I. Zetti (2002). La città post socialista. Il caso di Budapest, fra globalizzazione ed eredità passate. Firenze: Alinea, ISBN:8881256266
While the year 1989 marked the end of an era, for the cities of the former Eastern Bloc it signalled the beginning of a radical transformation. This book examines the case of Budapest in particular, a city that, in the 1990s, was swept up in waves of capital and global trends. These trends overturned an urban landscape shaped by forty years of centralised planning in the space of a single decade.
The author puts forward the theory of ‘temporal compression’: the accelerating pace of change has made the transformations in society’s fabric and spatial organisation more evident and, at times, more dramatic. This study goes beyond a neutral account by offering a deliberate examination that explores the continuities and ruptures between the socialist past and the global present. It does this by comparing the Hungarian experience with that of Western Europe.
Some of the photos from the book can be viewed on these pages.