 2012), we used a square of oppositions to illustrate the complementary relationships between ‘classic’ residential mobility and in-place adjustment. The categories from that classification (see Figure 7.1) can be used as a basis for describing the four generic types of residential behaviours undertaken by the households in the two Gdan´sk case study areas: – Residentially fluid and adaptable: several interviewees stood out on the basis of their above-average residential mobility, which was often accompanied by an ability or willingness to easily change their housing arrangement in response to fluctuating household needs. This stratum mainly included flat-sharing students and single-person households living in rental housing, as well as young couples at the beginning of their housing careers. For example, despite undertaking extensive renovations to his onebedroom flat on the second floor of a 130-year-old terraced building – including the addition of a toilet, as ‘previously I had to share one with the neighbours’ – Gaszpar would have nevertheless liked to relocate in the near future, as ‘there is not enough green space in this neighbourhood’. – Attached to home: it is also possible for a household to be unwilling or unable to switch from one residential arrangement to another, despite coming under housing mobility pressure. Within this stratum of

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interviewees, house moves took place alongside in-situ housing improvements; once the household had established a certain mobility pattern, everyday practices had become crystallized within it. Gaius was representative of this relatively rare sub-type. In order to maintain a stable set of social networks in both cities he decided to live a ‘dual home’ lifestyle between Gdan´sk and Warsaw, refusing to migrate from the former to the latter in response to changing professional requirements. He maintained homes in both locations, investing in the improvement of both. – In-place improvers: a number of households had transformed their dwellings as a result of the entry into a new household event, the improvement of household incomes or other assets, as well as the need to introduce a new function into the domestic domain (such as fusing home and work). Although they had not changed their residential location, such households were nevertheless experiencing housing dynamism in relational terms, because the shifting spatial arrangement of the home was also transforming the quality and organization of their everyday lives. Such was the case with Giertruda’s family, who had undertaken extensive renovations of their threebedroom flat in a 100-year-old terraced building in the centre of Wrzeszcz, in order to adapt it to the needs of their growing daughters. Although they had not been able to undertake all the changes they wanted because of ‘the unclear ownership structure of the home’, a facilitating factor in this regard was the fact that both the husband and wife were architects. – Spatially immutable: many of the interviewees from Nowy Port fell into this category. They had not changed their residential location and were not planning to move in the near future. Even though some of them had experienced several household events in the same dwelling, they had not made any modifications to the home in response to changing family needs. In addition to low-income households in Nowy Port, this group also included most of the pensioner households in Wrzeszcz, as well as extended families where the addition of new household members did not lead to relocation or housing transformation. A typical example was provided by a household whose two-bedroom apartment was shared by three generations. They did ‘not plan to move’ in the near future, mainly as a result of their limited income. Aside from changing the heating system and the windows, they had not implemented any structural changes to the dwelling. At this point, it is important to underline that most of the interviewed households fell somewhere between the four categories. The aim of the above classification, therefore, is to point to the underlying processes that shape housing choice, transformation, and relocation, rather than to provide an

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all-encompassing typology. In the main, it allows for the disambiguation of housing mobility in the built environment. Understanding household decisions through a resilience framework can provide a key stepping stone in this direction, because it encapsulates not only the ability to respond to a new set of social, economic or demographic circumstances by moving from one dwelling to another, but also the capacity to transform the present dwelling to suit changing household needs. The conceptualization of residential mobility can thus be expanded to include a wider set of social dynamics, including the interaction of households with the built environment, and the temporal dimension of housing careers. Through this process, residential dynamism without relocation is expressed as housing mobility across time. In the four sections that follow, I explore the different categories in further detail, and in relation to specific demographic groups. Brief examples and vignettes from the interview material are provided as illustrations of the different cases.

Flat-sharers and young professionals on the move The residential mobility literature insists that a specific set of values in a household’s demographic features – including age, tenure, housing space and socio-economic status – distinguish the types of households who are more likely to relocate to a different dwelling in response to a change in socioeconomic circumstances from those who are not (Kaufmann 1993; Mulder and Manting 1994; Murie et al. 1976). Age is one of the most important variables in this context, as younger adults – particularly those in the 20– 35 cohort – are more prone towards undertaking house moves due to experiencing a condensed sequence of household events (partnership, family formation, childbearing, employment changes). Relocations among this group are also influenced by their less stable tenure status: they lack the longterm commitment to a given location – in the form of capital and time investment – that hampers house moves among owners. Small household size also facilitates relocation and, once again, it is more likely to occur among households who are younger and childless; in eastern Europe, this process has often been facilitated by the second demographic transition (SDT) that has been underway in the developed world since the 1970s (see Box 7.1). The residential mobility literature also postulates that housing stress increases the likelihood that households living in smaller dwellings will move to bigger ones. As such, dwelling space is closely connected to age and tenure, since households living in smaller homes are often young and renters. It has also been established that a households’ social, cultural and economic features – including educational attainment and income – affect

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The second demographic transition in ECE

It has already been highlighted at several points throughput this book that the SDT is likely to be affecting ECE states. In 2003, the total fertility rate (TFR) in most of the region – with the exception of a few Balkan countries – was less than 1.4 children/woman, while ‘Latvia in 1998 marked the lowest level of fertility as measured by TFR, 1.09, registered anywhere in the world except in times of war, epidemics, or famine’ (Philipov 2004: 5). The decline in fertility has been accompanied by the postponement of the average age of childbirth by more than five years in some countries (Sobotka 2003). Moreover, several ECE countries are now European leaders in the number of extra-marital births, which in recent years have exceeded 40 per 1,000 live births in Estonia, Latvia and Bulgaria (Council of Europe 2006). In part, these trends can be attributed to the decline in marriage rates, and the postponement of marriage: the mean age at first marriage exhibited an abrupt increase during the transition of nearly two –three years, throughout ECE and FSU (Philipov 2003). The expansion of cohabitation behaviours have been said to further complement the attitudes towards marriage and divorce ‘into a general picture typical of the changes observed earlier in western Europe’ (ibid.: 14). While it is difficult to single out a clear set of reasons for the emergence of this particular set of socio-demographic transformations in the post-socialist realm, there is little doubt that economic changes have played an important role in this process. The economic, social and cultural ‘earthquakes’ that followed the demise of communist central planning have led to the emergence of specific demographic behaviours in ECE and FSU alike, as ‘nuptiality and fertility dropped to unprecedented low levels; extramarital cohabitation and the share of extra-marital births increased tremendously; rapid postponement of these events took place; migration increased significantly’ (ibid.: 11). The flexibilization of labour has also played a role in this process, even though countries like the Czech Republic and Slovenia have been reluctant to embrace it, while ‘in Bulgaria and Romania the general economic crisis and lack of coherent policies have lead to a situation where flexibilization is largely unregulated, even though some reform measures are in place’ (Wallace 2003: 5). It is also being increasingly argued that post-socialist societies are undergoing deep transformations in their systems of values and morals – thus leading to new patterns of household evolution and family formation – even if much of contemporary demographic change can be attributed to the change in livelihoods and economic constraints that have accompanied the post-socialist transformation process. In particular, it has been observed that younger generations born during the 1980s and 1990s have different priorities and aspirations with respect to marriage and childbearing when compared to older cohorts (Balcerzak-Paradowska 2005; Kucˇera et al. 2000; Petrovic´ 2011; Sobotka et al. 2003; Tirpak and Vano 1999). Therefore, most authors disagree about the extent to which the decline in fertility rates can be explained by either economic or cultural factors. On the one hand, the decline in fertility rates has been attributed to the fact that ‘the economic crisis has deteriorated particularly the high integration of women in the labor market’, while ‘many of the pronatalist – or at least family friendly – policies in ECE countries have discontinued after 1990’ (Kohler et al. 2002: 24). On the other hand, it has been emphasized that the decrease of fertility rates has been enabled by the possibilities of ‘self-realization’ offered to young people, in addition to changing life conditions (Tirpak and Vano 1999). A range of alternative explanations also exist: Gerda Neyer and Gunnar Andersson (2004) point out that ‘education became a source of economic opportunity and constraint’ during the post-socialist transition, resulting ‘in a

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significant postponement of first birth and a decline in first-birth fertility of highly educated women’ (p. 9). Some authors have developed more comprehensive analyses of the issue. Boz˙ena Balcerzak-Paradowska (2005) incorporates both economic and cultural considerations in her analysis of changing demographic patterns in Poland. On the one hand, she stresses that ‘delayed entry into marriage results from the social and economic transformations that have been taking place in Poland’, as well as the ‘difficult living conditions of some young people’ (p. 63). Yet, on the other, she also notes the spread of ‘the ideals of individualism, autonomy and self-fulfilment’ throughout society. Thus, ‘access to information technologies and the opportunity to directly observe patterns present in Western countries have resulted in the liberalization of attitudes and sexual behaviour, in seeking independence and a greater acceptance for nonformalized unions’ (ibid.). One of the more comprehensive reviews of the regional situation, at least as far as ECE is concerned, has been provided by Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn (2002), who point out that many features of the SDT ‘are by now clearly visible in central Europe too’ (p. 27). Although they are quick to emphasize that eastern European households are only now beginning to adopt some of the behaviours observed further to the West, it is also true ‘in terms of value shifts since 1990; new household formation patterns have gained acceptability’, which means that a further eastward spread of SDT features to include eastern Europe ‘would no longer come as a surprise’.

the frequency of residential shifts, since the propensity to move increases as a household’s financial resources and/or ability to forge new employment and social ties grow (Bo¨heim and Taylor 2002; Clark and Dieleman 1996; de Groot et al. 2011). Many interviewees in Gdan´sk had a recent experience of residential mobility through ‘traditional’ house moves. In general, these were younger and/or betteroff households, including students and recently married or cohabiting couples in the private rental sector, as well as first-time buyers. I also found a number of households who were moving quickly through the property ladder within this group; they were mainly – though not exclusively – wealthier households with a sufficient amount of investment capital. The interview with a flat-sharing group of three female students in their early twenties revealed that their relocation from the previous apartment – a converted loft within the immediate proximity of the university campus in central Wrzeszcz – was triggered by the decision of a fourth, now former, flatmate to move to a residence hall, rendering each person’s share of the total rental cost unaffordable. Another reason for the move was the layout of the former apartment, which consisted of a centrally placed kitchen, linked to a large living room and two smaller bedrooms. This arrangement did not suit them well, as they were forced to pass through the kitchen in order to get to the bedrooms:

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I wanted my own place, with silence and privacy. The layout [of the former flat] was a problem. There was a huge room, everyone was staying in either that room or the kitchen. Even if you wanted to go to sleep there would be people watching TV in there. The order of the rooms was strange [. . .]. Although the parties were in the kitchen and living room, people would then go to the smaller rooms. An additional reason could be found in the form of the original building, which had a circular staircase that conducted the noise from their apartment into the other flats even if someone was whispering at the top floor it was audible throughout the building: ‘You can imagine what it was like when I had parties.’ The housing choices of this household were largely the product of a conscious strategy to maximize their access to a wider range of transport infrastructures. Compared to all of my other interviewees, they were the most reliant on a wide range of daily mobility means, while exhibiting an ability to switch easily among different modes of transport: I only looked for places within walking distance of the university [. . .] Also, there are good tram connections [. . .]. The train line is nearby. It makes a big difference, because you can get to other places near the tram line quickly. Our lives are run by transport schedules. During the interview, it emerged that the three flat-sharing students had relocated to a new home despite failing to get the desired decrease in rental costs: We moved out of the previous flat because the rent was too high. Initially we thought that this one would be cheaper, but now it turns out that we are paying the same. Still, we are getting much more for the same money. The members of this household pointed out that the apartment to which they moved – a three-bedroom in a socialist-era tower block – provided for greater privacy because all the rooms, including the kitchen, were linked to a central hallway: When we were looking for a new flat, we wanted three independent rooms. In some flats you had to go from one to another room, and the rooms were not equal or were not separate from each other [. . .]. The present arrangement works well for us. Perhaps the rooms are too small,

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but at least everyone has their own one now. The small kitchen is actually quite good because we don’t waste so much time there [. . .] maybe it’s worse for our social life, but we get more work done now. This household, who possessed a high degree of mobility by virtue of its demographic, social and economic status, clearly placed a lot of value on spatial flexibility. Gustaw was in a similar situation: he would ‘think it impossible’ to live outside a centrally placed location without good public transport, as he spent several hours a day commuting by tram and bus to his university, which was in a remote part of the city. The housing histories of these two households illustrate the importance of structural housing and neighbourhood mobility features in the residential choices of flat-sharing students and young professionals. However, even households who own cars relied on a combination of transport means to satisfy their daily mobility requirements. As pointed out by the members of a household consisting of two cohabiting students: We couldn’t get around town if we didn’t live in such a well-connected area as Wrzeszcz. Our universities are in completely opposite parts of TriCity, and I [the male cohabiting partner] also work in a language school. Although I use the car every day, I also rely a lot on the SKM, as well as the trams and buses. Similarly, Gloria (a student) moved to her two-bedroom, 50 sq. m flat – which she inherited from her grandfather – only three years prior to the interview, ‘with the aim of increasing the size’ of her living space and ‘living together with her partner’. She and her partner were hoping to undertake a series of repairs and improvements to the flat, ‘which requires major capital investment’, in the near future, ‘depending on my earnings and help from parents’. The access to jobs and facilities was a key pull factor for this household’s choice of residential dwelling: I take the tram to my workplace; it takes only 25 minutes. My partner’s job is even closer, only 15 minutes on foot [. . .]. We don’t have any requirements to buy a car, with my job and study locations being so close. Also, the city centre is nearby and there are many shopping facilities in the area. Although most of the surveyed households were homeowners or living in co-operative apartment buildings, I did encounter a few renters among the residentially mobile group. Grzegorz and his partner – both students

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in their early twenties – moved to their present rental apartment of 34 sq. m in the central part of Wrzeszcz mainly because of the ‘attractiveness of the area’, the low rent, as well as the ‘possibility of renting it from someone we knew, which actually contributed to the low rent’. They also pointed out the proximity of the SKM train line and other means of transport as key assets of the location, while emphasizing the fact that they could easily visit the centre of the city and their relatives and friends from where they lived. Nevertheless, they did point out that they would like to own a dwelling in the future ‘but it is difficult to get credit in Poland and we don’t want to burden my relatives with debt’. They were thus planning to leave the country after completing their studies, in order to improve their ‘financial situation by working for a few years’. Residential relocation was often a result of the nature of regulatory constraints in the built environment. For example, the two members of a relatively well-off household, consisting of a jeweller and an office worker in their thirties, were ‘about to move out’ of their attractive, privately owned second floor flat situated in a 130-year-old terraced building in the centre of Wrzeszcz Dolny. This is despite the fact that they had undertaken extensive renovations and investment in the apartment, including the addition of a toilet, as ‘previously we had to share one with the neighbours’ (Gina). The main reason for the move was the fact that ‘all decisions about investment in the flat have to be approved by the tenants’ association’, which had prevented them from implementing the further range of housing alterations that they required. Just as in the case of the flat-sharing students, this household placed a high value on the structural housing features of the apartment, and the ability to modify them in response to altered circumstances. It was the institutional rigidities embedded within the decision-making procedures of the tenants’ association that had compelled them to decide to change their residential location. Contrary to this household, whose members were able to choose a relatively large apartment prior to an anticipated change of household needs, I found a number of cases where relocation to a new dwelling had occurred only after a major demographic event had taken place. Such was the case of a Gdynia shipyard worker, who was married with six children. Having maintained his employment ‘for a long time’, and getting ‘used to it’ he had ‘no plans to change anything’, despite being the only breadwinner in the family: his wife was entrusted with housework and caring for their six children. Even though the apartment consisted of four rooms not exceeding 60 sq. m, the interviewees were satisfied with its size and quality. This was partly because it was nearly double the space of, and in a much better condition than, the previous one, which had only two rooms. Nevertheless, they still missed the previous

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residence: ‘It was nice, quiet and calm. Each tenant had their own garden [. . .]. In summer, we often invited my neighbours for coffee in the cool breeze.’

In-situ housing transformations: Housing career mobility without relocation In the situations where a physical change of residential location was constrained by lack of finance or other factors, many of the interviewed households had responded to changing housing needs by modifying the structure of the home. Out of 32 households who were residentially stationary, I established that 17 (including seven working-class households) had implemented physical and structural alterations above and beyond inventory change over the length of their tenure in the home. In a general sense, their housing behaviours can be termed flexible and adaptable, despite the lack of residential mobility in the conventional meaning. A wide range of practices had enabled households to take a pro-active approach towards the physical transformation of their dwellings, ranging from changes to the layout and type of furniture, to the reorganization of the structural components of the building. The fact that these activities took place mainly outside the market – with the aid of barterized economies of reciprocity – points to their potential importance as a coping strategy in post-socialism (for a further discussion, see Stenning et al. 2010). Georgina and her husband had also undertaken extensive renovations of their three-bedroom flat on the second floor of a 100-year-old terraced building, in order to adapt it to the needs of their two growing daughters. A facilitating factor in this regard was the fact that both wife and husband were architects. But they were not able to implement all the changes they wanted because of ‘the unclear ownership structure of the home’. Indeed, property rights were a common constraint on the ability of households to implement major investment undertakings in their homes. I encountered many situations where dwellings were either not owned by their occupants, or the identity of the proprietor was unclear. This is yet another consequence of the housing restructuring process in post-socialism, and the simultaneous existence of different property regimes and modes as a result of the postcommunist transformation. The possibility of changing the structural features of the apartment in order to turn the home into a workplace had proved an important residential pull factor for the household of 60-year-old Gino and his wife. An investment fund manager, Gino wanted to be able to work from home. His household achieved this by undertaking a series of structural adjustments to their 67 sq. m dwelling on the third floor of a terraced

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tenement block. I found a similar situation in the case of Gerald’s household: he lived in the converted loft of a tenement building in the very centre of Wrzeszcz Dolny, together with his wife and seven-year-old daughter. The 100 sq. m apartment was dominated by an open-plan living room fringed by a kitchen and two small bedrooms. This interviewee stressed that he needed this kind of arrangement due to being an artist working from home: I used to work as a designer in the Laznia Contemporary Arts Centre [. . .] it was a good job, but one day I decided I had enough and just quit [. . .] I don’t want to work from 9 to 5, I want to decide my own working hours. I enjoy being free and wouldn’t like to return to an office or any kind of company [. . .] I am now working as a freelance multimedia artist, and I need a lot of space for the instruments and speakers. This flat is good because I have a separate room where I can store them, and I also paint there to prevent the smell of varnish and other stuff from spreading over the rest of the space [. . .] in the future I plan to split the large open space into two rooms, to create a separate space for my growing daughter. Aside from the ability to work from home and the adaptability of the apartment, this household was also attracted by the proximity to the SKM railway. In their case, as well as Gabriel’s, the absence of a need for residential relocation was contingent not only on the structural ability to fuse home and work, but the additional reliance on networked infrastructures – telecommunications and transport – as a means of improving daily mobility in time and space. Illegality was a common feature in household survival strategies relying on housing assets and resources as a source of livelihood. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the most pronounced examples of this were unauthorized sublets, as low-income families living in regulated rent housing often divided up their dwellings in such a way so as to allow some of the space to be rented. Squatting was also common: for example, a Nowy Port homemaker illegally took over an unoccupied 40 sq. m flat after marrying her now late husband in 1979. Previously they both lived in Wrzeszcz Dolny, in their family homes.

Residentially stationary households with a high degree of job mobility Interestingly, I encountered a number of households that belonged to social groups that are usually described as highly residentially mobile – such as

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young professionals – in the group of ‘in-situ’ improvers. Despite progressing with their professional careers very quickly, such households remained firmly attached to older social networks and neighbourhood environments. Many of them were homeowners in the private sector, or inhabiting co-operatively owned apartments. A closer look at the kinds of socio-spatial circumstances that allowed such residentially ‘resistant’ housing practices to survive indicated that the households who exercised them still led highly mobile lifestyles, despite refusing to alter their residential location. Within this social group, residential mobility was constrained by a set of affective and social networks that had bound everyday life within a set sociospatial matrix, contradicting the individuals’ job mobility. Another interesting case study of spatial flexibility was provided by Gizela, a 39-year-old NGO activist, who managed to split her residential location between Wrzeszcz and Warsaw. She decided to move to Warsaw after her organization’s office was relocated there several years ago. However, she did not give up her previous dwelling. Living in two flats at the same time, she still considered the one in Wrzeszcz her ‘permanent’ residence, despite staying there for only a few days every two or three weeks. When coming ‘home’ for prolonged weekends she manages to reconcile a wide range of social activities, including first: seeing my friends, most of whom live in Wrzeszcz and Sopot, where I go by SKM; second: seeing my parents, as I have an ‘obligatory’ Sunday lunch at my home in Karwiny; third: visiting other members of my family who live in Zaspa, I go there on foot; fourth: doing my private affairs on Friday, such as going to the bank, paying my bills, buying contact lenses, visiting local shops. (Gizela) The ability of this person to maintain her specific ‘dual home’ lifestyle was clearly related to her economic and demographic status, social preferences, as well as the psychological preparedness to live in two cities at the same time: Around 1995, when I started working on my PhD and getting some money, I decided to buy my own flat in Wrzeszcz [. . .] at that time most of my friends were buying flats of their own and I felt financially secure enough to invest [. . .] it was 21 square metres but it was my first own flat, which made me feel very happy [. . .]. In 2001, I wanted something bigger and found out that my credit rating was very high [. . .]. I calculated that if I sold the studio I wouldn’t need much more money to invest in something better and bigger. It wasn’t a big strain on my

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finances, as the credit repayment was spread across many years [. . .]. I thought it was a good moment to extend my living space, as I felt the need for a change. I decided I wanted to find something in Wrzeszcz [. . .]. I like the building, I like the area, I find it very cosy and safe. She also pointed out that the decision to purchase a flat in the centre of Wrzeszcz Donly was motivated by the availability of a wide variety of public transport means – trams, buses, light railway – which allowed her to maintain a highly mobile lifestyle without having a car. She also underlined her appreciation of the local architecture despite being maybe a bit monotonous, it has its own charm. I prefer this type of housing, it’s so much better than a flat in 10-storey block of flats. I also like the small scale of the neighbourhood, it is easier to get to know your neighbours. In Nowy Port, I was told a somewhat similar story by Gabriel, an interior designer and freelance photographer. He and his mother lived in a well-kept flat on the third floor of an early twentieth-century terraced building at the eastern boundary of the district. Although Gabriel admitted that ‘the majority of younger people who live here just inherited the apartments from their ancestors’, he did point out that there was an increasing number of newcomers from outside the district, who had moved to Nowy Port in order to take advantage of low housing prices and the proximity to the city centre. He supported this with examples from his own social circle, as the district had seen an increasing concentration of artists who would otherwise be unable to afford a flat in other parts of Gdan´sk. Nevertheless, he pointed out that the general social structure of the district was deteriorating the streets are full of children and teenagers who are growing up to be criminals. They are not receiving adequate education or care from their parents or schools. Many of them are basically being trained to become thieves [. . .]. This district is like a ticking time bomb. Having lived in Nowy Port throughout his life, this interviewee was not ready to leave it yet, though: The area might be getting worse but I am not planning to move out. I feel attached to this place [. . .]. Walking on the streets is safe, although it may not seem like that from outside the district. I feel safe here, nobody is bothering me.

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Throughout the interview, Gabriel kept emphasizing his deep knowledge of the area and the personal acquaintances with ‘almost all’ its inhabitants, which has enabled him to develop relationships of trust and mutual support with even some of most excluded individuals in the neighbourhood, including ‘drug addicts, alcoholics, and a hermit living in the abandoned docklands’. This is also important for his job, as one aspect of his work involves photographing vignettes from the everyday life of the district. Although Gizela and Gabriel’s unwillingness to change their residential location is partly contingent on the specific nature of Polish cities, where public transportation systems and the housing stock are relatively dense and closely knit (largely as a result of socialist legacies: see Sailer-Fliege 1999; Stenning 2005b), I would like to argue that their situation is also related to a wider array of socio-spatial links in the neighbourhood environment. The resulting associations allow such households to adapt to changed external conditions without necessarily relocating to a new home.

Residentially and spatially stationary households My interview corpus also included 16 households who had been living in the present dwelling longer than five years but had not implemented any structural alterations to the home. Most of these households felt that they did not require any in-situ modifications to the home as a result of being retired, living alone, or having moved to the area within the last 10 years. Many of them pointed out that the present dwelling met all of the household’s needs. As indicated by a factory worker from Nowy Port: ‘I have lived here all of my life and this apartment is more than enough for me.’ However, I did encounter a number of households who were unable to implement housing alterations, despite being residentially immobile. Financial problems were the most commonly cited reason for this situation, especially among my Nowy Port interviewees, as emphasized, for example, by the case of a single mother and schoolteacher: ‘this apartment was always too small and in need of refurbishing, but I simply couldn’t afford it’. I also found a number of cases where the physical transformation of the home was restricted by legal complications (mainly related to ownership), as well as the structural and technical features of the building. In the latter case, the physical inflexibility of built structures acted as an external constraint on the articulation of residential flexibility. Some of the most commonly cited problems included the presence of load-bearing or infrastructure-laden walls in the middle of the dwelling, which prevented the reorganization of internal wall partitions. Other issues included the location and quality of utility infrastructures, as well as the architectural design of the building more generally.

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This group of interviewees also included households who had moved or were planning to move to a different apartment in response to a new housing episode: 52-year-old Glenda and her 87-year-old mother purchased their present three-bedroom flat only three years ago, ‘with the aim of increasing the size of our living space’. The previous apartment was only ‘200 metres away, up the same street’. The residential behaviours of several interviewees in this group were influenced by the propinquity of kin and friendship networks, which also helped households obtain a range of non-market services involving childcare, food preparation, and so on: ‘I moved here seven years ago, because of the good transport links with other parts of the city, and the proximity of my family. They are helping us raise my son as both of us have to work all day’ (Glenda). This interviewee, who worked as a shopkeeper, pointed out that her household had not implemented any changes to the flat since: I don’t plan to live here much longer [. . .] when my son grows up a bit more and there is no need for the grandparents to take care of him, I will probably buy a nicer and cheaper house in the suburbs. During the interview with a policewoman in Nowy Port – otherwise a clear in-situ improver – it transpired that her daughter recently bought a flat on the same floor of the same building, because [. . .] he and I are taking care of their 14-month old son [. . .] but they will probably move out to a larger house when he grows up. Unlike the post-socialist period, when market transactions began to dominate all forms of residential relocation, the interviewees who had moved house during the socialist era mainly did so through informal exchanges and/or barter. I found several such cases in Nowy Port, where the majority of the interviewees were long-term residents who had often obtained their dwellings from the council or inherited them from family members. For instance, a nuclear family consisting of a middle-aged couple with two daughters aged 23 and 17 moved to their present dwelling 22 years ago, after the death of the husband’s great grandmother, to whom it previously belonged. Even though the flat had only two rooms, alongside a small kitchen and bathroom, according to the words of the wife ‘living with my parents-inlaw wasn’t exactly the dream of a young wife’. When I was examining the housing histories of Nowy Port residents, it emerged that most of the residential buildings in the area were owned by the German military before and during World War II. Having been subsequently occupied and badly damaged by the Red Army, the housing

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was then appropriated by the state and/or various families who simply squatted the buildings. This is how Genowefa and her husband – a pensioner couple in their mid-60s living with a teenage grandson – were able to acquire their present flat, a 49 sq. m two-bedroom in a four-storey block constructed in the late 1940s. One of the issues that emerged during this interview is that the limited income of this household prevented it from renovating and maintaining the home: ‘The walls, everything, is falling into pieces [. . .] the flat has never been repaired since it was built.’ That the practice of squatting empty apartments continued well into the post-war period was evidenced by the case of a Nowy Port woman who took over an unoccupied 40 sq. m flat after marrying her now late husband in 1979. Previously they both lived in Wrzeszcz, in their family homes: ‘When my children came into the world it started to get cramped, we couldn’t find anything better, we were short of funds for a flat.’ Her opinion about the district was very negative: she felt that the social environment was ‘pathological’. According to her, the low social status of the neighbourhood was the reason why ‘people escape this place the moment their income starts to grow’. Regardless of the subjective perception of the district, the fact that most interviewees in Nowy Port had been living there for a long time attests to the low residential mobility of households in this area. The marketization of the housing sector implied that most of them did not possess the resources necessary to relocate to a new dwelling. The interviews also underscored the need for incorporating inventory change within the framework of residential mobility (for a wider discussion, see Baer 1990). Many of the households who had no other means of modifying the structural and technical qualities of the dwelling had resorted to improving internal decoration, appliances and furniture in line with present housing needs. This had a significant impact on the quality of life when no other financial or technical means were available. It was also evident that most families expended a great deal of effort – within their own material constraints – to maintain the dwellings in good condition.

Concluding thoughts: Multiple axes of housing adaptability As a whole, the stories of Nowy Port and Wrzeszcz Dolny residents presented a variegated and ‘messy’ picture of the boundaries between subjective and objective influences on the internal aspects of flexibility. It is difficult to evaluate the level of rationality involved in decisions about relocation, urban transformation, or everyday mobility in response to a new housing episode or a broader re-alignment of the social and economic forces that shape everyday life. Indeed, this is a common theme in the literature, as was

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discussed in Chapter 4. Nevertheless, some of the complex relationships between household needs, housing structures and changing socio-economic circumstances did come to the fore. It transpired that households may articulate residential dynamism by either changing their residential location or transforming the structure and function of their dwelling. Seen through a flexibility lens, these two processes can be conceptualized as, respectively, mobility in space (relocation to a different house) or in time (in-situ alterations of the present dwelling). In the interviews, I found a direct correspondence between both types of processes and the onset of new housing episodes, which may be related, among other points, to demographic events (for example, births, deaths, marriages, effects), changes in employment demands (affecting the temporal distribution of household tasks and housing needs), and/or changes in household incomes (a shift in the economic situation of the household, and/or the level of aspiration). The surveyed households were able to undertake a plurality of residential practices in the domestic domain, often experiencing multiple housing events in the same dwelling. When placed within the context of wider debates on informal economic practices and neighbourhood change, this finding points to the existence of a dynamic urban landscape beneath the surface of large-scale and physically visible transformations in the fabric of the city. It indicates that the much neglected transformation of inner-city dwellings from within – and over longer periods of time – can play a crucial role in shaping the everyday lives, economic practices, mobility patterns, housing behaviours and residential aspirations of many households living in such areas. Preliminary evidence of the ‘multiple equilibria’ and adaptive cycles described by social-ecological resilience thinking can be found both in the ability of housing episodes to prompt different types of changes in a household’s residential status, as well as the broader existence of hidden geographies and paths of housing dynamism in the fabric of the city. The stories of the households from Gdan´sk can be broadly divided into two categories. The first group generally includes the trajectories followed by long-term residents of the two areas, who inhabit either private, co-operative or – less frequently – municipally-owned apartments. These households mainly achieved residential flexibility through a wide range of in-place housing modifications implemented with the aid of investment in the existing dwelling, and self-help survival strategies. The accumulated financial capital, knowledge, skills and social networks of the households acted as enablers of such practices, alongside the easily adaptable room layouts and structural features of inner-city tenement buildings. However, the articulation of in-situ residential mobility was often hampered by the unclear

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property rights in this part of the city, which is one of the reasons why some of them resorted to illegal practices in their dwellings. It should also be pointed out that many such households had lengthy experience of articulating coping strategies under communist central planning. The second group of interviewees includes the households who are more residentially mobile in the traditional sense of the concept, because they have been responding to housing events by relocating to new dwellings. These were mainly younger, non-family households with a shorter housing tenure, living in privately rented or co-operative housing. However, their everyday geographies suggest that the extent to which a household is behaving in a ‘flexible’ manner can be judged on a wider set of different planes in addition to the residential one, as they exhibited a range of adaptable behaviours in their employment patterns, social relationships, daily mobility practices and living arrangements. It can thus be concluded there is no single method of determining whether a household is ‘flexible’ or not, as there are always multiple criteria that can be employed toward this purpose. Interestingly, although young professionals and non-family households are often seen as residentially mobile, adaptable and active, many of my respondents from this category chose to adapt their dwellings to new housing events rather than relocate to new ones. But working-class households, who have been constructed as passive and rigid within rightwing public discourses, often reacted to changing housing needs with a wide variety of creative strategies and responses. The diverse articulations of flexibility in the given context, therefore, point to the different meanings and practices relating to the concept, and the need to move away from stereotypical representations of inner-city urban populations and neighbourhoods as unresponsive to processes of broader economic change (for a further discussion, see Riabchuk 2009; Stenning 2005). Moreover, the housing choices and strategies of some of the interviewees pointed to a desire to link spatial flexibility and daily mobility to other kinds of fluid social relations, especially with respect to employment and/or kin and friendship networks. This ‘multiplication of flexibilities’ allowed some households to ‘bend’ Euclidean space to their advantage, by creating socio-spatial matrices that can diminish the physical constraints of the built environment through increased mobility in space and time. The fact that not all households have access to such ‘flexibility chains’ points to one of the reasons for the emergence of social inequality and deprivation. The flow of everyday life is experienced differently by different social groups not only because they may possess different assets – a car, a better quality house, a dwelling that has a wider choice of heating systems – but also as a result of

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the fact that networked service provision has a specific geography of unevenness within the city. One of the most potent examples of ‘linked flexibilities’ is provided by the households who managed to increase job flexibility by turning their homes into workplaces, such as the freelance photographer from Nowy Port (Gabriel), as well as the artist (Gerald) and fund manager (Gino) from Wrzeszcz. In all three cases, the transfer of employment tasks to the domestic domain would have been impossible without a certain degree of physical alteration of the home. For them, the adaptability of the domestic residential environment allowed for the attainment of work flexibility through in-situ housing mobility. However, I also found examples of the opposite situation: the NGO activist who lives in both Gdan´sk and Warsaw could not have maintained her residentially mobile lifestyle without a high degree of work flexibility. In her case, the ability to simultaneously live in two cities and two homes at the same time was contingent on the spatial freedom allowed by her job. It can also be argued that one of the reasons for the migration of such ‘flexible’ household structures to the centre of the city is the desire to supplement their socio-demographic flexibility with spatial flexibility, as the social, economic and cultural density of inner city offers a wider choice of amenities and lifestyle options. The interviews identified three types of relations that contributed to the achievement of these ‘multiplications of flexibility’: the utilization of transport infrastructures, the conversion of homes into workplaces, and the proximity of networks of kin and friendship. The linkages between longterm residential flexibility and daily mobility were the most pronounced in the cases of households who lived in the areas with good transport connections, such as the central part of Wrzeszcz Dolny. Relocating to the area, or deciding to stay in it – sometimes by modifying the home to suit a new housing episode – meant that a household had a wider palette of connectivity options (light railway, trams and buses, in addition to good road links), while being situated within walking distance of the city centre. As pointed out above, the density of public transport systems in the area, inherited from socialism and continuously maintained since, increased its residential attractiveness in this respect. This suggests that the provision and use of socio-technical infrastructures is deeply enmeshed in the relationship between households, mobility and residential flexibility. If a household has some degree of labour mobility, its residential decisions may be driven by the desire to acquire daily mobility. The interviews also revealed that the proximity of the workplace was a key factor for households who decided to stay in, or relocate to, Nowy Port, as the area had much poorer public transport connections. Even though

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many of them did not own cars – which limited their ability to quickly switch between transport means in response to altered circumstances and conditions – the interviewees had a ‘linked flexibility’ relationship with their built environment, simply by choosing to stay in a location that gave them access to a wider variety of modes of movement.

CHAPTER 8 NETWORKS: UNRAVELLING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

The previous chapters explored the manner in which the built environment of the home created alliances with human actors over time – a dynamic that can be broadly said to correspond to the ‘r’ phase of the complex adaptive cycle according to the social-ecological resilience approach. By using the same approach, it can be argued that this chapter focuses on the operation of the ‘K’ phase in the given context, by exploring the ability of buildings to ‘roll out’ the economic, social and cultural ties that they have created with their inhabitants across the broader neighbourhood setting, and within a wider range of social and cultural domains. In using the social-environmental resilience analogy as a means of interrogating the case study material, my key argument is that agentic energies become stored in the social-built system thanks to the ability of hybrid networks to resonate in line with the transformation processes experienced by a wider range of material and political sites. A number of such sites are described in this chapter, with reference to each of the study cities. In this context, it should be noted that the movement towards a marketbased economic regulation that has been unfolding in Poland, Macedonia, Slovenia and Hungary since 1989, has been marked by the implementation of neoliberal policies – including liberalization and privatization – throughout the housing sector (Kotus 2006; Smith and Rochovska´ 2007; Smith and Swain 2010; Smith and Tima´r 2010; Stenning et al. 2010; Uchman and Adamski 2003). At the same time, however, the three societies have become more unequal and polarized, with urban spaces undergoing trends of commercialization, commodification, gentrification, in addition to the construction of new office space and gated communities (as was noted in Chapter 5), coupled with the selective decline of working-class districts. In all of the four cities, therefore, relations between buildings and people in the

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housing stock became ‘unlocked’ from the clasp of a centralized, planned economy, becoming subject to a wide range of socio-economic transactions and spatial transformations. These developments destabilized older links between social and built formations, warranting the creation of new networks of appropriation and survival. The text that follows interrogates the diverse socio-material assemblages that branch out of the built environment of the home via a range of vignettes and examples specific to each of the four study cities. In two of the cases (Skopje and Budapest), these explorations refer to processes that extend beyond the physical limits of the domestic realm, by encompassing physical and social changes in the host neighbourhoods and cities. The Gdan´sk case is less straightforward, as it refers to processes that take place primarily in the home, but enrol a much wider range of economic and cultural developments. Ljubljana is more complex still, as the processes hosted by the homes in its case study are of a liminal and hybrid nature, involving the emergence of an array of private spaces with a specific public function. In a broader sense, all four sets of examples demonstrate that uncovering dynamics that take place in the seemingly slow and hidden domain of the home can help tell a broader story of social and spatial change in a given city.

Gdan´sk: Alternative economies and affective neighbourhood spaces In the previous chapters, I emphasized that even though the post-communist transformation lifted the wide range of state-imposed limits on residential mobility, many households in Poland have been unable to move house due to a lack of financial capital. As a result, in-place housing modifications have continued to serve as an alternative form of residential mobility, often even intensifying due to the wider availability of cheap building materials. The interviews in Dolny Wrezszcz and Nowy Port indicated that the built environment of the home has helped energize and sustain such practices, by providing an alternative and flexible source of capital. However, built alterations and improvements of the home have not been the only form of non-capitalist economic production in this context: I found several cases where the physical structure and character of residential dwellings permitted the articulation of a much wider range of alternative economic practices. Most notably, several interviewees had converted their homes into workplaces, using the domestic domain as a base for running small enterprises, sometimes operating outside the formal economy. The dwellings quickly became enmeshed in a wider network of work practices that allowed them to create a new set of allies beyond the immediate neighbourhood context.

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I was able to identify several key assets and mechanisms that enable households to take a pro-active approach towards the transformation of their homes. The importance of education and building expertise was illustrated by Galina’s case. Having been trained as an engineer, the middle-age divorced woman who headed this household was able to undertake a wide range of technical measures to improve the quality of the dwelling, including the replacement of energy installations, doors, and windows, in addition to fitting new flooring. She also expressed an intent to improve the interior design of the corridor (‘the creaking floorboards drive me mad’) and increase the insulation of the ceiling. These measures, whose aim was to raise the quality of life in the dwelling for both herself and her son, were undertaken despite her limited income. Thanks to her knowledge of the technical aspects of building renovation, she had gradually been able to bring the home to a state that matches the household’s needs and requirements: ‘I changed the windows and doors in stages throughout the 1990s. I didn’t have enough money to replace them all at once.’ In some cases, the built space of the home provided a source of rental income, thanks to changes in the internal layout of the home. In Chapter 6, I mentioned the case of Gertruda, a 69-year-old single pensioner who lived in a spacious, 85 sq. m turn-of-the century apartment in central Wrzeszcz. She was subletting one the rooms in the flat in order to supplement her modest pension. This was facilitated by the structure of the dwelling, which consisted of three interconnected rooms that were each linked to the corridor. In order to give more privacy to their then teenage son, she and her late husband had decided to seal off one of the interconnecting doors, with the aim of separating one of the rooms from the rest of the open space. The arrangement, which had been implemented more than 10 years earlier, now allowed her to use the living space in a more rational way, while providing an additional source of income. In the case of this household, non-market-based physical transformations of the space of the home – allowed for by the structure of the built fabric – created an additional source of livelihood and improved quality of life: I cannot afford to live in such a large apartment at this age, and yet I do not want to move out of this district. I have close friendships with my neighbours [. . .]. This is a good area to live in, I appreciate the peace and quiet, green spaces and good shopping facilities. Renting this room, albeit illegally, allows me to do that. However, there were several situations where the socio-spatial networks inscribed on the blank figure of built forms were insufficiently strong to counter older, more established assemblages. In such cases, the lack of interpretive flexibility constrained the fulfilment of household needs,

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1 Bathroom Living room

2

4 3

Bedroom and study

Kitchen

Figure 8.1 Spatial adaptability issues in Gizela’s apartment: 1–narrow door does not allow for moving big furniture pieces in; 2–removal of partition wall; 3–remainder of partition wall cannot be removed because it contains chimneys; 4–addition of curved wall to separate kitchen and bathroom.

providing a powerful ‘push’ factor for households that lacked the ability to move to a different home. Households attempted to deal with technical rigidities in the housing stock by utilizing their knowledge, skills and capitals in the implementation of in-situ alterations. In Chapter 7, I mentioned the case of Gizela, a young professional who lived in a terraced tenement building in the centre of Wrzeszcz. I found it striking that she refused to move from her apartment despite the fact that it did not meet her housing needs, and she had the financial means for relocation. Although her main job was in Warsaw, this interviewee chose to commute from Gdan´sk in order to keep her Wrzeszcz flat. In the interview, Gizela pointed out that ‘this apartment has its own charm’ and she prefers ‘this type of housing [. . .] I like the historical significance that it projects’. She had made a number of interventions to her 42 sq. m apartment after moving there in early 2001 (see Figure 8.1): I changed the heating, enlarged the bathroom and moved the bathroom door. Previously the door was facing the main entrance, which wasn’t very convenient. This, and the idea to extend the bathroom through a curved wall came from my cousin, who is an architect. Weronika’s housing strategies were implemented in response to her specific housing needs – those of a single woman in her thirties – which did not

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correspond to the original function of a flat that had been originally constructed for a nineteenth-century working-class family. Despite the numerous transformations, the built fabric of the apartment limited the extent to which she could alter the function of the dwelling: I would have liked to pull down the wall separating the kitchen from the bedroom, but I cannot do anything about that because there are six chimneys inside it. Three of those are for ventilation, and the other three are for the former heating system – there are two for each of the floors below me. Also, the narrowness of the entrance corridor makes it impossible to move in big pieces of furniture. In Gizela’s case, the clash between two technological frames allowed only part of the household’s present residential requirements to be met. In spite of her considerable financial power and access to technical knowledge, the structure of the building prevented her from implementing the full range of measures that would allow her apartment to become more comfortable and better suited to her needs. Responding to the functional blankness of the dwelling required a more intense co-weaving of networks within the grain of the social and built fabric, involving major technical knowledge and interventions that were not allowed by the building itself. This is far beyond the one-directional relationship among ideology, power and the design features of architectural forms suggested by authors such as Thomas Markus (2013) and Spiro Kostof (2005). There were also a number of households that refused to move from the study districts despite the poor state of repair of their homes. Genowefa, whose apartment was ‘literally falling apart’, still wanted to stay in it even though moving would have been a more affordable option: ‘we have grown roots here’. Such interviewees stressed that their residential environments were providing a kind of ‘shelter’, both physically and emotionally, from the rapidity of socio-economic change experienced by Gdan´sk and Poland in the post-communist period. Thinking along similar lines, Gabriel also felt that his home, which had seen numerous structural alterations since its construction in the 1930s, was ‘very functional’ and contributed to his ‘quality of life in the area’. He was planning on renovating a downstairs flat inherited from his grandmother and moving there ‘at some point in the future’. According to this interviewee, one of the most gratifying aspects of everyday life in Nowy Port was the presence of open spaces of creativity and conviviality during the warmer part of the year. Faced with the lack of social venues (‘there is only one pub in the area, and, trust me, you don’t want to go there’), its

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inhabitants often organized spontaneous open-air gatherings, accompanied by live music and drinks bought from the local shops. Such events happened ephemerally, at different points throughout the quarter. They were supplemented by the open-air ‘pub’ at the banks of a disused industrial canal, where he and his friends ‘meet up to talk and drink beer, sitting on sacks filled with sand’. Through such alternative urbanisms, it can be claimed, locales within the neighbourhood received a new social meaning that compensated for both the lack of residential mobility of its inhabitants, and the inadequate provision of local amenities. The spontaneous, ephemeral and fluid character of these spaces points to an altogether different manner of articulating flexibility in the built environment. I would argue that such examples point to a second type of associative link between households and buildings: a subjective bond that allows, as pointed out by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981), the material features of the built environment ‘to represent, at least potentially, the endogenous being of the owner’ while constituting an ‘ecology of signs that reflects as well as shapes the pattern of the owner’s self’ (p. 17; for a further discussion, see Norman 1993). This transitivity reaches above economic relations or residential functions, pointing to a deeper, affective connection. Indeed, what makes home-territories different from other territories is on the one hand the living of the territory (a temporalization of the space), and on the other their connection with identity, or rather a process of identification, of articulation of affect. (Wise 2000: 299) Perhaps the concept of ‘appropriation’, as understood, for example, by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre 2001) – who points out that ‘an appropriated space resembles [author’s emphasis] a work of art, which is not to say that it is in any sense an imitation work of art’ (p. 165) – can provide a useful explanatory framework for understanding such relations. In his words, often such a space is a structure – a monument or building – but this is not always the case: a site, a square or a street may also be legitimately described as an appropriated space (ibid.). In a way, it can be claimed that the examples discussed above provide evidence of a relationally fluid appropriation process between households and the built environment of their homes, since the buildings radiate meanings and associations that affect the residential mobility behaviours of their occupants, and warrant the creation of new heterogeneous networks. This connection may also be related to the buildings’ functional blankness, since it

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is precisely the new set of messages that residential buildings convey in the post-socialist context that allows for the affective networks to be formed around them.

Ljubljana: Destabilizing the boundaries between private and public space As was pointed out in Chapter 6, some of the Ljubljana interviewees that belonged to the categories of ‘in-situ improvers’ and residentially stationary households (categories described for the Gdan´sk case study in Chapter 7) consisted entirely of older residents who had lived in the case study areas for several decades. They managed to develop a close connection with the built environment of the host dwellings and neighbourhoods, having implemented a wide range of physical modifications and/or alterations to their homes. In cases where the financial capital and/or technical possibilities for in-place adjustment were lacking, such households had often improved and transformed the inventories of the homes themselves. Unfortunately, many decision-makers failed to recognise these complexities, referring to this socio-demographic group as a distinctive social and political problem (see Box 8.1). The importance of the domestic domain – and my interviewees’ attachment to it – extended beyond the realm of the residential environment of the home, encompassing a much wider range of neighbourhood settings. One of the most prominent issues to emerge in this context related to the manner in which the daily mobility patterns of many interviewees – most of them long-term residents of the area – had taken the form of a hub-andspoke-like structure centring on the domestic domain. Their everyday movements were deeply shaped by the degree of cultural and social familiarity with the neighbourhood (which are undergoing rapid socio-spatial changes), health issues, and the availability of local facilities. Living in the inner city, which provides a higher-than-average spatial density of, and walking access to, such amenities became a crucial precondition for the successful conduct of everyday life in this context. Ljubljana has also experienced dramatic changes in the nature and structure of urban service provision. The post-socialist transformation has been marked by the restructuring, reorganization, and, in many cases, ‘consolidation’ of public transport, social welfare, health, and cultural amenities. As a result of these dynamics, there has been polarization of service functions between the centre and outskirts of Sˇisˇka. The former has a much broader range of local amenities, partly as a result of its greater diversity of built structures. Nonetheless, according to Liljana, who lived in a rented 45 sq. m apartment in a 1960s building:

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Urban decision-makers and older people in inner cities

The dynamic and mutually empowering connection that many older urban residents in my Ljubljana and Gdan´sk case studies had managed to build with their dwellings, was not reflected in the relevant statements of city council officials and local urban development experts. In the eyes of the city’s governing authorities and influential policy specialists, residentially stationary households living in inner-city areas – especially when dominated by pensioners or older people – were a demographic and spatial ‘problem’. They were perceived as suffering from extreme marginalization and poverty while stubbornly occupying some of the best real estate in the city. In particular, the domination of older one-person households in the residentially attractive central parts of Sˇisˇka and Wrzeszcz Dolny was not being seen favourably by the city authorities. In both Ljubljana and Gdan´sk, they were perceived as an obstacle to the economic development and demographic rejuvenation of the inner city, because, in the words of a Ljubljana decision-maker a lot of housing capital in very desirable locations is simply locked. We cannot use these dwellings to attract younger or more affluent residents that could help revitalise the inner city. The pensioners who currently live there are usually either owners or have long-term rental contracts. We cannot move them out, and they refuse to go. Moreover, it was pointed out that ‘the saturation of housing markets in central urban areas is artificially increasing house prices in this part of the city and preventing other inhabitants from moving in’. Although neither Ljubljana nor Gdan´sk had taken any active measures to move single elderly persons to different locations, through the interviews it transpired that the city of Sopot, which borders Gdan´sk to the north, had already been moving some pensioners out of the municipally owned housing stock in the city centre. The inability of the Gdan´sk city authorities to undertake similar measures in Zaspa may have been hampered by the fact that the majority of flats in this area were part of one of the largest housing co-operatives in the city. However, both urban areas had recently seen the emergence of private real-estate agencies that specialized in inner-city house swaps, whereby large, well-located flats with indebted owners or legal problems were exchanged for smaller and more peripheral housing. The cities’ desire to remove older single-person households out of their current residential location can also be attributed, in part, to the land-use conflicts between them and newly settled younger inhabitants, who had different housing needs and behaviours. It should also be taken into account that ‘within the near future, the city centre [of Ljubljana] will be inhabited by different age groups, i.e., by very young people and elderly and even high-aged people’, which means that ‘the improvement of urban amenities has to take into account the needs and wants of all groups’ (Haase et al. 2005: 29). Moreover, the demographic, economic and structural revitalization of Wrzeszcz Dolny was a key development priority for the local municipality. According to a local decision-maker, ‘the growth prospects of these areas are aided by the availability of significant tracts of vacant land, as well as their favourable inner-city location [. . .]. The construction of new housing may help to maintain a mixed social structure and slow down the process of general degeneration of the district.’

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I can find almost everything that I need in my area. The church, health centre, and shops are all within walking distance. It is very important that doctors, nurses and rehabilitation facilities are so close nearby. I only have to use the public transportation when I go to visit the members of my family. When asked what would be her preferred residential area in the city, she responded that ‘without doubt, the place where you live is always the best’ (to a certain extent, this statement echoes the findings of similar geographical work on ‘feelings of place’, for example in Holloway and Hubbard 2001). However, the inability of many older residents to mentally cope with the fast rate of social and spatial change in both their residential neighbourhoods, and the city as a whole, has often forced them to limit their everyday movements to spaces that, in their view, have undergone fewer transformations and can provide a higher degree of familiarity. This was particularly pronounced in the choice of shopping areas. Lena, who lived in a 31 sq. m apartment, stated that ‘I prefer shopping in small, local premises, where I know the shopkeepers, and they also know me. It is very important for me to have a personal relationship and to be able to talk with them.’ Sˇisˇka, like many similar residential districts in post-socialist cities, has seen the substitution of ground-floor apartments with privately-owned grocery shops, while several medium-sized supermarkets have been opened along the main communication arteries. The importance of the physical proximity of such facilities for the successful performance of everyday activities was illustrated by Ljudmila, a 72-year-old widow living in a 60 sq. m apartment in a tower block in the western part of Sˇisˇka. Although she was used to being independent, and had a ‘sufficient’ income – having worked all her life as a secretary – she still did not ‘feel safe, and [. . .] can’t move around easily for health reasons. Even going to the corner shop for food is difficult sometimes.’ Nevertheless, Lilijana, who was 78 and lived in a detached house in the eastern part of Sˇisˇka, was under the impression that: ‘Now there is a much wider range of shops available in my neighbourhood, and they have the groceries that I need. [. . .] but, on the downside, everything is so much more expensive now’. Restricted mobility may be one of the reasons why a representative sample of residents aged over 60 that were surveyed in the adjacent Ljubljana city centre district listed ‘good shopping facilities’ at the top of their neighbourhood preferences (Haase et al. 2005b: 13). However, the opening of car-based hypermarkets in suburban locations has eroded the profitability of small retail businesses in the inner city, while undermining consumer choice in such areas. According to the president of the Ljubljana Shopkeepers’

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Association: ‘Three large suburban shopping centres is too much for a small city like Ljubljana [. . .] shopping revenue in the city centre has decreased by more than 30 per cent during the last three years.’ Yet one of the shopkeepers who I interviewed in Sˇisˇka pointed out that the continued presence of a wide, socially mixed range of households – including single female pensioners – in the inner city is what is keeping us in business [. . .] if more yuppies moved into the area our business might decline, since they have cars and tend to do their shopping in larger supermarkets. The reduced physical mobility of many of the interviewees in Ljubljana, coupled with the fragmentation of shopping and social amenities across the urban fabric, meant that living in the inner city – where nearly all necessary facilities are located within walking distance – became an essential precondition for the conduct of everyday life. The rapidity of change in inner urban neighbourhoods, however, had often brought with it a significant degree of psychological and emotional intimidation that further restricted my interviewees’ daily movement across everyday space. The maintenance of a stable domestic environment became all the more important in this context, since it provided both a ‘refuge’ for emotional stability (for a further discussion of this meaning of home in other geographical contexts, see Rapport and Dawson 1998), and a physical pivot in the spatial weaving of networks of quotidian (an aspect discussed further in Bennett 2002). This was one of the main reasons why most of the surveyed households would find it inconceivable to move to another area, where the degree of familiarity with the neighbourhood environment is even lower. As a whole, the stories told by the residents of Ljubljana indicated that a household’s ability to participate in the expression of socio-economic life in the inner city is closely linked to its specific urban mobility patterns, which are principally shaped by two groups of factors: the mental perception of the changing city, and the physical ability to move through space. Depending on the number of times that they were able to leave their home, the respondents chose to visit only those places that were essential for their most direct needs (shops, hospitals, church) within environments that they were familiar with, and could relate to. The rapid social, cultural and economic changes unfolding in the surveyed neighbourhoods implied that these places are being constantly fragmented across the urban fabric, although their density in the inner city has often increased. The interviewed households had thus found themselves in a ‘disjointed’ set of

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territories, consisting of a distinct set of spatial trajectories centring on the domestic domain. Even though this resulting attachment to home can be attributed to the interviewees’ inability to adapt to the rapid transformation of their urban environments, it is also true that domestic spaces can act as a key affective and symbolic realm for emotional and social stability. The physical proximity to a wide range of facilities in the city, accompanied by their homes’ function as a ‘sanctuary’ from the rapidity of socio-spatial changes in the neighbourhood, allowed this group of residents to continue to live in the inner urban fabric despite its rapid post-socialist transformation. Given the emergence of dynamics of gentrification and re-urbanization in these areas, it can be suggested that the presence of a sizeable cohort of older households (particularly single women) in the inner city helped increase its social, economic and functional diversity. In addition to serving as a site for the social reproduction of everyday life, the domestic domain is also constitutive of the wider spatialities of the neighbourhood. Therefore, and largely thanks to the specific spatial and demographic circumstances of many of the surveyed households in Ljubljana, the home became a key site of local community activity, outside the remit of formal, established formal institutional structures. This means that the domestic domain came to serve many of the functions and roles traditionally played by outdoor and indoor public space, thus blurring the territorial boundaries between the private and the public. The central importance of home to the conduct of everyday life in the neighbourhood also pointed to the need for conceptualizing home space and the social construction of scale (MacKinnon 2011; Marston 2000) through a relational lens, where it is the performance, rather than the absolute size, of the space that matters. To summarize: aside from the rather receptive, inward-orientated purpose of home – whereby it served as a sanctuary from the rapidity of social change unfolding in the city – the interviews also revealed a much more active, outward-orientated and place-making role of the domestic domain. Basically, the home acted as a vessel for the weaving of economic and social networks that transform community life. Although I found little evidence that these functions of residential dwellings are the outcome of an intentional, conscious effort of the households who occupy them, there was little doubt that the resulting mobilization of community relations had helped to invigorate the inner city with a whole new set of socio-economic networks. These understandings of home may indicate a very different aspect of home than the one suggested by Kathrin Ho¨rschelmann and Bettina van Hoven’s (2003) work on middle-aged women in East Germany, where home had ‘become a place of restrictive, rather than empowering, stability’ (p. 753).

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Skopje: Mutating the city beyond the limits of the home In Skopje, the process of in-situ housing alterations has extended beyond the existing physical limits of residential dwellings to create a specific phenomenon: apartment building extensions (ABEs). These built forms represent free-standing enlargements of the plans of dwellings in apartment blocks, attached to the external cladding of the building (see Figures 5.13 and 6.9). ABEs are rooted in the housing practices inherited from communism, when it was common for families to create glazed balcony enclosures (also known as loggias) in order to alleviate the chronic shortage of living space resulting from the combination of structural constraints on residential mobility, massive rural-to-urban migration, as well as the common practice for extended families to live in one dwelling. The lack of a clear set of housing policy guidelines further aggravated the haphazard character of the state’s involvement in housing sector management during the post-communist transformation process since 1990, resulting in a boom of illegal housing construction. Previously limited to the urban outskirts, residential buildings constructed without planning permission now started to spread into innercity areas, often involving entire apartment blocks rather than only individual houses, as was previously the case. The absence of a co-ordinated policy response and an adequate planning framework regarding the rise of informal and illegal construction may have also contributed to the further expansion of the practice of enclosing balconies in apartment buildings. The appearance of ABEs in Skopje can be dated back to the period when these dynamics started to involve the addition of new residential space beyond the external perimeter of the buildings, through various technical means. Such trends were fuelled by the aggravation of housing shortage (stemming from continued household growth and rural-tourban migration), as well as the low affordability of new housing stemming from the low level of housing market development, the unavailability of competitively priced mortgages, and the low income levels of the population as a whole. Still, ABEs in Skopje have been constructed under the remit of the formal planning process, as the citizens who build them require planning permission from the municipal authorities. The planning framework treats ABEs as ‘external building extensions and supplements’, which may be built if at least 51 per cent of the homeowners in a given block support them. It is also stipulated that the extensions should stay within the external planning ‘envelope’ of the building, which in most cases is 10 – 20 per cent larger than the object itself, but tends to be absent from newer buildings. The administrative approval of ABEs often involves complicated bureaucratic

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procedures that also entail – at least nominally – inspection checks at the construction site itself, to ensure that the extensions are in accordance with the planning permission issued by the municipality. Thanks to the lack of any concentrated policy efforts to curb and regulate its expansion, the ABE phenomenon expanded rapidly during the late 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in its widespread presence throughout apartment buildings in Karposh. Different types of extensions can now be found on virtually every 1970s prefabricated apartment block in this district. However, ABEs are not represented in the taller, non-prefabricated blocks in the estate that were constructed during the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, since their greater height places technical limits on the addition of external extensions with independent frame constructions; the interviews with local residents also indicated that such blocks they tend to be inhabited by higher-income residents, which may be more residentially mobile through the housing stock and do not require additions to the flats. It also transpired that ABEs have impacted the internal configurations of their host flats in multiple ways. In cases where they have been added to panel block buildings where the external walls are load-bearing, the extensions rarely exerted a significant impact on other domestic spaces, because the built fabric is insufficiently structurally flexible to allow for the creation of new room arrangements by removing internal partitions. However, the converse is true in cases where facade walls adjoining the ABEs have been knocked down to reorder the apartment: I encountered several cases where entirely new room configurations had been made. The extensions also differ in terms of the amount of added space – among my interviewees, the average contribution of ABEs to the size of the adjoining dwelling amounted to approximately a third of the original total space. The additional residential space created by the ABEs serves a variety of roles: in most cases, the new dwelling areas are used for cooking and storage, although I did encounter situations where they served as additional bedrooms or living rooms. The use of extensions as storage space may be partly due to the technical difficulties and cost penalties associated with connecting them to the district heating grid. In some cases, the extensions were heated with electric appliances. Nevertheless, their construction and use of ABEs has spawned an entire urban economy, partly because they have played a significant role in hosting different types of economic activities: ground-floor conversion of flats with extensions into shops, medical practices, and so on, is an increasingly common phenomenon in Karposh, as is the use of ABEs for informal domestic work. Most of the extensions have been built by private firms, with the financing being undertaken by the developers themselves, who in turn receive the right to build and own an additional loft apartment on top

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of the block. The increasing popularity of this practice can be attributed to the fact that it does not require the commitment of any additional financial resources. According to Siljan: None of the tenants in our building had to pay anything to get the basic extension, consisting of two rooms, as the developer added an entire flat on top of the entire building in order to build them. The neighbour added several new rooms to her extension as she had additional money to spend. The placement of ABEs on the facades of apartment buildings, together with their large numbers and volumes, means that this phenomenon has come to dominate the visual landscapes of Karposh. The employment of relatively expensive materials and external finishes – including decorative bricks and wrought-iron fences – has rarely resulted in a compliance between ABEs and their host buildings in stylistic and aesthetic terms. Rather, most buildings in Karposh demonstrate an almost complete lack of harmony between the architectural styles of the ABEs and the original apartment blocks: the extensions rarely follow the pure modernist forms of the blocks, being either very shoddily built in the cases of low-income owners, or following a more ornamented style that sometimes becomes overt neoclassical kitsch in situations where the investors are more affluent (which suggests that there is a link between social status and the type and size of an ABE – see Bouzarovski et al. 2011). Indeed, architects in the city have noted the ‘aesthetic inferiority’ of the extensions, terming them urban ‘scars’ and ‘vandalism’ (ibid.). Experts’ complaints are also motivated by the lack of seismic safety among these structures, as it is feared that they might endanger the mechanic resistance of the host buildings in the case of a strong earthquake. Opinions about the energy efficiency implications of ABEs, however, have been divided: while some of the interviewed residents stated that the ABEs have helped improve thermal comfort inside the previous dwelling in cases where the extensions are not heated, some experts believed that the ABEs worsen the energy efficiency of the host structures, because they create thermal bridges that conduct heat out of the buildings. Also, some of the interviewed residents of Karposh felt that the extension had worsened the insulation, insolation and aeration of their homes; this was particularly true in situations where they had opted against the construction of such a structure in their apartment while their neighbours had not, which meant that their balconies and windows would be encased by an empty concrete frame. In some instances where the extensions are particularly

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deep – as there are examples where they increase the building perimeter by several metres – their presence impedes the flow of air into the building, or blocks sunlight into living quarters. There were a few instances where ABEs encroached on public space, by occupying areas that were previously used as parks and pavements. Despite these issues, most interviewees felt that the ABEs had an overall positive effect on their everyday lives, and the improvement of the neighbourhood more generally. As stated by Silvana: The extensions are new, they look nice. They help hide the ageing cladding of our apartment building, which hasn’t been replaced or redecorated since the 1970s [. . .] they may have taken a small part of the park away, but there is still plenty of green space left around the building [. . .] not to mention that I have a much bigger apartment now, three additional rooms. It makes a giant difference when you turn a two bedroom apartment into a five bedroom one. There is a great deal of uncertainty, however, about the manner in which the widespread construction of ABEs in Karposh will affect the districts’ long-term development. Local government officials did not look upon the phenomenon in a favourable light, having become concerned that it might make any future attempts to reconstruct or replace the dwelling stock much more difficult. Although the prefabricated panel blocks from the 1970s that host the ABEs in this district were built so as to allow easy dismantling and the replacement with more permanent structures, the extensions are more solid – they rely on reinforced concrete frames and brick walls that will make the future disassembly of the blocks and the relocation of their occupants more costly. There is a danger that the ABEs will ‘freeze’ the development of their host structures in time, thus increasing their obsolescence and decreasing the overall resilience of the built environment.

Budapest: The home as a starting point for residential segregation The Budapest case study helps identify the meso-level patterns and trends stemming from the micro-level processes of social transformation and differentiation at the level of the home. Statistical evidence about the patterns of social segregation in this city at the start of the post-communist transformation in the early 1990s has revealed that the study area comprises four distinct spatial zones of housing provision. Communist-era housing estates contained the highest average residential quality standards, although

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they mostly comprised apartment buildings. The apartments in these buildings had the greatest mean number of rooms, far higher than in the other districts (more than 5 rooms per dwelling on average, as opposed to 2.5 in the remaining study area). In all of them, the ratio of dwellings with a bathroom was above 90 per cent; this was unlike the industrial inner-city quarters, where the analogous ratio often dropped to below 70 per cent (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992). However, Lipo´tva´ros and U´jlipo´tva´ros came second in terms of the shares of dwellings with bathrooms and other amenities. They ranked very low in terms of the total amount of floor space per resident (less than 13 sq. m). Although most sub-standard dwellings were concentrated in inner-city industrial districts, the proportion of individual homes in some of these areas was quite high in comparison to similar quarters in Western cities. Many such quarters were built in a semi-legal, speculative manner, which explains their low housing quality (Szele´nyi 1983). However, a fourth category of dwellings ´ jpest. These quarters could be distinguished in the outer residential belt of U were almost entirely composed of single-dwelling buildings (up to 90 per cent) and were constructed to a higher-than-average standard in terms of the number of rooms and sanitary facilities. The general housing patterns observed in the study area can be largely attributed to the legacies of the centrally planned housing model – with its pervasive shortage of dwellings – as well as post-communist transformation processes, marked by growing social polarization and segregation, including ghettoization and gentrification. Of particular importance in the context is the rapid privatization of Budapest’s housing stock during the 1990s, which mainly involved a shift from the public to the owner-occupied sector (Bodna´r 1996). Broader research in the field has found that the correlation between privatization and renovation is low, and that richer families, living in better quality dwellings and in more desirable locations, have been more inclined to reconstruct. However, the differences among households in this regard are not very significant as much of the improvement in the residential stock ‘has been decorative, rather than structural’ (Kova´cs 1996: 254). As confirmed by Be´la, the 60-year-old owner of a 70 sq. m dwelling in Lipo´tva´ros: We tried to do our best in terms of renovations over a period of almost 10 years – changing the floors, windows, and repainting the walls – but the outside facade of the building only got improved last year, when there was full agreement from all the owners. Even so, we have not managed to change any of the pipes or heating systems that are very old, over 150 years. I fear that we will need to undertake further

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interventions on them in the years to come, and this will be very difficult as there are many private flats in the building, and some of the owners are companies or overseas investors. Movements in housing prices indicate that the privatization of the built environment has produced a new urban hierarchy in the study areas, in which there may be a link between the residential attractiveness of the built environment and average dwelling prices. This was already visible in 1990; the highest levels of apartment prices (in the range above 50,000 Hungarian forints per sq. m) were observed in the most affluent districts and in major service centres (Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1992). At the same time, 1 sq. m of dwelling space in the industrial quarters of northeastern Ujpest cost less than 28,000 Forint (ibid.). Prices in the remaining inner-city areas were located on a linear trajectory between these two extremes, depending on their distance from the city centre. More recent data about the change of apartment prices since 1990 indicates that a number of new residential inequalities are emerging parallel to the transformation of urban functions. One of the key differences in this regard is related to the level of public maintenance. According to Bala´sz, a resident of U´jlipo´tva´ros: ‘Levels of public services here vary within Budapest, as we have different district governments in each area. In general, poor districts are more likely to receive poor infrastructure services.’ The spatial polarization of municipal public services has resulted in a concentration of new investment along major transport arteries and functional hubs. This is in contrast to the presence of environmental amenities (fresh air and green space) in the zone by the Danube (which has already attracted a significant amount of investment) and the outskirts of the city. The outer suburban ring is a unique case in this regard: its environmental quality has been endangered by the recent construction of the Budapest orbital motorway (M0), which passes only 250 – 300 metres from the large (5,000 inhabitants) prefabricated panel housing estate of Ka´poszta´smegyer II. One of the motorway’s junctions was placed 150 metres from the local kindergarten, and 400 metres from the outermost blocks. The construction of the road involved the diversion of a nearby stream, and the degradation of a protected nature reserve. According to some of the NGO campaigners I spoke with, its associated noise and air pollution effects have impacted the day-to-day lives of the residents of Ka´poszta´smegyer II. However, despite experiencing a quick decline of its natural amenity value, the area has also become an important area of commercial concentration. The effects of this process on the level of public maintenance and development remain to be seen.

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The quickest rise of property value between 1988 and 1994 (more than ´ jlipo´tva´ros and Lipo´tvaro´s (Kovacs 1996). 40 per cent) was concentrated in U This may be attributed to the quick privatization of the (relatively) goodquality housing stock, although the area has also enjoyed a favourable social status, satisfactory level of municipal service provision, and a good ecological location. The lower quality of environmental services (including the higher temperature and population density), and the competition from more affluent central parts of the city – in Buda and central Pest, where gentrification is proceeding at a faster pace – can account for the slower growth of dwelling prices in Lipo´tva´ros. These quarters have been losing their residential function thanks to ‘ground floor reconstruction’: a process that occurs when private firms reconstruct old buildings, bringing in new assets – shops, restaurants, offices, and so on – in the process. As a result of this dynamic, sharp contrasts emerge between the deteriorated upper floors and the refurbished basement of the buildings (Kova´cs 1994). The broader revitalization of the inner city has also been aided by a combination of favourable spatial and social factors, inherited from the socialist period, including low rents, high social status, adequate infrastructure and good environmental conditions. The rise of property prices has rendered the renting of flats and ground floors to shops and offices more profitable and led to a general de-residentialization of the area. At the same time, the good quality of environmental functions (thanks to the abundance of green space, insulation, low air pollution levels, and panoramic views across the Danube) has further increased the upmarket residential status of the parts of the central city along the shore of the Danube. This area has acted as a magnet for property price growth, helping catalyse investment dynamics that have extended well into the residential inner city. However, there was a palpable sense among many of my interviewees that the few inhabitants that will remain in the most affluent zones of the urban core are thus likely to be ‘well-offs’, as high living costs will make it impossible for retirees and the unemployed to survive there. The long-term outlook for socialist housing estates is uncertain, especially in the areas where public services are poor. Their structural rigidity limits most types of revitalization investment, implying further social and environmental deterioration. However, there is a marked difference between the housing estates located in the suburbs and the inner city, as the latter have been subject to more extensive levels of renovation and private investment. The comparatively low cost of living, coupled with low rents, the presence of retail investment, and the proximity to the city centre, may yet act as driving forces for the demographic rejuvenation of inner-city housing estates. This is contrary to the trends in districts with individual housing, as family homes in

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peripheral suburbs have undergone extensive expansion and revitalization, largely thanks to their favourable natural amenities and high rates of car ownership. Property price growth in these areas has exceeded rates found in the surrounding industrial quarters and socialist housing estates. Many such districts have also attracted retail investment due to low land prices and rents. As for the inner city, the question remains as to whether the combination of cheap land and favourable spatial factors will help bring future residential investment in its declining factories and housing estates.

Concluding thoughts: The geographies of do-it-yourself urbanism The four case studies cited in this chapter pointed to some of the ways in which the ‘geographies of home’ interact with the spatialities of urban functions and structures in sustaining the social dynamism of the inner city. In its entirety, the reviewed evidence indicated that household behaviours and actions arising out of material and affective linkages with the built environment of the home are socially and spatially reproduced across the neighbourhood scale, and that it is precisely through this set of relations that homes become structurally bound within a particular path of urban development. To a certain extent, the given cities’ ability to create a resilient social –ecological system inside their territorial boundaries hinges on the nature and outcomes of this path. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that complex adaptive cycles operating at the level of the home are connected with similar processes at the scales of neighbourhoods and cities. As I pointed out in Chapter 6, the technical and social qualities of residential buildings in the four case study areas were deeply influenced by the processes of post-communist urban transformation that have engulfed the four case study cities since the early 1990s. As a result, the technological frame of the home acquired new roles and meanings not only with respect to its occupants – thanks to the articulation of new forms of functional blankness – but also in relation to the wider neighbourhood context. In addition to the continued importance of in-situ alterations, the subsequent establishment of socio-spatial networks between homes and their encompassing neighbourhoods and cities has helped maintain the everyday life of a wide range of households in the inner city. Although the evidence reviewed in Chapter 7 indicated that the limited opportunities for residential mobility have contributed to the rise of economic deprivation and social exclusion among some households – as I pointed out in Chapter 6, this is mainly due to the prohibitively high utility and maintenance costs stemming from the mismatch between housing needs and

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Figure 8.2 Ground-floor conversion of apartments into small businesses is visible throughout the case study areas (photo by the author).

built structures – the evidence reviewed in this chapter indicates that the domestic domain also provides an important spatial refuge from the rapid socio-economic restructuring of the post-socialist city, and a symbolic arena for personal expression and emotional comfort. The home also serves as a focal point for social support networks and a source of additional earnings, as many of the interviewed households supplemented their incomes with ‘informal’ economic activities in the home (see Figure 8.2). In Skopje, the specific combination of planning policies, built environment features and household aspirations allowed the process of in-place residential transformation to spill over the physical boundaries of apartment buildings, creating a material embodiment of the ‘do-it-yourself urbanism’ that underpins housing alterations. While such developments have been beneficial for the households who practise them in the short term, their long-term impact on urban resilience remains uncertain. The existence of a rich range of socio-spatial networks between homes and neighbourhoods among older households in Ljubljana can shed further light on the reasons for their continued insistence to remain in the inner city, despite low incomes and the prohibitively high running costs associated with such dwellings. This finding further undermines the authorities’ perception of the concerned individuals’ decisions as ‘selfish’ and ‘illogical’, by emphasizing the rationality of practices of domesticity in this particular urban setting. In particular, the reviewed evidence highlighted the role of home in providing economic support and affective stability against the

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Figure 8.3 Varying levels of housing upgrading and reconstruction are both embedded and create micro-scale patterns of inequality that may be replicated across wider spaces (photo by the author).

fragmentation of everyday lives across different spatial and social settings. It pointed to the diverse ways in which social and economic ties emanating from the domestic domain play a role in the spatial articulation of mobility and consumption needs. Seen through such a lens, the desire of such households to stay in their present dwellings can hardly be deemed irrational and unreasonable. It has also been possible to observe that structures of the built environment are closely linked with spatial patterns of social and ecological segregation (see Figure 8.3). I uncovered a number of specific trends in the patterns of residential inequality within the three study districts of Budapest. Although all the surveyed areas have improved their socio-spatial outlook during the post-socialist transformation, there is a visible deterioration of ecosystem functions and services in some parts of the inner city, particularly within peripheral socialist housing estates. The situation in such districts may change in the future, because environmental factors have played a key role in shaping the patterns of spatial inequality. Throughout all the investigated areas, residential revitalization has tended to concentrate around spaces of high natural amenity value – once again emphasizing the merits of viewing urban change in relation to both the human and physical environment.

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In all of the four study cities, the relationship between homes and urban space is ‘constituted not by one but by multiple spatio-temporalities, producing multiple frameworks within which conflictual social processes are worked out’ (Harvey 2013: 23). But the presence of such conflicts and mismatches, it seems, is insufficient to counter the numerous hidden advantages that could aid the current and future ‘re-urbanization’ of such inner-city areas (see Haase et al. 2005; Buzar et al. 2007). In addition to the spatial proximity to the city centre, all of the reviewed neighbourhoods still possess good public transport connections, relatively good-quality housing, major environmental amenities, and, most importantly, low rents, land values and living costs. Their growing urban attractiveness is evidenced by the presence of new commercial and office developments along arterial hubs.

CHAPTER 9 CONCLUSION

The previous eight chapters explored the alternative urbanisms stemming from the diverse articulations of flexibility and resilience in the built environment of the home. They cross-pollinated a range of hitherto disparate theoretical knowledges, while using evidence from a variety of sources and contexts, in order to explore the factors that influence the relationship between households and dwellings in this context. Part 1 of the book started from the premise that theorizations of resilience in the built environment are dominated by a social-constructivist perspective that often fails to grasp the dynamic ways in which buildings and people ‘are always already bound together, always already binding together’ (Bingham 1996: 635). The notion that the possession of flexibility in this context is a ‘powerful commodity, something scarce and highly valued’ (Martin 1994: xvii) has received very little academic scrutiny, despite the obvious danger that it could lead to new inequalities and divisions in society. In addition, the relationship between housing needs and the adaptability of residential dwellings has been neglected among housing theorists, urban sociologists and urban geographers alike. Further explorations of the relevant scholarship on the subject led me to the realization that I was actually looking at a much wider theoretical gap, relating to the overall expression of flexibility and social resilience in the city. I found that much of the reasoning among policy-makers and the relevant theoretical literature seemed to suggest that persons can be distinguished on the basis of possessing a poorly described and vague form of residential mobility capital – sometimes termed ‘motility’ – based on their ability to change their residential location in response to external perturbations. It can be argued that this approach represents a direct transfer of economic flexibility thinking into the domain of urban socio-spatial transformations. In order to destabilize such thinking, I first investigated the manner in which the restructuring of work and employment practices has affected human

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relationships, and the consequent transformation of structures of kin and friendship. I drew upon several strands of work in constructing my analytical framework, paying particular attention to scholarship focusing on the social and cultural changes in post-Fordism and post-modernity more generally. A central theme in such research is the deep transformation of household and family structures in the developed world, as a result of shifts in cultural values, social expectations and economic relations brought about by the ‘second demographic transition’. The dissolution of the traditional nuclear family has been accompanied by the decline of marriage rates, the postponement of marriage, as well as falling fertility rates and rising numbers of divorces and cohabitations. Not only has the number of single person households increased dramatically, but individuals are now more likely to move through a wider range of family structures throughout their life course. The growing number of small households and housing transitions has also increased the demand for housing in many developed countries. Taking some of these dynamics as starting points, the book mostly focused on situations where households are either unable or do not want to move house during the life course, in addition to the more general ways in which the built structures and power topologies associated with residential mobility are implicated in shaping the urban ‘geographies of quotidian’. I aimed to formulate a set of novel conceptual approaches towards the understanding of residential dynamism in the built environment. At the same time, the book sought to bring a more nuanced social and cultural perspective to the existing interpretation of housing market transformations, which is otherwise dominated by discussions of the architectural issues and urban physical implications associated with in-place adjustments. One of the key claims I advanced in the first part of the book was that the participation of the constructed environment in household decisions and social practices takes place thanks to the functional blankness that buildings have in relation to household needs. Articulations of flexibility in the residential stock, therefore, are predicated upon the occurrence of ‘building events’, which are simultaneously constituted by the spacing and timing of everyday practices, on the one hand, and the agency of buildings that govern household behaviour, on the other. Rather than acting as a rigid container for the flows of materials and ideas, seen in such a way the built environment of the home becomes a fluid vessel of multiple socio-technical networks, which, coupled with the agentic capabilities of households, help ‘nurse’ the geographies of everyday life. Using evidence from four case studies – involving interviews and documentary analysis in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Macedonia – Part 2 of the book found that performance of building events hinges on the internal

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features of the households such as income or education, in addition to the structures of the built environment. Urban tissues played multiple roles in shaping the ability of households to switch from one form of everyday organization to another. Thus, the structural qualities of buildings were found to affect the facility with which a household is able to adapt the dwelling to changing socio-demographic, cultural and economic requirements; and the spatial positionality and structure of transport infrastructures restricted a household’s capability to shift from one form of mobility to another. Such ‘practices’ of architecture were additional to the agency vested in buildings by the planners who designed them, allowing for the establishment of a relation of transitivity (Salvini 2010) between human and non-human actants. Through this process, resilience and flexibility became co-dependent processes, instead of a one-directional set of responses to an external change. The experiences and practices associated with building events were also powerfully reflected in the case of energy services, especially in situations where household activities were governed by the desire to switch to heating systems that are more appropriate to their requirements than the arrangement that they already have. Heating systems that were mismatched with household requirements may raise heating costs and worsen the quality of life. Discomfort, deprivation and hardship were likely to occur in cases where the housing stock or socio-economic circumstances internal to the household did not allow for a sufficiently elastic shift. The inability to modify the type and structure of energy networks showed that the building itself may exert agency over the everyday life of a household, by constraining or enabling particular types of social actions and practices. The buildings’ inability to respond to household energy consumption practices and requirements thus led to the severance of previously established alliances and linkages with their occupants. The same type of conflict often extended beyond the domestic domain, as households were constantly forced to negotiate their mobility and consumption requirements through a rigid maze of urban infrastructures, including streets, buildings and utility networks. The inability to reconcile daily mobility patterns with the temporal and spatial requirements of the ‘infrastructures of everyday life’ also led to hardship and deprivation in a number of cases. The analysed evidence indicated that networks based on kin and friendship have played a crucial role in helping the interviewees build a rich and multilayered geography of everyday spaces. Although many households relied on the aid of family members, I found that friendship and companionship support systems tended to be more durable, while providing for a higher quality of life. This may be attributed to the fact that friendship does not entail some of the care obligations associated with family ties. In some cases, even links based on family and kinship had been severed precisely because of

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the obligation of care. The strength of friendship networks appeared to be related to the level of residential stability in the neighbourhood, as the majority of them were locally nested. The interviewees’ reluctance to leave their residential location can be attributed to such circumstances, because moving to a different area would have likely endangered or severed some of the social links associated with existing neighbourhoods. Some of the older inner-city neighbourhoods in Gdan´sk, Ljubljana and Gdan´sk exhibited a particularly strong concentration of such social networks. Although the domestic domain has often been seen as restrictive and disempowering for individuals in other age cohorts and geographical contexts, I would argue that the ‘spaces of home’ actually allowed many of my interviewees – especially older women – to articulate a wide range of affective, social and economic practices. In this, I would second Diane Gibson’s (1996) conclusion that ‘while there is no doubt that women face a number of adverse physical, emotional, mental, social and economic eventualities in their old age, such eventualities do not adequately represent the totality of their experiences’ (p. 435). For many of the interviewed households – particularly pensioners – everyday space had taken the form of a hub-and-spoke-like structure centring on the domestic domain. The daily mobility patterns of such interviewees were affected by the degree of cultural and social familiarity with the neighbourhood (which are undergoing rapid socio-spatial changes), health issues and the availability of local facilities. Living in the inner city, which provides a higher-than-average spatial density of, and walking access to, such amenities had become a crucial precondition for the successful conduct of everyday life in this context. It is important to emphasize the ability of some households to ‘achieve satisfaction by changing the physical characteristics of their environments’ ¨ zsoy 1998: 315) via the exploitation of existing flexibilities (Altas and O in the housing stock, and the creation of new and adaptable spaces. This process plays a crucial role in enabling the articulation of housing dynamism without relocation. It embodies the interaction between human and nonhuman actants in the most direct possible manner, by underscoring the ability of built structures to restrict or afford particular types of household decisions and actions. Social exclusion and marginality arise at the nexus of such relations, because they express a mismatch between household requirements and the structures of the built environment. The manner in which the micro-geographies of everyday life in the four cities were nested in a relatively similar set of broad-level processes was demonstrated by the importance of the domestic domain in enabling some of the more ‘residentially stationary’ households to take an active role in their own and others’ lives. Many of the uplifting, positive aspects of their everyday

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existence – such as the identification of affective ‘anchors’ dealing with the fragmented and fluid social landscapes of the inner city, the maintenance of networks of kin and friendship, as well as the development of coping strategies – revolved around the home, which has clearly taken on ‘an additional meaning over and above its use as a shelter’ (Randolph 1991: 38). Its variegated functionings in the four inner-city contexts allowed a range of households from different age and social groups to take a positive and creative stance towards the negotiation of their everyday lives. These findings echo the arguments made by authors such as Michel de Certeau (1984), Gordon Douglas (2014), Jeffrey Kidder (2009, 2012) Henri Lefebvre (2001) and Nigel Thrift (1995b), who have emphasized the diverse ways in which households and individuals appropriate the spaces of their everyday lives, by developing creative responses to the multiple constraints of built legacies and structures in the city. The overflow of homebased interventions into the wider spaces of the neighbourhood and city (as described in Chapter 8) allows mobility and attachment to place to become ‘reflexively constituted and reproduced within social and kin networks, within a locale, through the evolution and negotiation of particular household strategies’ (Jarvis 1999: 225). Such processes make it possible for households and communities to destabilize topographical and fixed notions of space, by mobilizing wider spatial, technical and social networks, and constructing the domestic domain as a moment in time.

Multiple planes of flexibility and resilience It is not easy to synthesize a set of coherent analytical threads out of the myriad life stories and housing biographies covered by this study. Overall, the surveyed evidence points to the complexity of household everyday activity and lived experience in the built environment, demonstrating that flexibility and mobility in the city are closely intertwined, multi-faceted processes with diverse reflections on residential choices and strategies. It has also transpired that households and individuals value socio-spatial flexibility and mobility in different ways, and may not necessarily behave in rationally predictable ways when it comes to changing their residential location, environment, or daily movement patterns. Spatial flexibility and mobility are also linked to the emergence of social exclusion, because socio-political changes in production and governance systems can lead to the ‘entrapment’ of disadvantaged households in non-flexible spaces that embody the mismatch between social and built infrastructures. The field research has also uncovered the existence of a plurality of perceptions and understandings of flexibility. While some individuals see the

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ability to change or adapt their everyday spaces to new circumstances as a key priority in everyday life, others have emphasized the attachment to place, habit and stability. As indicated by the experiences of Nowy Port residents in particular, the lack of residential flexibility may be countered by conscious spatial appropriation efforts, encompassing private and public spaces. Through this process, local inhabitants are able to build a dynamic relationship with their everyday space, without having to accept the dominant logic of capitalist consumption. To a certain extent, this appropriation strategy is mirrored within the domain of ‘in-place’ residential modifications implemented outside the market. Such practices allow households without access to the financialized housing sector to mobilize informal support networks to negotiate poverty and exclusion. One specific issue, however, that emerged from the interviews is the almost complete absence of adaptability in the value systems of some households: I found cases where the ability to respond to changed housing circumstances did not figure as an ‘asset’ in systems of aspiration and motivation. In their case, the ability to transform their residential situation in order to respond to housing or employment career pressures in a fast and dynamic manner is far from a ‘powerful commodity’ (to echo Martin 1994) as they had chosen to give priority to social capital or tradition, or, in many cases, were completely indifferent towards it (as evidenced by the case of Gabriel). Thus, the diverse perceptions and understandings of flexibility within the interview corpus pointed to the different meanings that may be attached to the concept in various contexts and situations. It is also striking to note the extent to which the post-socialist ‘marketization’ of housing operations has reduced the residential mobility of households with low incomes. Unlike the socialist past, when housing transactions were dominated by barter and exchange-based mechanisms, the housing sector has now become almost entirely marketized and financialized (this is mirrored in other aspects of everyday life in postsocialism – see, for example, Smith and Stenning 2006). As a result, households without the necessary monetary means for relocation to a new apartment may not be able to respond to a new housing episode through long-term spatial mobility. But ‘in-place’ housing transformations can be implemented outside the market, with the aid of a wider variety of nonfinancial and non-market ‘self-help’ survival strategies. These practices rely on informal household skills and knowledge, in addition to networks of kin and friendship, to source the needed labour and materials for housing transformations. The interviews in Wrzeszcz, Nowy Port, Zaspa and Sˇisˇka alike highlighted the importance of non-market activities in the articulation of such practices.

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This situation embodies a paradox: although flexibility and choice are some of the key tenets of market economics, it is the non-market that actually provides a source of spatial flexibility for low-income households in the given context. Having been squeezed out of the formal housing domain – now increasingly part of the official market – many interviewees resorted to informal coping mechanisms as a means of improving the structural quality or changing the functional makeup of their homes. This trend underscores the need for considering practices of inter-household exchange and reciprocity as ‘important and constituted by the “outside” of the formal economy’ (Smith 2002: 234), in order to move beyond the centrality of capitalist conceptualizations into ‘a more nuanced, open and less essentialist understanding of economic forms’ (ibid.). Thinking about human – environment relations in the domain of residential mobility raises a number of questions about the interaction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ spheres of flexibility. The interviews revealed that the everyday lives of inner-city residents are simultaneously constrained and enabled by a variety of social, economic, cultural and spatial contingencies. Some of these circumstances are entirely personal: even when a household has the financial or technical means to be spatially flexible, decisions about spatial mobility and/or housing transformation may be limited by psychological factors such as attachment to place, social capital, or personal preferences and fears. However, internal constraints are not always subjective: in numerous cases, the spatial proximity of kin and friendship networks was crucial in aiding the development of coping strategies. The book has been inspired by social-ecological resilience thinking in the interrogation of recent and ongoing academic debates, the development of its conceptual approach, and the exploration of evidence gathered in the field. While resilience was not used as an explicit organizing framework for the book, some of the basic tools and principles of this paradigm – particularly complex adaptive cycles and the notion of multiple equilibrium – provided the principal starting point for understanding how networks between buildings and people are forged and dissolved over prolonged periods of time (as outlined in the conclusions of Chapters 6, 7 and 8, and Figure 9.1 below). The contribution of social-ecological resilience has been particularly useful in terms of developing further the idea that a socialecological ‘system’ or actant can possess multiple potentials for action, and multiple stable states – a situation exemplified by the diverse flexibilities described above. Not only does this indicate that social-ecological resilience has significant explanatory potential that is yet to be employed towards the understanding of urban, economic, or cultural processes, but it is also a sign that the framework may offer emancipatory political opportunities when

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Alliances

r

K

Growth phase

Conservation phase

Construction of housing, residents move in New opportunities

Affective bonds being forged

Fore loop

Appropriation of neighbourhood spaces Interdependence and interweaving with urban structures

Technological frames are set Networks being created

Reorganization phase New mobility patterns Do-it-yourself urbanism

Release phase

Back loop

Changing household needs Residential mobility

Spatial segregation and polarization

In-place adjustment Building events

Heteropolitanization, new flexibilities and liquid cities

Networks

Housing episodes

Mobilities

Figure 9.1 An integrated perspective on in-situ housing transformations and resilience via the lens of resilience thinking.

applied in practice (also noted by Welsh 2014). There is, therefore, a need for reclaiming resilience from the increasingly technocratic, reactive and mechanistic policy interpretation of the concept (Evans and Reid 2014).

Informal urbanism: Landscapes of bricolage Much of the book has been focused on exploring the forces that allow buildings to be upgraded and transformed over long periods of time, via bottom-up interventions that are not directly guided or supported by formal state policy. In many ways, this process can be captured by the notion of ‘bricolage’ (Faulconbridge 2013; Joksimovic´ et al. 2014), as it is the outcome of a patchwork of uncoordinated actions, and results in a tapestry of forms that extend both within and beyond the built confines of the home. The resulting

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landscape of ‘do-it-yourself urbanism’ (Bouzarovski et al. 2011; Finn 2014) encompasses a fragmented array of domestic and neighbourhood spaces. It is associated with the emergence of a diverse patchwork of everyday mobilities and consumption patterns, which in turn interact with the uneven geography of economic development and infrastructure provision in the city to privilege some social groups, built tissues and temporal horizons over others. The variegated interactions between household requirements and socio-economic change are one of the main underlying driving forces of the aforementioned multiple meanings and reflections of socio-spatial flexibility and resilience. Therefore, and in response to the third question in the ‘Purpose’ section of the introductory chapter of this book – referring to the manifestation of residential flexibility and resilience in urban landscapes – it becomes evident that temporal and spatial residential mobilities in the built environment are primarily contingent upon deep transformations in the grain of the city. This co-construction of built spaces and social action arises from the mediation of household agency by the layered geographies of domestic and communal realms. The perpetual contradiction between fluid social requirements and fixed housing structures is ‘liquefying’ the urban (to use a Zygmunt Bauman metaphor): there is a tendency towards losing order and hierarchy in the built environment, accompanied by the splintering of the social and physical landscapes of the city. The destabilization of established urban patterns is exemplified by the increasing presence of flexible household arrangements, such as single professionals or flat-sharing adults, in the inner city – a location that gives them residential, transport and work flexibility – as well as the emergent relationship between urban social segregation and the medium- to long-term prospects of particular neighbourhoods, on the one hand, and the transformation of the internal structures of dwellings in response to housing episodes, on the other. These gradual, innumerable and almost imperceptible changes are possibly more important to the long-term evolution of the city than more visible and sudden reconfigurations, such as investment in new retail or commercial space, new-build office blocks, infrastructure regeneration, gated communities or the demolition of derelict buildings. They underscore the need for a comprehensive, multi-faceted theorization of flexibility and resilience in the built environment; one that would recognize the joint agency of human and non-human networks in transforming the city ‘from within’. Understanding them in a more integrated manner has the potential to provide alternative explanations of dynamics such as shrinking cities and reurbanization (Bouzarovski et al. 2010; Großmann et al. 2013), while questioning the ability of existing frameworks – particularly gentrification – to explain contemporary urban change, particularly when understood in highly normative terms (Slater 2008).

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Although the ‘landscape of bricolage’ described here is not the direct outcome of a conscious policy effort, in the empirical setting of the book it is clearly the outcome of the distinctive economic and political dynamics triggered by transformation processes unfolding since the fall of communist central planning and the dismantling of single-party rule in 1990. As such, they support arguments in favour of a sequential understanding of post-communist transition, in which the articulation of a specific set of practices and relations at the scale of the urban is embedded in a broader policy commitment towards a market-based capitalist economy. While the broader direction and purpose of this change varies in line with local circumstances – as evidenced by the radically different post-communist transformation trajectories seen in the four case study countries – they would have been impossible without the very existence of a political and economic departure from the broad level decision-making structures of the centrally planned, one-party state. This is contrary to claims advanced by Monika Grubbauer (2012) who disassociates the alternative economic practices of everyday life in ECE from the specificities of the region’s geographical setting. While emphasizing the importance of treating post-communist cities as ‘heteropolises’ in which mobility, segregation, physical and functional aspects become complex and diverse (Gentile et al. 2012), the evidence surveyed in this book emphasizes the need for transcending understandings of urban change in post-communism as a relationship between socialist legacies and capitalist political-economic processes (Golubchikov et al. 2014). Overall, insights from the transition context of the four case study cities can be extended to the broader understanding of low carbon transitions at the global scale. This is because both types of processes involve fundamental economic and political transformations away from a given economic and political regime. Discussions of climate retrofits can also benefit from incorporating knowledge about the more general residential upgrades and housing transformations studied in this book. These types of interventions underscore the importance of treating retrofits as systematic and communitylevel processes, whose success hinges on the articulation of a fundamental understanding of the social relations and aspirations of households participating in them (Bartiaux et al. 2014; Eames et al. 2013; Gupta et al. 2014; Hodson and Marvin 2010; Karvonen 2013). The need for engaging residents as equal and active participants in the housing transformation process is of particular importance here, as is the development of a theoretical and policy framework that can incorporate the gradual, sequential and grassroots nature of built environment interventions at the household scale. As a whole, therefore, retrofitting the city is a socio-material exercise that enrols a wide array of political and economic relations, in addition to the technical infrastructures of the built environment.

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Challenges for policy Some of the policy lessons highlighted by the evidence reviewed in this book are applicable globally, while others are more relevant to the post-communist urban context. If there is one ‘take home’ message from this book, it is that national, urban and neighbourhood authorities need to develop more sensitive policy tools and systematic knowledge about the different forms of housing dynamism in the built fabric, as well as the mobilization of informal and alternative economies towards in-place transformations of the built environment of the home. A deeper understanding of the diverse mechanisms through which residential buildings and people may embody complex cycles of adaptation and planes of flexibility can lead to a radical re-thinking of existing understandings of urban resilience in relation to external and internal shocks and stress. As this study has shown, the outcomes of many spatial differentiation processes are yet uncertain and many questions remain to be answered, especially with respect to the evolving relationships among urban environments, socio-spatial segregation and everyday informality. Local authorities across the world, which have traditionally been strongly oriented towards solving internal problems, will have to become conscious of the importance of cities as pivots of bottom-up creativity and innovation in the housing domain. The developing plurality of forms of residential intervention and tenure can lead to a sustainable urban future only when the powerful role of ‘do-it-yourself urbanism’ in shaping urban futures is adequately considered. As far as the ECE context is concerned, local and national governments will have to play a more active role in the strategic management of housing demand and mobility, because the polarizing effects of market processes will limit the financial possibilities for meeting the residential needs of the growing number of households stemming from the second demographic transition. A conscious housing policy at the local scale for most postcommunist countries would represent a departure from the legacies of the past, since urban planners in this part of the world have favoured direct methods of housing allocation and public investment. The need for more sophisticated frameworks of management, motivation and economic incentive is further highlighted by the decreasing likelihood that homeowners will be able to provide resources for private investment over the long term. Some neighbourhoods could become hotbeds of social segregation and political resistance, as a result of the state’s inability to deal with the growing social and environmental demands on the built environment. Investment will also be needed in many large-scale housing estates at the periphery of the city. In such districts, the redistribution of income should

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be aimed at preventing the emergence of structural poverty traps, via the improvement of urban ecosystem functions and services. Evidence has shown that the uniformity of these residential structures allows for renovation measures to be standardized and implemented at a large scale. Future policies will also have to combat the broader process of socio-environmental degradation, which could ensue as a result of ‘poverty migration’ from innercity rehabilitation areas or attractive suburbs. But instituting environmentally and socially sustainable policies will require comprehensive thinking, moving beyond the traditional boundaries of natural, social and engineering sciences, towards integrated frameworks of consilience for ‘the unity of knowledge across fields’ (Alberti et al. 2003: 1178), including an integrated perspective on the role of sciences and humanities in urban ecology.

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INDEX References in italics refer to illustrations in the text ABE, see apartment building extension actor-network theory (ANT), 17 – 18, 20, 70 adaptability concept, 1, 4 – 5, 9, 20, 27 – 30, 34, 36 –7, 41 – 2, 45, 57, 64 – 5, 80 – 2, 162, 187, 192, 195, 219, 224 housing, 81, 192 physical, 5 residential, 5 spatial, 82, 200 adaptation concept, 5 – 8, 11 – 12, 35, 43, 48, 51, 58, 63 – 5, 68 – 9, 84, 112, 229 cultural, 63 adaptive capacity concept, 4 –6, 8, 10 – 13, 17, 22, 29, 43 – 4, 46, 48, 63 – 5, 67 – 8, 68, 69 – 70, 95 resilience and, 10 – 11, 46, 48 adaptive cycles, 12, 52– 5, 55, 56 – 7, 68, 68, 193, 197, 215, 225 advanced marginality, 3 ageing, 109, 125, 133, 162, 168– 9, 211 agency of architecture, 85, 87 – 8 socio-spatial, 14 – 15, 17, 19 – 22, 42, 70 – 1, 89 – 90, 92, 95, 111, 167, 174, 176, 220– 1, 227 see also power agentic capacity, 85, 92, 197, 220 air pollution, 213–14 alienation, social, 42, 72 ANT, see actor-network theory apartment block, 119, 126, 141, 158, 172, 208–10

apartment building, 120– 1, 126, 127, 128, 132–3, 140– 1, 142, 160, 166, 174, 184, 208– 12, 216 apartment building extension (ABE), 141–3, 208–11, see also glazed balcony enclosure; loggia appliances, 84, 166, 192, 209 appropriation, 42, 92, 174– 5, 192, 198, 202, 221, 223– 4, 226 Archigram design studio, 83 architectural style Art Nouveau, 123 Baroque, 123, 131 classicist, 151 eclecticism, 126, 151 neoclassical, 120, 125, 137, 147, 151, 210 romanticism, 151 secession, see secession architecture, 5, 12, 20, 22 – 3, 30, 71 – 2, 80– 1, 85 – 90, 189, 221 agency of, 85 –7 anthropological perspective, 88 geography of, 85 liquid, 80, 90 of the event, 90 area studies, 110– 11, 113 assemblage, 17, 21 – 3, 70 – 1, 85 – 6, 92, 145, 151– 2, 198–9 asset, 3, 8, 13, 15, 51, 108, 139, 167– 8, 179, 185, 187, 194, 199, 214, 224 atomization of society, 30, 43, 96 biology/biological, 7, 35 –6 adaptive capacity, 68 evolutionary, 6

INDEX biophysical, 6, 35, 63 birth child, see childbirth control, 38 extra-marital, 181 in life cycle, 74 – 5 postponement, 182 bourgeoisie, 117, 146–7, 157 breadwinner, 30, 43, 185 Bretton Woods institutions, 136 bricolage, 226, 228 brownfield site, 120 Budapest Angyalfo¨ld, 131– 3, 151– 2 case study, 128– 36 city, 101, 102, 105, 128– 36, 151– 2, 157, 160, 198, 217 history, 129– 30 Margit bridge, 151 micro-patterns of segregation, 211– 15 Red Thursday, 152 study sites, 130, 131– 3 U´jlipo´tva´ros, 133– 5, 151, 212– 14 U´jpest, 131– 5, 151– 2, 157, 160, 212– 13 urban features, 131 building design, 72, 77, 79 – 81, 83 building event, 85 –7, 96, 144– 5, 151, 154–5, 160, 174– 5, 177, 220– 1, 226 built environment concept, 1, 4 –5, 12 – 13, 15 – 20, 22 – 4, 39 – 40, 42 –5, 68, 69– 71, 79 – 80, 82, 84 – 5, 88, 90 – 1, 95, 121, 142, 145, 173, 175– 7, 180, 185, 194, 196– 8, 202– 3, 210, 213, 215– 17, 219– 23, 227– 9 practices of power, 87, 89 semiotics of, 88 bureaucracy/bureaucratic, 53 – 4, 105– 6, 153, 208 burgher court, house, 146– 7 business, 108, 110, 131, 135, 206, 216 capital accumulation, 83, 175 economic, 3, 18 – 19, 40, 52, 77, 83, 95, 103, 131, 136, 145– 6, 181, 193, 198, 200 financial, 198, 203 housing, 204

257

investment, 166, 180, 182, 184 residential mobility, 41 – 2, 219 social, 34, 224– 5 capitalism, 9, 23 capitalist, 9, 28, 66, 105, 108, 224– 5, 228 capitalist economy, 2, 4, 28, 228 non-capitalist, 171, 198 carbon, 7, 14, 228 care, 28, 37 – 8, 121, 162, 169, 171– 2, 189, 191, 221– 2 case study, see methods: case study CBD, see central business district census Skopje, 139 Sopot, 114 U´jpest, Angyalfo¨ld and Lipo´tva´ros, 132 central business district (CBD), 107 childbirth, 32, 75 – 6, 156, 156, 165, 173, 181, 193 climate change, 7 – 8, 15 – 16, 56, 64 –5, 81, 84, 228 coal, 154, 164 stove, 163– 4, 166 cohabitation, 19, 32, 75, 109, 181–2, 184, 220 cohort older single women, 168–9, 207, 222 pensioners, 127, 169, 181 younger adults, 180– 1 commercial(ization), 1, 27, 86, 107, 117–18, 124, 126, 131– 2, 132, 133, 140, 160, 197, 213, 218, 227 commodification, 107, 175, 197 communism, 104, 113, 116– 17, 140, 153, 159–60, 163, 165, 208 communist central planning, 22, 78, 84, 103– 6, 108, 113, 115, 130, 133, 152– 3, 157, 163, 168, 181, 194, 228 housing policy, 104, 106, 116, 118, 131, 211– 12 party rule, 22, 104, 115, 123, 129, 152 community cohesion, 42 gated, see gated community human, 7, 62, 95 local, 73, 168, 170, 207 marginalized, 35, 171 resilience as, 51

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social, 8 –9, 31, 33 – 4, 51, 61, 63 – 4, 80, 84, 93, 128, 154, 170, 207, 223, 228 virtual, 32 companionship, 31, 172, 221 construction site, 108, 209 co-operative apartment, 184, 188, 193 building, 82 – 3, 161, 184 housing, 194, 204 courtyard, 132, 151 decentralization economic, 111 spatial, 107 decision-maker, 2, 7, 10, 84, 104, 109, 121, 142–3, 185, 203–4, 228 demographic ageing, 109, 126, 133, 168– 9 decline, 125, 134 dynamics, 37, 43, 153 groups, 78, 109, 117, 120, 127–8, 167, 180 growth, 120, 139, 152 household events, 74 – 5, 128, 153, 156, 177, 185, 193 rejuvenation, 19, 204, 214 transformation/change, 5, 11, 13, 20, 30 – 1, 38, 51, 74 – 5, 81, 102, 107, 109– 11, 124, 156, 168, 170, 181– 2, 204, 221 transition, see first demographic transition; second demographic transition demography, 5 – 6, 22, 76, 95, 96 demolition, 75, 138, 158, 227 densification, 141, 149 deprivation economic, 137, 215, 221 energy, 18 social, see social deprivation derelict space/building, 117, 227 de-residentialization, 214 developed-world, 1 – 2, 5, 14, 16, 19 – 20, 22, 28 –32, 37, 40, 42 – 3, 78, 96, 220 differentiation ecological, 136 economic, 14, 51 residential, 129, 211 socio-spatial, 31, 229 urban, 3, 21, 89, 113, 131, 161 disfigured city, 3, 21 diversification, 1, 38

THE CITY

divorce, 32, 128, 181, 199, 220 do-it-yourself urbanism, 79, 215– 16, 226, 227, 229, see also apartment building extension domesticity, 45, 72 – 3, 79, 168, 216 dual home lifestyle, 179, 188 earthquake Ljubljana (1511), 123 Ljubljana (1895), 123 Scupi (518), 137 Skopje (1963), 138– 41, 159 U¨sku¨b (1555), 137 ecological resilience, 7, 11 – 12, 47, 49, 51, 65 system, 6, 8, 44, 48, 50, 52, 54, 64 ecology, 4, 7, 22, 46, 50, 52, 54 – 5, 63, 67, 230 economic investment, 104– 5, 107, 122, 131, 139, 153, 186 economy centrally planned, 78, 101, 104, 106, 113, 157, 163, 168, 198, 228 Fordist mass production, 10 macroeconomic, 137 market-based, 22, 53, 101, 108, 110, 113, 116– 17, 156, 197, 225, 228 Neo-Marxist, 21 political, 9, 29 ecosystem, 6, 11, 48 –55, 57, 62 – 3, 67, 106, 135, 217, 230 edge cities, 42 education as economic opportunity, 181 demography and, 109, 118, 121 level of, 79, 134, 180, 189, 199, 220 resilience, 58 – 9, 75 service, 139, 157 work environment and, 38, 122 egalitarianism, 31, 106 elastic bund, 31, 96 elasticity, 12, 76, 221 electricity, 123, 163– 4, 173 elusive metropolis, 42 empire, 72, 129, 137 employment concept, 4 –5, 10, 20, 27 –9, 37– 9, 43, 68, 75 – 7, 83, 95, 96, 103, 113, 121, 133, 139, 146, 151, 180, 182, 185, 193– 5, 210, 219, 224

INDEX high-tech job, 37 high-touch job, 37 see also unemployment; work enclaves, see urban enclaves energy efficiency, 15, 84, 166– 7, 173, 210 network planning, 62, 221 poverty, 18, 166 price, 105, 163 provision, 105 renewable, 84 security, 84 service, 166, 221 engineering, 4, 15, 46, 62, 84, 93, 230 re-engineering, 16 resilience, 47 Enlightenment, 113 entrepreneur, 52 –3, 129, 135 environment biophysical, 35 built, see built environment constructed, 22, 95, 145, 220 domestic, 82, 206 neighbourhood, 188, 190, 206 residential, 23, 43, 74, 78, 89, 109, 144, 167, 195, 201, 203 social, 80, 111, 192, 197 urban, 89, 102, 128, 207, 229 work, 38 environmental management, 46, 49 environmental variability, 7, 51 equality, social, 103– 4 equilibrium, 7, 46 – 7, 49 – 50, 62 equity, 31, 65, 130 estate country, 117, 122 housing, see housing estate manorial, 151 panel, 165, 173 real-estate, 128, 204 residential, 133 ethics, 31, 89 Euclidean space, 194 evolutionary biology, 6 exchange barter, 153, 191, 224 gift, 153 non-monetized, 113 exclusion exclusivity, 51

259

infrastructural, 4 networked, see networked exclusion physical, 94 social, see social exclusion exurbs, 122– 3, 125 facade/fac
ade, 117, 132, 162, 209–10, 212 family astronaut, 32, 96 developed-world, 43 extended, 179, 208 household vs, see household: family vs nuclear, 30, 43, 75, 191, 220 ties, 221 see also kinship famine, 181 farm, 146– 7, 149 female labour, 38, 122 feminism/feminist/femininity concept, 5, 37, 71 – 2 poverty and, 168 fertility rate concept, 32, 133, 181, 220 total (TFR), 181 finance, 117, 138– 9, 186, 189 first demographic transition, 32 flexibility concept, 9 –10 functional, 144– 5 geography of, see geography/geographies of: flexibility interpretive, see interpretive flexibility linked, 195– 6 liquid life and, 13, 40 multiplication of, 194 planes of, 44, 95, 96, 223, 229 residential, 176– 96, 224, 227 resilience and, 5, 13, 16, 22, 65, 70, 221 socio-demographic, 195 socio-spatial, 29, 44, 223, 227 spatial, 19, 40, 184, 188, 194–5, 223, 225 work, 40, 43, 195, 227 flexible accumulation, 39, 42, 68 buildings, 77, 79 – 81, 96 citizenship, 34 – 5, 68, 96 household, 30 – 4 housing, 81 office space, 27 work, 38 – 9, 83, 96

260

RETROFITTING

flexi-place, 83 flexi-time, 83 fluid household, 38, 40, 43, 103 fluidization, 5, 14, 19, 22, 29, 31, 37, 103 food security, 63 Fordist era, 3 foreign investment, 128– 9, 131, 136 fossil fuel, 105 free-market, 111 Freitas, Chrisde, 63 friendship networks of, 31 – 2, 172, 191, 194, 221– 4 post-modern arrangements, 19, 22, 29 – 30, 43, 170, 220– 1 proximity of networks of, 195, 225 society of, see society of friendship FSU, see Soviet Union functional blankness, 71, 92, 95, 96, 152, 155, 173, 201– 2, 215, 220 furniture, 82, 186, 192, 200, 201 gas lighting, 123 gated community, 197, 228 Gdan´sk alternative economies and affective neighbourhood spaces, 198– 203 Brzez´no, 158 case study, 113– 21 city, 2, 101, 102, 109, 113– 21, 143, 146– 7, 148, 149, 152, 154, 157– 8, 161, 165, 170 –1, 178– 9, 182, 189, 193, 195, 198, 200– 1, 203–4, 222 demography, 114, 152 Great Avenue (Große Allee), 146, 147 history, 115– 16 Letnica, 121 Neufahrwasser, 147 Nowy Port, see Nowy Port Strzyz˙a, see Strzyz˙a study sites, 116, 118– 21, 178 urban features, 116– 18 Vistula, see Vistula Wrzeszcz Dolny, see Wrzeszcz Dolny Zaspa, see Zaspa GDP (gross domestic product), 122, 136, 139 Gdynia, 114– 15, 185 gender identity, 36 – 8, 168– 9 relations, 28, 30 – 1, 72, 169– 70

THE CITY

gentrification, 19, 42, 75, 109, 125, 175, 197, 207, 212, 214, 227 geography/geographies of architecture, 85 everyday life, 23, 176, 220, 222 everyday space, 221 do-it-yourself urbanism, 215 fear, 169 flexibility, 13, 27, 29 home, 5, 215 post-modernity and liquid life, 13 quotidian, see quoditian: geographies of resilience, see social resilience: geographies of ghettoization, 212 glazed balcony enclosure, 208, see also apartment building extension globalization, 2, 10, 30, 33, 41, 85 GNP, see gross national product government, 29, 54, 67, 69, 108, 112, 114, 138–40, 168, 211, 213, 229 Green party, 30 green space, 118, 120, 125– 6, 178, 199, 211 greenfield, 124, 130, 137, 159 Gridiron, Philip Kerr, 174 gross national product (GNP), 138 ground-floor conversion, 205, 209, 214, 216 habit (Foucault), 87 habits and routines (Bauman), 3, 40 Habsburg Empire, 122– 3, 129 health, 36, 109, 162, 168– 9, 203, 205, 222 mental, see mental health policy, 109 heating system, 84, 105, 162– 4, 166, 173, 175, 179, 194, 200– 1, 212, 221 ABE and, 209–10 coal stove, 163– 4, 166 combined-heat-and-power, 105 district central, network, 105, 108, 122, 163, 165– 6, 209 electric, 163, 173, 209 gas, 154, 163– 4 heat-only-boiler, 105 hot water, 105, 165 mobile electric heater, 173 storage heater with thermostat, 165, 173 heteropolitanization/heteropolises, 111, 226, 228 hinterland, 137, 150, 154, 156

INDEX historical core, 130, 146, 157 home as a workplace, 45, 73, 179, 186, 195, 198 meanings and functions of, 71 – 4 office and, 83 spaces of, 128, 222 home improvement, 78 – 9, 143, 176, see also do-it-yourself urbanism household astronaut, see family: astronaut childless couples, 19, 180 cohabiting partners, see cohabitation competing auspices, 32 contemporary, 31 dual-career, 39 dual location, 32, 39, 96 family vs, 32, 38, 74 – 5, 181 flat-sharing, 19, 31 – 2, 40, 75, 178, 180, 182– 5, 227 fluid, see fluid household income, 4, 14, 51, 75 – 8, 128, 142, 153, 162– 3, 166– 7, 168, 170– 1, 175, 179– 80, 187, 192– 3, 199, 205, 208– 10, 216, 220, 224–5, 229 inner-city, 5, 38 living-apart-together couple, 32 non-family, 194 non-related flat-sharers, 19 older one-person, 204 older single women, 166, 168– 9, 204, 206 one-person, 19, 32, 75, 83, 118, 125, 204 pensioner, 120, 127, 167, 179, 222 shadow, 32 size, 32, 74, 76 – 7, 133– 4, 167, 180 events, 76 – 7, 179– 80 housework, 185 housing allowance, 168 demography, 5, 75 – 6 individual, 123– 4, 126, 160, 208, 212, 214 investment, 121, 124, 141, 161– 2, 167, 173, 185– 6, 193, 215 life cycle and, 74 –9 market, 77 – 8, 106, 125, 153, 161, 170, 175, 204, 208, 220 mobility, 19, 44, 178, 180, 195 post-socialist policy, 104– 6, 168– 9, 208, 229

261

prefabricated panel, see prefabricated panel housing price, 19, 76, 114, 120, 142, 189, 204, 213– 15 public, 108, 131, 135, 170 renovation, 79, 120, 135, 173, 178– 9, 185– 6, 199, 212, 214, 230 rental, 178, 187 sector, 84, 103– 4, 106, 192, 197, 208, 224 shortage, 82, 104, 139, 104, 153–4, 175, 208, 212 stock, 75 –6, 84, 102, 107, 109, 111, 121, 135, 141, 145, 152, 154– 5, 157– 9, 167, 174– 5, 190, 198, 200, 204, 209, 212, 214, 221 –2 stress, 76, 180 studies, 72 subsidy, 106 transformation, 2, 13, 16, 77, 179, 224– 5, 228, see also in-situ housing transformation upgrading, 217 housing estate, 79, 105, 229 Budapest, 130– 1, 133, 134, 135, 157, 160, 211, 213 –15, 217 Gdan´sk, 116– 18, 120, 148, 153, 157– 9 Ljubljana, 123, 125 Skopje, 140, 142, 159 Hungary, 128– 9, 131, 157, 197, 220 Huth, Elfried, 81 Illyrians, 122 immigration, 123, 125 improvement decorative, 212 ‘do-it-yourself’, see do-it-yourself urbanism home, see home improvement in-situ/in-place, 161, 176, 179, 188, 191, 203 structural, 212 inclusion, see social inclusion industrialization, 78, 123, 131, 133, 138 industry agro-, 66 banking, 139 cement, 138 chemical, 138 food, 138

262

RETROFITTING

glass-working, 138 heavy, 133, 136 insurance, 62 metal refining, 138 oil processing, 138 pharmaceutical, 138, 157 railway repair, 157 sizeable steel, 138 vehicle assembly, 138 inefficiency, economic, 104, 136, 153 inequality gender, 28, 168 residential, 13, 19, 107, 136, 213, 217 social, see social inequality urban, 5, 95, 104, 113, 129 inflation, 168 infrastructure communications, 27 electricity, 164 energy, 136, 163 of everyday life, 12, 221 flexible, 71 gas, 164 heating, 164 public, 58, 108 sewage, 164 technical, 108, 195, 228 telecommunication, 136, 187 transport, 136, 183, 187, 195, 221 urban, see urban infrastructure utility, 136, 190, 221 water, 164 inner-city, 1 – 2, 5, 14, 19, 43, 48, 95, 106, 109, 117– 18, 125, 129– 32, 134– 5, 145, 157, 168, 171, 195, 203– 7, 214– 17, 222–3, 227 area, 1, 19, 83, 108– 9, 125, 133, 152, 168, 213, 218 district, 43, 117– 19, 125, 212 household, see household: inner-city tenement-building, 1, 193 transition zone, 153 in-situ housing transformation/in-place adjustment classic residential mobility model vs, 77, 77, 176– 8, 178 concept, 23, 74 – 9, 82, 84, 107, 153, 160, 176– 8, 179, 186, 188, 190, 193, 195, 198, 200, 203, 208, 215– 16, 220, 224, 229

THE CITY

flexible transformation, 82 resilience and, 226 insulation, 210, 214 ceiling, 199 energy, 162 noise, 84 thermal, 84, 163– 4 wall and window, 165, 173 intelligent buildings, 82 interpretive flexibility, 94 – 5, 144, 154– 5, 161, 164, 172, 175, 199 investment capital, see capital: investment disinvestment, 117 economic, see economic investment foreign, see foreign investment in-place housing, 161, 163 private, see private investment public, see public investment retail, see retail investment state, 157 time, 180 upgrading, see upgrading investment Japanese house plans, 88 kinetic elite, 3 –4, 40 – 1 kinship concept, 19, 22, 29 – 30, 32, 38, 43, 170– 1, 194, 220– 1, 223– 4 proximity of networks of, 171, 191, 195, 225 labour cheap, 157 feminization of labour force of, 38, 122 market, 3, 19, 37 – 8, 43, 76, 83, 113, see also working arrangements mobility, 37, 43, 78, 83, 195 see also employment; work studies, 5 union, 28 unskilled, 133 women’s work, see work: women’s lag-time space, 3, 21 land degradation, 51 price, 215 -use, 62, 131, 133, 204 landscape of bricolage, 226, 228

INDEX LARES, see Large Analysis and Review of European Housing and Health Status Large Analysis and Review of European Housing and Health Status (LARES), 79 liberalization, 10, 21, 106, 182, 197 lifestyle change, 1, 36, 81, 96, 103, 117, 195 contemporary, 3, 32, 173 dual home, 179, 188 institutionally reflexive (Giddens), 33, see also reflexive self, the living with people with the same, 172 mobile, 188– 9, 195 light railway, 114, 189, 195, see also SKM train line lighthouse, 120, 149 lime tree, 146 liquid architecture, 80, 90 city, 226 life, 13, 18, 39 – 40, 227 modernity, 2, 40 livelihood, 35, 51, 170, 175, 181, 187, 199 living pod, 83 Ljubljana case study, 121– 8, 203– 7 Celovsˇka Street, 126 city, 2, 101, 121– 8, 132, 146, 149, 156, 161, 170, 172, 198, 203– 7, 216, 222 Emona, 122 history, 122– 4 Sˇisˇka, see Sˇisˇka St Bartholomew the Apostle, 149 study sites, 124, 125– 7 urban features, 124– 5 load-bearing wall, 80, 190, 209 local community, 73, 168, 207 local government, 108, 139– 40, 211, 213 local municipality/municipal, 135, 139, 168, 193, 204, 208– 9, 213– 14 local resident, 1 –2, 161, 209 loft, 182, 187, 209 loggia, 208 low-energy building/system, 84 lumpenproletariat, 40 marginalization, social, 3, 14, 21, 35 – 6, 48, 168, 170, 204 market-based system, 22, 110, 113, 116, 156, 199, 228

263

marketing, 27 marketization, 106, 111, 192, 224 marriage ethics, 31 postponement of, 32, 34, 38, 181– 2, 220 rate, 32, 181, 220 status, 74, 76 mediaeval, 113, 115– 16, 122– 4, 126, 131, 151 mental health, 12, 58 – 60 merchant, 137 methods analytical, 17 – 18, 22, 44, 47, 70, 101, 169, 220, 223 case study, 12, 14, 16, 22 – 3, 35, 96, 101, 113, 121, 127 –8, 135– 6, 144– 6, 161, 170, 173, 178, 188, 197– 8, 203, 211, 215, 220, 228 deductive, 16 descriptive approach, 111 empirical, 12 – 14, 16, 19, 22 – 4, 47, 70, 95, 228 ethnographic study, 121, 142– 3, 169 field research, 113, 127, 135, 142, 163, 170, 223 inductive, 16 interview, 121, 127– 8, 135, 142– 3, 145 qualitative, 41, 121, 136, 168 quantitative, 79 questionnaire survey, 142 metropolitan area, 1, 39, 62, 107, 110, 114, 132, 139, 146 micro-geographies, 15, 176, 222 micro-rayon model, 157 migration concept, 35, 37, 39, 103, 106, 110, 115, 125, 130, 139, 158, 179, 181, 195 in-migration dynamics, 42, 107, 125, 139, 146– 7, 152, 154, 156 international, 19, 125 out-, 107, 125, 133, 141, 153 poverty, 230 residential mobility vs, 76 – 7 rural-to-urban, 157, 208 urban-to-rural, 35 Młode Miasto, 117 mobile buildings, 87 mobilities paradigm, 40 – 1

264

RETROFITTING

mobility daily, 29, 128, 183– 4, 187, 194– 5, 203, 221– 2 job, 187 –8 labour, see labour: mobility residential, see residential mobility restricted, 205 modernist functionalism, 123 modernity/modernist, 30, 33, 36, 108, 119, 210 mortality rate, 133 mortgage, 28, 106– 7, 208 motility, 41, 219 Motława, 114 moving, 41, 47, 75, 77 – 8, 82, 106, 115, 117, 125, 153– 4, 166– 7, 169, 176–7, 179– 80, 182, 185, 188– 9, 191, 198– 9, 200–1, 204, 206, 220, 222 moving-and-improving strategy, 78 multi-storey, 105, 117, 119, 132– 3, 147, 157–8, 160 multiple equilibria, 7, 70, 193, 225 Murdoch, Jonathan, 17 mutability concept, 1, 23, 42, 80, 85, 90, 94 – 5 technological frames and, 94 Myers, Dowell, 75 – 6 nanomaterial, 84 national heritage centre, 114 natural hazard, 63 nature protection, 35 neighbourhood, see environment: neighbourhood neoliberalization, 14, 28, 35, 113, 131, 136, 170, 197 net of mixed beads, 42 network of weak ties, 34 networked exclusion, 21 networked metropolis, 3 NGO, 188, 195, 213 Nijkamp, Peter, 49 Nowy Port, 120, 145– 7, 149, 149, 150, 152, 154– 5, 158, 158, 159, 162– 3, 165, 165, 174, 177, 179, 187, 189– 92, 195, 198, 201, 224 Obuda, 129 OECD countries, 168

THE CITY

office, 27, 80, 83, 108, 120, 131– 2, 140–1, 187–8, 197, 214, 218, 227 see also home: as a workplace; home: office and oppression, 56, 73 outdoor space, 74, 207 panarchy, 55 – 7, 65 Pannonia, 129 park, 35, 157, 211 parliamentary democracy, 22 partition wall, 80, 156, 156, 171, 190, 200, 209 partitioned city, 3, 21 path-dependency, 56, 65, 96, 111–13 patriarchal, 72 Pelister National Park, 35 pension, 163, 166, 168– 9, 170– 1, 199 pensioner, 2, 120, 127, 154, 167– 71, 172, 173, 179, 192, 199, 204, 206, 222 periphery/peripheral, 123– 4, 126, 133, 142, 160, 204, 215, 217, 229 perturbation, 7, 46 – 7, 52, 58, 95, 219 polarization economic, 117 social, 42, 103, 107, 109– 10, 131, 197, 203, 212 spatial, 120, 197, 213 policy economic, 43, 109, 136 education, 109 free-market, 111 health, 109 housing, 101, 104–6, 168–9, 208, 229 pronatalist, see pronatalist policy reactive, 50, 226 social, 137, 163, 230 technocratic, 226 urban development, 16, 42, 47, 73, 105, 131, 137– 9, 157, 159 Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth, 115, 117 political ecology, 63 politics, 14, 35, 56 – 7, 69, 72, 92, 101 Pomerania, 114, 146 Pomorskie, 114 population density, 135, 214 dynamics of species, 52 expulsion, 152 growth, 114, 122, 133– 4, 139, 152

INDEX loss, 109, 125, 133– 4 mobility, 146 movement, 107, 110 shift, 115 post-colonial, 35, 71 post-communism, 23, 124, 167, 228, see also post-socialism post-communist city, 111– 13, 168, 228 legacy, 103, 113, 125, 201 state, 2, 22, 57, 84, 101, 112– 13 transition, 14, 112– 14, 117, 122, 129, 139, 163, 228 urban restructuring, 22 – 3, 106, 109, 112, 127, 161, 172, 175, 198, 208, 211– 12, 215, 229 see also post-socialist post-Fordism, 2, 10, 14, 29, 42 – 3, 108, 220 post-industrial, 42, 74, 96, 131 post-materialist, 30, 43, 96, 103 postmodernization/post-modernity, 3, 13, 19– 20, 29, 95, 103, 108– 9, 220 postnational, 35 post-polycentric urban region, 42 post-socialism, 102– 3, 113, 136, 186, see also post-communism post-socialist city, 102– 3, 108– 11, 205, 216 country, 107, 110, 168– 9 economy, 104, 106, 168, 171, 191 housing policy, 79, 106, 224 transition, 110, 118, 136, 168, 181 urban studies and literature, 106, 111, 169 urban transformation, 19, 102– 3, 110– 12, 170, 203, 207, 217, 224 see also post-communist post-sociality, 31 post-traditional, 36 poverty energy, 18, 166 feminization of, 168 institutionalized, 35 migration, 230 plain, 3, 8, 28, 111, 135, 165, 167, 170 trap, 53, 230 urban, 61, 204, 224, 230 power forces, practices, processes and relations of, 89

265

space, society and, 91 –2 views of, 15, 85 – 8, 90 – 1, 95, 97 see also agency Poznan´, 31, 110 prefabricated panel housing, 80, 117– 18, 120, 124, 133– 4, 134, 140– 2, 142, 157–8, 158, 159–60, 160, 164– 5, 173, 209, 211, 213 preservation, 120 price shock, 168 private investment, 105– 6, 214, 229 sector, 105, 131, 188 space, 73, 83, 174, 198 privatization, 73, 106, 111, 131, 136, 170, 197, 212– 14 pronatalist policy, 181 property rights, 161, 186, 194 protected area management, 35 protected nature reserve, 213 protest-proneness, 30 proximity over distance, 18 Prussia, 115, 147 psychoanalyst, 71 psychologist environmental, 8 social, 12 psychology, 4, 7, 46, 58 –60 public investment, 105, 114, 130, 147, 174, 213– 15, 230 space, 15, 73, 133, 170, 174, 203, 207, 211, 224 transport, 3, 157, 184, 189– 90, 195, 203, 205, 218 quarter industrial, 213, 215 residential, 118, 124, 133, 167 suburban, 134 urban, 119, 122, 124, 141 quotidian geographies of, 11, 15, 29, 220 networks of, 206 spaces of, 177 railway, 119, 123, 137, 147, 149, 151– 2, 157, 187, see also light railway real-estate agency, 204 recession, 113, 129

266

RETROFITTING

recreational area/facility, 118, 126, 133, 157–8 Red Army, 154, 191 reflexive self, the, 33 refurbishment, 84, 109, 190, 214 rehabilitation area/facility, 106, 205, 230 relocation, 2, 35, 43, 74 – 7, 107, 153, 158, 167–8, 170, 177–80, 182–3, 185–8, 190–5, 200, 211, 222, 224 renovation, see housing renovation rent/renter/rental, 28, 104, 106, 113, 131, 161–2, 171, 180, 182– 5, 187, 194, 199, 203– 4, 214–15, 218 market, 81 sector, 19, 106, 109, 182 subsidy, 104 repopulation, 1, 43, 103 residential mobility concept, 2, 23, 43, 70–1, 74–9, 106, 153, 159, 169, 175–80, 182, 186, 188, 192, 198, 202, 208, 215, 219–20, 224–5 in-place adjustment and, 74 – 7, 77, 78 – 9, 160, 176– 8, 178, 179– 80, 193, 226 migration vs, 76 – 7 motility and, see motility psychological factors, 225 residentialization, 19, 43 resilience, see social resilience restructuring, 3, 14, 23, 28, 37, 43, 96, 101–2, 106– 8, 110, 112, 123, 129, 163, 167, 186, 203, 216, 219 retail, 27, 108, 116, 120, 131, 139, 157, 159, 205, 227 bank, 27 investment, 214– 15, 227 retirement, 168, 190, 214 retrofit/retrofitting, 15 – 16, 84, 228 reurbanization, 1, 19, 43, 125, 131, 207, 218, 227 revitalization, 108–9, 111, 119, 121, 204, 214–15, 217 roomware, 82 r-strategists, 52 science ecological, 52, 54 ecological systems, 50 economic, 12 ecosystem, 48

THE CITY

engineering, 230 medical, 36 natural, 6 – 7, 67, 230 social, 4, 6 – 7, 10 – 11, 40 – 1, 46, 48, 50, 56, 65 – 7, 89, 91, 230 sociology of, 5 Science and Technology Studies (STS), 18, 22, 41, 70 SDT, see second demographic transition secession, 129, 147, 149 Secessionist Ljubljana, 125 Second Balkan War, 137 second demographic transition (SDT) concept, 32, 43, 75, 103, 133, 180, 220, 229 in ECE, 181– 2 secularization, 30 self-fulfilment, 31 – 2, 73, 182 self-help survival strategy, 193, 224 self-realization, 181 segregation anti-segregation, 129 ecological, 217 environmental, 135 residential, 104– 5, 107, 159, 211 social, 18 – 19, 106– 7, 131, 135, 211– 12, 217, 227– 9 spatial, 42, 104, 135, 226, 229 urban, 2, 111, 113 shipyard, 113– 14, 116, 151, 185 shopping area, 205 centre, 119– 20, 141– 2, 206 facility, 126, 184, 199, 205– 6 revenue, 206 shrinking city, 168, 227 Single Hauz, 83 Sˇisˇka, 125– 6, 126– 7, 128, 145, 149– 50, 150, 156, 159– 60, 163, 166, 171– 2, 172, 174, 203– 6, 224 SKM train line, 185 Skopje 1963 earthquake, 138, 141, 159 case study, 136– 43, 208 city, 2, 101, 136– 43, 146, 159, 161, 198, 208, 216 features, 138– 41 history, 137– 8 Karposh IV, 141– 2, 142, 145, 159– 60, 160, 163, 164, 174, 209– 11

INDEX Scupi, 137 study sites, 140, 141– 2 U¨sku¨b, 137 Vodno, 140 Slavic, 115, 122 Slovenian Reformation movement, 123 smart grids, 84 home, 82 social assistance, 117, 120 class, see social class -constructivist, 219 deprivation, 3, 29, 167, 194, 221 exclusion, 3, 5, 14, 16, 20 – 1, 41, 103, 113, 167, 215, 222– 4 inclusion, 24, 41, 51, 155 inequality, 5, 18 – 20, 63, 104– 5, 107, 111, 113, 194, 219 justice, 65, 84 network, 2, 6, 34, 152, 169, 179, 188, 193, 207, 222 –3 resilience, see social resilience social security, 168 status, 130– 1, 140, 192, 210, 214, see also socio-economic status study of labour, 5 vulnerability, 51, 65 welfare, 19, 137, 167, 203 social class bourgeoisie, see bourgeoisie distinction, 31, 131, 169 low, 37 merchant, 137 middle, 151 noble, 115 pensioner, see pensioner socialist middle, 105– 6 working, 2, 37, 104–5, 130, 146, 151–2, 186, 194, 197, 201 social resilience ecosystem based on resilience approach, 48 – 51 engineering, 47 flexibility and, 17, 22 – 4, 69, 70 – 97, 219, 223– 6, 227 geographies of, 5, 13 in-situ housing transformations and, 226 psycho-social, 44, 58 – 61, 68, 68

267

social-ecological, 7, 11 – 12, 15, 46 – 9, 51 – 2, 56, 62, 64 –7, 68, 69, 144, 177, 193, 197 urban, 47 – 8, 61 – 3, 68, 144, 216, 229 socialism term, 104, 106, 108, 129–31, 156, 195 urban housing model, 106 socialist planning, 103, 105 society of friendship, 34 socio-economic status, 79, 180, see also social status soft budget constraint, 136 Solidarity movement/Solidarnos´c´, 116 Sopot, 114– 15, 188, 204 Soviet Union, 16, 103, 108, 141, 152, 155, 159 space of flows, 2 – 4, 18, 20 – 1, 23, 101 space of places, 4 splintering urbanism, 20 squatting, 154, 187, 192 stability, 7, 10, 33, 35 – 6, 44, 46 – 9, 54, 65– 6, 80, 85, 90, 176, 207, 224 state enterprise, 137 sticky places in slippery space, 4 strategic-relational approach, 21 strategies of obduracy, 94 strategy (Michel de Certeau), 86 – 7 stratification, social, 107 street grid, 105, 132 street trading, 107 stress exogenous, 58 external, 63 – 4 housing, see housing stress personal, 8, 10, 60 resilient, 59, 229 social, 6, 8– 9, 51, 60 – 1, 63 – 5 Strießbach, 146 Strzyz˙a, 146 STS, see Science and Technology Studies subsidy accommodation, 104 district heating, 165 energy provision, 105, 163 food, 106 housing, 106 rent, 104 state, 106 suburban, 36, 72, 105, 117, 119, 125, 130–1, 134– 5, 157, 160, 206, 213

268

RETROFITTING

suburban sprawl, 62, 140 suburbanization, 103, 107 sustainability, 8, 10 – 11, 16, 35, 50 –1, 62, 66, 80, 84, 229– 30 szlachta, 115 tactic (Michel de Certeau), 86 – 7 technological frame, 87, 93 – 5, 144– 5, 150–2, 154–5, 160– 1, 164, 167, 173, 175, 201, 215, 226 telecommunication, 21, 42, 83, 136, 187 telework, 83 tenement block, 114, 117, 120, 126, 130, 147, 154, 187 building, 1, 119– 20, 124– 5, 131, 149– 52, 159, 162, 187, 193, 200 tenure as variable, 77, 180 land, 35 housing choice and, 76, 194 residential intervention and, 186, 229 terraced block, 120, 155, 165, 187 building, 119, 178– 9, 185– 6, 189, 200 house, 159 tertiary sector, 107 thermostat, 165, 173 Thessaloniki, 137 time-space compression, 3, 17 – 18, 21, 30, 32– 3, 39 – 40, 43, 51, 75, 78, 80, 83, 85, 90 – 1, 96, 103, 110, 136, 152, 175, 180, 187, 193– 4, 202, 218, 221, 227 topography, 18, 23, 223 tourism, 114, 116, 149 tower block, 183, 205 trading, 107, 117, 122, 137, 139, 146 transition economic, 112, 128, 139 first demographic, see first demographic transition low-carbon, 14, 228 post-communist, see post-communist: transition post-Fordist, 14 post-socialist, see post-socialist: transition second demographic, see second demographic transition socio-technical, 4, 11 urban sustainability, 16

THE CITY

transitory urbanites, 109 transport bus, 184, 189, 195 car, 184, 189, 194, 196, 206, 215 carriage, 152 electric tram, 183– 4, 189, 195 ferry, 152 horse tram, 147, 152 link, 4, 123, 126, 152, 183– 5, 191, 195, 213, 218 railway, see railway road link, 150, 195 street car, 152 train, 149, 183 see also infrastructure: transport; public transport under-reform trap, 112 unemployment, 10, 107, 111, 113, 117, 120, 139, 214 United Nations, 138 United States, 34, 42 upgrading investment, 118 urban agglomeration, 114, 123, 161 area, 1, 42, 62, 103, 106, 109– 10, 127, 140, 145, 204 armatures, 42 capital, 61, 74, 110, 114, 120, 122– 3, 128– 9, 132, 136– 8 core, 106, 116– 18, 124– 5, 127, 131– 2, 132, 135, 137– 8, 140, 159, 168, 214 design, 80 differentiation, 3, 21 ecology, 230 enclaves, 42 fringe, 107, 131, 133, 149, 160 governance, 23, 101 infrastructure, 16, 62, 84, 221 morphology, 101, 107, 116, 120, 124, 132, 137, 142, 148 planning, 137– 9, 229 planning and management, 106, 108 researcher, 12, 47 studies, 21 – 2, 106 tribe, 4, 31, 34, 96 urbanization counter-urbanization, 42 issues, 21, 62, 135

INDEX re-urbanization, see reurbanization sub-urbanization, see suburbanization urbemes, 88 Va´c, 157 Vardar, 137 variability, 7, 10, 44, 51, 63 variable, 12, 16, 46, 49 –51, 58, 77, 79, 180 village, 35, 115, 117, 119– 20, 124, 126, 131, 146– 7, 149, 157 violence, 61, 152, 169 Vistula, 114, 147, 149 vulnerability, see social vulnerability wall(s) brick, 166, 174, 211 facade, see facade/fac
ade glassed, 82 infrastructure-laden, 190 movable system, 82 partition, see partition wall repainting the, 212 see also apartment building extension (ABE) war destruction, 117, 152, 156

269

waterworks, 123 western Europe, 110, 133, 137, 181 Westerplatte, 115 white-collar worker, 130 work feminist theory, 37 – 8 low class, 37 low paid, 37 women’s, 37 see also employment; labour working arrangements, 10, 37, 96 workplace, 37, 45, 73, 184, 186, 195, 198 World War I, 115, 123, 150 World War II, 113, 115– 16, 129, 138, 152, 154–7, 160, 175, 191 Wrzeszcz Dolny, 119, 119, 120, 145– 7, 148, 149– 50, 152, 154, 156, 160, 165–6, 171, 177, 179, 182, 184– 5, 187–9, 192, 195, 199– 200, 204, 224 yuppies, 206 Zaspa, 118, 118, 119– 20, 145, 148, 154, 157– 60, 165, 166, 171, 188, 204, 224