Fin de Millénaire Budapest

Metamorphoses of Urban Life

2000
Author:

Judit Bodnár

Considers what this central European metropolis tells us about the changing nature of urban life.

Fin de Millénaire Budapest combines historical narratives and ethnographic accounts with quantitative evidence to create a richly detailed picture of a city subjected to the forces of great local and global change.

Globalization and Community Series, volume 8

Judit Bodnar analyzes and comments with fresh and sometimes provocative insights the transformations of the largest metropolis of post-socialist Central Europe after 1989. . . . Fin de Millenaire Budapest is undoubtedly a stimulating and well-written study that enriches contemporary urban sociology literature and it deserves to be read and studied.

Slavic Review

With the collapse of state socialism, the people of Budapest are rearranging their points of reference as the cityscape’s familiar signposts disappear. In what sense is the transformation of Budapest different from the experience of "Western" cities? What does all this mean if viewed, as this book suggests, as a part of global restructuring? Through Budapest’s example, Judit Bodnár shows how the postsocialist experience of east-central European cities offers a fresh and instructive view of our general farewell to modernity.

Fin de Millénaire Budapest combines historical narratives and ethnographic accounts with quantitative evidence to create a richly detailed picture of a city subjected to the forces of great local and global change. In the privatizing of public space, the decline of manufacturing, the rapid growth of services, and the opening of opportunities for entrepreneurs, Bodnár captures global urban patterns-with a distinct, central European accent. In particular, she shows tensions between the liberating and fragmenting effects of the increasingly private use of urban space and some ways in which the new urban patterns both resemble and transcend cultural patterns from Budapest’s socialist past.

Judit Bodnár is a research fellow at the Center for Russian, Central, and East European Studies, Rutgers University.

Judit Bodnar analyzes and comments with fresh and sometimes provocative insights the transformations of the largest metropolis of post-socialist Central Europe after 1989. . . . Fin de Millenaire Budapest is undoubtedly a stimulating and well-written study that enriches contemporary urban sociology literature and it deserves to be read and studied.

Slavic Review

This book will well serve students of post-communist urban societies.

Canadian Journal of Urban Research

A stimulating and well-written book that enriches urban sociology literature. Complicated issues are expressed transparently and elegantly, and Bodnár has the ability to see things and relations that are often unobserved: the transformation of socialist cities into cities that are part of market economies and the forces that fragment cities, segregate different social groups, and that destroy the urban fabric.

Jirí Musil, Central European University, Prague

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Posted: Socialism, Modernity, State
2. Constructing Difference: Western versus Non-Western, Capitalist versus Socialist Urban Logic
3. "He That Hath to Him Shall Be Given": Inequalities of Housing Privatization
4. Inner City Doubly Renewed: Global Phenomenon, Local Accents
5. Assembling the Square: Social Transformation in Public Space and the Broken Mirage of the Second Economy
6. Globalizing Art and Consumption: Art Movies and Shopping Malls
7. Urban Texture Unraveling: Fragmentation of the City

Conclusion

Appendix: Models of Housing Privatization

Notes
Works Cited
Index