Martin T. W. Rosenfeld

The development of cities and municipalities in Central and Eastern Europe: introduction for a special issue of ‘urban research and practice’

Since the 1990s, local governments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have been confronted by completely new structures and developments. This came after more than 40 years (or even longer in the case of the former Soviet Union) under a socialist regime and behind an iron curtain which isolated them from the non-socialist world. A lack of resources had led to an underinvestment in the refurbishment of older buildings, while relatively cheap ‘prefabricated’ housing had been built, not only in the outskirts of cities, but also within city centres. A lack of resources had also resulted in the fact that the socialist regimes were generally unable to replace old buildings with ‘modern’ ones; hence, there is a very rich heritage of historical monuments in many of these cities today. The centrally planned economies and the development of urban structures (including the shifts of population between cities and regions) were determined by ideology, political rationality and the integration of all CEE countries into the production schemes of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and its division of labour by location. The sudden introduction of a market economy, private property, democratic rules, local autonomy for cities and municipalities and access to the global economy and society may be seen as a kind of ‘natural experiment’. How would these new conditions shape the national systems of cities and municipalities? Which cities would shrink and which would grow? How would the relationship between core cities and their surrounding municipalities develop? And what would happen within these cities and with their built environment? After such a long period of oppression by centralized planning institutions, it is not surprising that there often arose in CEE cities in the 1990s a strong devotion to liberal economic rules, a belief in market forces as the appropriate driver of economic development, and a great deal of suspicion towards new attempts to establish ‘Western European types’ of planning systems. As Dieter Rink et al. point out in their paper, this special heritage of socialism is visible when we compare the governance of urban shrinkage between cities in CEE countries and cities in Western European countries. In general, cities in CEE countries try to react to the process of shrinkage with growth-oriented strategies, while Western European cities, which had been confronted with shrinkage long before 1990, are much more ready to accept this and try to respond to shrinkage by creating new patterns of policy. Against this general backdrop, Rink et al. discuss specific problems related to the process of shrinkage and the reactions to this by local actors for a selection of post-socialist cities located in East Germany (Leipzig), Poland (Bytom), the Czech Republic (Ostrava) and Romania (Timisoara). Apart from Leipzig, local actors in all three of the other CEE cities have not developed specific strategies to cope with shrinkage and have more or less denied the importance of public activities in the area of city planning. The main strategy has been to attempt to attract private capital from outside (above all by FDI). In East Germany, local actors have been able to make use of the flow Urban Research & Practice, 2014 Vol. 7, No. 3, 255–257, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2014.966509

The impact of local factors on the scope of benefits from public investment: the case of tourism infrastructure in Saxon municipalities

Following the transition from socialist central planning economies to market economies in all of the former socialist countries, many regions have had to cope with severe structural changes and economic development problems. To overcome these problems, local governments have tried to invest in new public infrastructure to support the development of new industries. This paper looks at infrastructure that supports tourist activities and argues that the impact of infrastructure generally depends on certain local factors which differ between municipalities. One important factor is whether the local population possesses the relevant complementary factors, in particular the right ‘soft skills’.

How to Create a New Holiday Destination? An Evaluation of Local Public Investment for Supporting Tourism Industry

This paper reports on an empirical study for the East German state of Saxony. A strong de-industrialization took place in many regions in Saxony following the German reunification. Since the 1990s tourism has been one major area in Saxony where new local public infrastructure has been created. The question is whether this newly-built tourism infrastructure has been able to change the path of economic development in those municipalities where the investment has occurred. Is it possible to activate the tourism industry with the help of public investment at locations that are completely new to the tourism industry? The econometric estimations and a survey of businesses in the field of tourism make it clear that the new tourist infrastructure really did have a positive effect on local employment – but not everywhere and not in every case. Tourist infrastructure will only have a major positive impact on economic development if a municipality already has a “track record” of being a tourist destination and is well-equipped with the relevant complementary factors for tourist activities and the “primary features” of tourist destinations. This indicates that a local tradition in the area of tourism is one condition for the economic success of new public infrastructure. From a more general point of view, this seems to be an example of path-dependency in local economic development.