Sessions

One of the key features common to almost all post-socialist cities is the concept of double transition as theorized by Ludek Sykora (2009:392). It refers to the local post socialist transition to market economy and the global transitions conditioned by economic globalization and its influence on local political, economic, social, and cultural restructuring.  The mechanisms were similar however local responses and outcomes were very different. While the mechanisms were similar, the local responses and outcomes varied significantly. Although we have barely reached an agreement that the transformation processes in post-socialist cities have come to an end, a new transformation has appeared on the horizon. Cities after transition, especially those within the EU, now face another significant transition - the green one.

In the case of many cities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), traces of socialist urbanization have been reshaped by various processes, ranging from flawed urbanization to chaotic suburbanization (Kusiak, Grubbauer 2012), as well as the shrinkage of many small or medium-sized towns, eventually leading to metropolization. These processes have resulted in the emergence of structures that are difficult to measure and describe using EU indicators of "green development", which are primarily tailored to the context of Western European cities. Interestingly, post-socialist cities often exhibit a higher degree of greenery than Western standards and norms expect them to have. However, their environmental challenges primarily stem from the chaotic development of suburbs, leading to issues such as inefficient energy consumption, road congestion, and biodiversity loss in formerly rural areas.

The proposed regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on nature restoration points out the goals for green urban development, however doesn’t recognize the differentia specifica of cities after transition. In fact, implementation of the principles of the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) may have counterproductive effects.  

Upon reviewing the proposed regulations, we were prompted to ask questions regarding the extent to which the legacy of cities after transition, especially those in CEE, can contribute to green transition and what their shortcomings are. Are these cities predominantly concrete jungles, or are they actually green cities? Does their spatial development align with sustainability and the idea of a compact city, or is it quite the opposite? Moreover, can the model of the socialist city already meet the requirements of a "15-minute" city? Is the EU's advocated policy of green development equally utopian?

In this section, we aim to address the following topics:

• Cities after transition: the balance between compactness and dispersion.
• Energy efficiency in different spatial structures.
• Are cities after transition truly green?
• Accessibility of green areas and spatial differentiation within the city.

As a consequence of a dynamic rise in social awareness of the rapid climate change we observe in the recent decades, possible adaptation and mitigation strategies become topic of lively debates in many scientific disciplines. Here, cities as places of concentration of people and industry as well as communication and transport hubs are sometimes seen as ‘ecological bombs’ which should be neutralized by making urban tissue less dense, for the benefit of their inhabitants and the whole planet. However, this line of thought leads to an inevitable clash with one of the key proposals of many nature conservationists i.e. broadly extending the planetary network of protected areas so they cover – in a maximum option - up to half of the Earth’s surface. Needless to say, if such claims are to be taken seriously, they are likely to result in a further agglomeration (and not deglomeration) of already settled human hotspots, for to leave more space for nature, and as such they go very well with the compact city idea. Nevertheless, as the social awareness of possible disadvantages that living in urban environments bring (pollution, noise, overheating etc.) also rises, supported by growing expectations towards quality of public spaces, we may assume that a compact city which would not be wisely ‘saturated’ with greenery, risks to fail its role and to lose its inhabitants for the suburbs. In this session we are going to review various strategies and good practices to address an ambitious aim of a city that is at a time compact and green, and investigate diverse challenges that CEE countries face in this field.

Proposed topics to address in this part of the session include (but are not limited to):

• Possible impact of the EU Nature Restoration Law on implementing compact city idea depending on various climatic, historical and socio-economic characteristics, with a special attention given to post-socialist/post-transition heritage;
• Post-socialist / post-transition cities towards climate crisis: adaptation, mitigation, reversing the trend? Challenges and opportunities depending on different geographical contexts;
• Green urban public spaces – interventions and systematic approach. Between acupunture and infrastructure. How to implement nature-based solutions without stopping at short-term ‘gadgets’?;
• ‘Concretosis’ of public urban spaces: in search of geographical scope and sociological background of the problem.

The Russian war against Ukraine is one of the defining geopolitical moments of our time. It has had global impacts, from engendering food and energy crises to restructuring Europe’s security architecture. The war also plays out on social media, as people around the globe try to make sense of this ongoing tragedy. And, most directly, the war has impacted individual lives in ways both immediate and subtle. For people touched by the war, both on the ground in Ukraine and at a distance, there is a very real sense that life after 2022 will never be the same. It is certain that the war will be a central topic at this CATference as well. Taking the war as its starting point, this session centers on the interplay between global, urban, and individual scales, because everyday practices and places are where geopolitics takes shape (Graham 2004; Laketa 2016; Pain and Staeheli 2014; Pratt and Rosner 2012). The session seeks to dispel the abstractions generated on social media and the 24-hour news cycle, instead highlighting the war’s human and quotidian impacts. From this perspective, the session contributes to debates in everyday geopolitics and urban geopolitics, speaking to audiences outside of our traditional regions of focus. This is part of a long-standing effort to transcend the hegemonic ontologies of knowledge production that relegate places outside the Global North to mere test-beds of theory (e.g.the AAG2018 sessions by Dixon and Wolfe, Flattened scale beyond the Second World, and the CATference2019 sessions by Wolfe and Polese, Urban geopolitics, individual resistance, and valorizing the everyday in the Global East and beyond). Ultimately, this session posits that theory developed in the context of the war is vital to places beyond Central and Eastern Europe. While underscoring the existential threat against Ukrainians and Ukraine, and valorizing the (extra)ordinary lives and cities at risk, this session welcomes papers that:

• engage with the everyday realities of life under war, under occupation, and being implicated in the war from afar
• theorize questions of the seemingly mundane in the context of geopolitical catastrophe
• explore the multiscalar connections between emotion/affect, the urban, and the war
• interrogate how digital technologies are implicated in this constellation of violence and daily life.

***Please submit an abstract of maximum 500 words to Sven Daniel Wolfe (dwolfe@geo.uzh.ch) and indicate whether you would like to be considered for participation in a special issue dedicated to these themes.

Small peripheral cities throughout the Global North, and increasingly elsewhere, are faced with significant challenges. As population growth in most developed countries has slowed, and many have gone into negative growth, cities which have already been widely peripheralized by pressures of neoliberal globalization are increasingly becoming shrinking cities. The effects of shrinkage are particularly intense in regions such as the Baltic States, where hyper-centralization of urban functions, especially in Latvia and Estonia, has made almost all cities outside the national capital region peripheral.

Shrinkage has powerful negative implications, including demographic change (particularly growth in the older population), economic decline, fiscal constraints on local governments, brain drain to more central areas, housing oversupply, and potential loss of social cohesion. At the same time, it may open opportunities to implement creative land use and environmental strategies (sustainability or green transformation), and to accommodate new populations at a time when the world, and Eastern Europe in particular, are experiencing growing refugee and migrant pressures. A further area of uncertainty has been added recently, as we have seen how controversial and challenging the impacts of refugee migration, including war refugees from neighboring Ukraine, have become for cities and regions of the Baltic States and Poland, and which raise potentially significant long-term issues about these cities’ trajectories.

Set against this background, this session will discuss how both the challenges and opportunities created by shrinkage and exposure to the new refugee immigration are being experienced in different small cities in the Baltic States, and explore actual and potential strategies that can be pursued by national governments, local governments and NGOs to create better demographic, economic and environmental futures for these cities.

Session keywords: Shrinking cities, Small cities, Demographic change and migration, Baltic region

The key challenges on the housing market relate to increased housing affordability which has increased housing inequality and fostered new patterns of segregation as well as dynamics of displacement, but also generally impacted on the development of social inequality in cities. Skyrocketing housing and rental prices have hit large shares of households hard especially the more vulnerable ones such as income-poor households or (forced) migrant newcomers and young people at the start of their housing career. Access to affordable and adequate housing is an essential part of quality of life whereas too high housing costs can become limitations in accessing other life domains. Affordable housing has been a cornerstone in the welfare state policies for a long time but has been greatly undermined in the recent decades across Europe as a whole. Countries across EU, especially the newer member states, have witnessed a retreat of public engagement in the housing sector in favour of market solutions during the last decades. Furthermore, housing affordability crises are linked and reinforced by other crises – energy, climate, refugee arrival as well as financial crises and, not least, effects of the war against Ukraine. How this multiple crisis context is being handled by local governments and other actors of urban societies, especially in respect to the equality issues in the housing sector, represents a large challenge and will be crucial to be observed and discussed.

Set against this background, the session invites (both conceptual and empirical) contributions related to this overall theme, e.g.

• dynamics in housing affordability, accessibility and inclusion,
• housing affordability challenges in relation to housing and spatial inequality,
• housing affordability and its consequences in case of vulnerable groups (forced migrant/refugees, low-income groups, single-parents, young people, etc.),
• inter-generational links to housing inequality and affordability (i.e., generational gaps, generational wealth transfers),
• access to housing for young people in relation to increasing inequality,
• effects of energy poverty, energy-efficiency-targeted retrofit programs, and financial crises on housing affordability,
• governments’ and other urban actors’ response to housing affordability crises (existing debates, approaches, interventions and their effects).

Keywords: (urban) housing affordability, inequalities, crisis, policy and society response

The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has led to the largest refugee migration in Europe since the Second World War. More than 7 million people left their country and fled to European (neighbouring) states, with the majority settling in Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Baltic States and other postsocialist countries. The EU activated the Temporary Protection Directive as a legal basis for the access of refugees to basic services in the receiving countries such as housing, childcare, schooling, and medical care for the refugees, as well as the right to enter the job market. In the receiving countries, the management of arrival and settling of refugees takes place mostly at the local level, in cities and municipalities. The arrival of a large number of refugees within a few months in 2022 represented a large challenge for local decision-makers, actors and societies to provide housing, childcare and school education, job prospects and language training for the refugees from Ukraine. The need to relocate migrants from larger cities, to which they most willingly went, arose at the beginning of the migration crisis and is still present. For many small towns, also in the light of their shrinkage, the influx of migrants may turn out to be an opportunity window. In many CEE countries, state and municipal refugee reception systems were previously politically marginal and widely resisted. Therefore, a lot of innovation and non-bureaucratic help was created to cope with the situation. Building on historical political allegiances and established migrant networks local societies showed significant empathy and willingness to support the refugees, housing and daily support was offered. Without this, the initial arrival and coping wouldn’t have happened as it did. Main challenges and opportunities remain, apart from the scale and demographic composition of the refugee migration, the housing, job market, and education integration in a long-term perspective, the wide-spread uncertainty of how long the refugees will stay and what consequences a longer duration of the war for their decision-making will have.

Additionally, issues such as rising prices of housing, “compassion fatigue” among the local societies as well as frustration among other groups of refugees and helpers about “selective solidarity” and double standards of treatment have increased and led to conflicts. Set against this background, this session aims to discuss the impacts and local responses of Ukraine war refugee migration for the context of the receiving countries and their cities and municipalities.

A comparative perspective on the impact of contextual factors will be a desired outcome of the session, as well as learning from the best practices of how, at different places, the coping of arrival and settling (has) worked. We especially encourage contributions from the perspective of Ukrainian to provide a comprehensive picture.

Keywords: war against Ukraine, refugee migration, cities in reception countries, impacts and responses

The disintegration of the former Soviet Union with the fall of communism brought a turbulent period of transition that affected all fundamental societal characteristics established before 1989. The transition from the centrally planned economy asked for the dismantling and restructuring of all aspects related to communism. The ‘obvious’ way forward appeared to be the adoption of a free-market economic system that offered the impetus this region seemed to lack. The economic crisis that followed the first years of transition lasted until the early 2000s when most of the countries had achieved some level of institutional stability. However, until today there are vast differences among the post-socialist countries ranging from the levels of economic growth to the extent of democratic pluralism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, actors other than the state started to take hold of the urban development scene. Urban planning, which was solely the domain of the state during the socialist and communist periods, became exposed to interventions from multiple actors who started to emerge. The wild waves of privatization of the 1990s advanced the interests of the private sector, while the ambiguity of the urban-related regulation left a lot of space for the action of a wide range of actors with conflicting interests and rationalities. The socioeconomic and political instability of the 1990s, in combination with the efforts of international organisations directed at democracy-building processes shaped a new form of civil society. Civic movements soon started to address various urban issues, making civil society one of the main actors in place-making. Countries in Eastern Europe and former member-states of the USSR have been recipients of international aid since the beginning of the 1990s. The paradigm shifts in international aid politics, namely the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), affected the direction of international development. Finally, urban development was acknowledged as an important setting with SDG number 11. SDG 11 advocates for safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities, setting a New Urban Agenda. This meant that international donor organisations would not only be involved in urban development through their support to the governments and civil societies but that donors themselves could initiate place-making projects. The session aims to provide a platform that will help initiate conversations around the wide range of actors involved in place-making through a variety of processes in post-socialist/post-Soviet cities.

 Keywords: urban development, place-making, civic movements, actors involved, international donors

After 40 years of centrally planned economy, the economic and political conditions for urban development radically changed in Eastern-European cities; they had to face new challenges, those of the free market and deregulation in housing construction.

The housing construction was motivated by the housing shortage during state socialism. Public authorities played a dominant role in the development of large housing estates. After the change of regime, the housing construction has become entirely market-driven; the local authorities of post-socialist cities hardly play any role in it, while the role of municipalities in housing construction is not negligible in the Western part of Europe.

In terms of number and size, the post-socialist residential estates are likely to have smaller impact on the structure of cities than the socialist housing estates. However, they efficiently shape the city: they emerge in almost all parts of it: inner city apartment houses, lofts in the ex-industrial zone, peripheral residential estates, and sometimes even new apartment buildings among the blocks of old housing estates. They have specific physical characteristics, distinguishing them from the earlier housing stock, notably often being gated.

This session aims at gathering papers about new housing and residential forms of post-socialist urban areas. The most important topics to be addressed are as follows:

• The role of location in the new housing construction: the impact of availability and residential environment on the decision of actors (investors, dwelling buyers).
• The emergence of the first gated communities in the 1990s, the first large-scale projects (combining housing, commercial and office functions) at the turn of the century, the lofts, housing towers in the 2000s suggests that the investors typically follow the western trends in housing construction. To what extent do the investors manage to meet local demand, and how much they are influenced by local regulations?
• Have the physical characteristics of new residential complexes (the size, location, residential environment) impact on the social characteristics of dwellers (including lifestyle, demographics, social status)? Are there relevant social differences between new residential areas?
• The image of new residential complexes. How are they marketed and what are the preferences of the newcomers? E.g. lots of green areas, eco-friendly and sustainable housings, etc.

Keywords: housing, new residential areas, gated communities

In line with the neoclassical school in economics, mainstream transportation studies treat consumption as one of its core concepts. The focus on a consumer helps to develop quite a lot of different techniques, policies and ideologies. Follow-the-leader traffic flow theory, market approach to parking management, or competition between car and public transport are good illustrations to the point. As a consequence of such dedication, the production side of transportation remains understudied.

In that sense, the title political economy refers to the classical understanding of embeddedness of economic exchange into politics and culture. Political economy of urban transportation is therefore a very broad and simultaneously fragmented field of knowledge that is different from a mainstream discourse of planning and management. Therefore the field of contributions to the topic is wide and embraces not only conceptual developments but empirical case studies as well. It is not only the challenging of the non-neoclassical assumptions and outcomes but the development of alternative narratives dedicated to transportations issues. All above, post-Soviet cities are extremely rich not only in historical legacies of transformations but also there are quite a lot of examples of reforms that are happening right now in the transportation sector.

This session aims at gathering papers about conceptual and empirical contributions to the question on how transportation service is actually produced. The themes explored may include but do not have to be limited to the following topics:

• Conceptual contributions that challenge neoclassical framework and/or develop alternative conceptual assumptions on the production side of transportation.
• Presentations on research outcomes in fields like planning, management, finance and policies.
• The role of power in discussions around transportation issues.
• The contribution of finance institutions in service provision.
• Critical reflections about transportation reforms.
• Historical context of the production of transport service.

The post-socialist transformation of housing demonstrates the erosion of socialist values towards rapid financialisation and commodification of housing. This has not left any housing market segment untouched (Bernt, 2022) and it is no wonder that over last 20 years academic publications on gentrification in CAT countries have taken off massively. The wide spectrum of post-socialist gentrification studies has varied from discovering new types of gentrification to examining the particularities of ownership, the implications of neoliberal policies and systemising developers’ capitalist intent (Kubeš and Kovács, 2020).

Although first the object of post-socialist gentrification studies was the functional change of inner cities that made possible speculative investment in housing and played a major role in the commodification of the disinvested housing stock (Olt and Csizmady, 2020), recent (post-) pandemic and boom years have shown that gentrification could read the processes beyond the inner-city neighbourhoods (Phillips, 2004). The increasing investments that are made to purchase a second home outside of the large cities and regional capitals have resulted in rapidly rising market prices for property in the countryside (Pitkänen et al, 2020).

The housing market transformations in both urban and rural areas have been boosted by digital transition. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working has become a widely accepted form of work, thus reducing the need to consider commute when choosing residential location. At the same time, access to the benefits of digital transition is inequal, as remote work is more readily available in higher paid jobs (Randall et al, 2022). Therefore, those who are most tied to their workplace location experience the most pressure in the housing market.

Inspired by the recent counter-urbanisation trend and second homes boom as a result of the pandemic flight from cities, this session aims to present the newest research in discovering the interrelations between population change and urban-rural transformations, displacement, state and local government induced redevelopment and its influence on urban and rural communities. The session is aimed at researchers undertaking empirical research and interested in methodological and theoretical discussions on:

• Gentrification, displacement and housing market evictions;
• Counter-urbanisation and second homes boom;
• Interrelations between population change and urban-rural transformations;
• Urban and rural regeneration and redevelopment of industrial/residential properties;
• Opportunities and barriers of digital transition in the housing market;
• Contextual accounts with respect to governance and policies, etc.

Keywords: counter-urbanisation, housing markets, second homes, remote working

When societal and cultural frames seeming steadfast get compromised, the ideas of both individual and collective futures, taken for granted in a stable routinized life, suddenly become irrelevant and need reconsideration. The future appears neither linear nor single: its various trajectories are produced in different "presents" and are rooted in different "pasts," creating the situation of competition for different futures by individuals, institutions, and collectives.

For decades, urban futures were determined mainly by the states, corporations, and urban experts (planners, architects, and local governments). However, recent challenges, including the pandemic, climate crisis, wars, and growing social inequalities, questioned the existing geometry of power. They also made evident the ongoing democratization of the futures: the growing strengthening of the citizens and civil organizations in developing desirable futures at different scales.

We see the key question of the session as: who, how, and at which scale is involved in developing urban futures today in different cities and political systems. It coincides with Urry's assumption that the "who or what owns the future?" question should be at the center of research revealing how power is exercised. This question opens an avenue for further inquiry: what kind of futures are currently debated and claimed for the cities? Is there any common or collective urban future possible, or is it fragmented, individualized, and localized to particular spaces due to uncertainty, post- or neocolonial realities, lack of agency, or inability to achieve consensus? Finally, to what extent can individuals or particular groups, communities, or movements design urban futures? Which groups possess more power, how is this power performed, and who is "left behind"?

We would like to initiate discussion on the following aspects of urban futures (other thematic suggestions are welcome):

• Personal experience of living in disrupted time/spaces, and constructing futures in times of crises (with a focus on the experiences of migrants and reflections on living in the city amidst the pandemics);
• Agency in future-making in the city and its reassembling in times of crises: conflicting interests, contestation, and negotiations;
• Challenges for urban planning, from technical to ethical issues: the "experts" empowered to plan the futures of the cities, including the cities on the occupied territories and/or states;
• The strengths and weaknesses of digital and smart technologies in the process of designing the futures for cities and citizens;
• The impact of climate changes on the process, time horizons, and agency of future-making.

Keywords: urban future, agency, urban planning, crisis response, post-pandemic cities.

In the times when authoritarian urbanisms are rapidly growing and wartime urbicide has become an everyday agenda in thinking futures of the cities, urban researchers and planners need to sharpen their critical analytical lenses and carefully reflect and assess the rhetoric they use and popularize. In the growing urbanization machines of the post-Soviet region one can witness falsifications of the major urbanism concepts, such as public space, public participation, sustainable urban development, which are appropriated by decision-makers and consequently lose their semantic linkage with the political process of space production. The holistic conceptual apparatus of urban experts, describing change of urban space as a bottom-up process of community participation, is often converted into detached, fashionable, but shallow concepts in the populist top-down programmes of urban development. Mass media texts and political speeches announcing creation of new public spaces or new digital tools for citizens participation can form an illusion of a democratic change in urban decision-making, which worked out well for clouding the minds of urbanists, especially in Russia. This trap can also await urban researchers and makers in the less regulated environments, if they do not critically assess their language and avoid reinforcing its political potential through micropolitical practices, such as decentralized communication. This session will dwell upon the consequences of the authoritarian and technocratic hegemony over the urbanist thought and conceptualize how critical language and rhetoric used in urbanist projects can be strengthened and coupled with micropolitical and ethical principles. In the post-Soviet cities, in authoritarian and sometimes even in democratic contexts, it is timely to think of the ethical guidelines which could be shared and supported by, at least, the experts and practitioners, who create new public spaces and launch processes of public participation. The critical assessment of the urbanism concepts and their falsifications in the post-Soviet context is much needed as one of the resistance mechanisms of contemporary urbanists.

Key words: critical language of urbanism, politics of urbanism, epistemology of the urban

In the course of the last decade the battery industry, the battery cars and buses, is ever growing. The topic is hot and the fascination is great. Multiple municipalities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere promote and advertise their progressiveness by willing to introduce (for now in the future) new battery buses wherever and whenever possible. On the other hand, the trolleybus technology is still widely spread throughout the post-socialist countries and offer an electric alternative to the battery bus. This session invites scholars interested into the introduction of the new technology from the perspective of the older, socialist one – the trolleybus. The host of the session will provide insights from local interviews and data from the capital of Bulgaria, where his paper will explore the potential of the decolonial perspective when addressing public transport developments in a post-socialist, Eastern European, supposedly backward context. I look forward to gather more insights on trolleybus and e-bus practices from other post-socialist countries and to create space to discuss the trolleybus technology from contemporary, as well as from historical perspective.

Keywords: Trolleybus, E-bus, post-socialist, decolonial

Large housing estates constitute a significant component of urban space in cities in postsocialist countries. Although housing estate neighbourhoods in different spatial contexts share many features, including their physical form and function, large variations among them exist not only across different countries but also within cities. Indeed, in the last decade, the research has shown that different housing estates have followed divergent trajectories in the development of their spatial population patterns (Hess et al. 2018, Kovács et al. 2018, Kalm et al. 2023, Temelová et al. 2011). Some housing estate areas continue to suffer from gradual social decline connected to selective in- and out-migration, whereas others have retained their status relatively well and developed into ordinary quarters or are even experiencing a renaissance, attracting younger and better-off populations (e.g., Galuzska 2022, Kovács et al. 2018, Krišjane et al., 2019, Ouředníček, Kopecká 2021). The extent of this difference is dependent on various factors with initial conditions being one of the most important: when, how, and where these estates were built is crucial (Hess et al. 2018, Leetmaa et al., 2018, Vasilevska et al. 2020). Also, scholars agree that other context-related factors matter in determining what trajectory the neighbourhood follow. However, further research is needed to shed more light on the variability of the trajectories as well as their underlying conditions (especially in the context of the availability of the 2021 Census data and other new data sources).

This session aims to bring together and present current research on large housing estates in (postsocialist) European cities, with a particular focus on their development trajectories. We invite papers from diverse perspectives and based on various methodologies. We welcome research papers addressing questions such as: What are the changing population patterns in housing estates, either in the long-term or in the last decade? What are the mechanisms and underlying conditions of these changes (e.g., in situ changes or selective migration)? What are the policies at the urban and national levels that impact these developments?

Keywords: Housing estates, trajectories, population structures

The peculiarities in the dynamic of (re-)investments in post-socialist contexts (Bernt et al., 2015; Kubes and Kovács, 2020) were theorised recently with the processes of commodification and de-commodification (Bernt, 2022): the effects of post-socialist transformation could cause both. The observed differences are not only related to the heritage of socialist past but the transformation process itself (Tuvikene, 2016).

For example, the privatisation of the state owned housing stock could be a clear case of commodification. However, the ad-hoc and insufficient (non-)regulation of the process for example in Romania (Chelcea, 2006), or Poland (Kusiak, 2019), or the populist “give away” element of privatisation and fragmentation of ownership as in Hungary (Kovács et al, 2013) or Russia (Bernt, 2022) together with systemic corruption and politically controlled operation of authorities, hindered the full commodification of real estate. Often, instead of fully open international markets with long term rational calculations, local, (politically) well-connected players could speculate in these chaotic processes (e.g. in Budapest: Olt et al, 2019; or Bucharest: Bürkner and Totelelcan, 2018).

Thus, behind the veil of the dogmatic neoliberal rhetoric (Chelcea and Druta, 2016), or (false) promises made for the neoliberal EU institutions, the larger weight of political considerations and the operation of state institutions and local authorities in many cases actually resulted in “a caricature version of the ‘entrepreneurial municipality’” (Varró, 2010: 1260). Therefore, in this session, we intend to look at the relations between different levels of real estate commodification and different manifestations of neoliberalism (e.g., “post-“, “radical”, “authoritarian”) and/or the effects of political forces outside of neoliberalism (see Robinson, 2011).

We expect empirical or theoretical papers dealing with the following or similar issues:

Stories of real estate commodification, investment projects and commercialisation

• To what extent was real estate commodified? What was the role of state actors? What was the role of political power? Did it go according to the plans? What kind of neoliberalism was behind it? Were there other political considerations?

Stories were commodification was limited, projects that failed or were stalled for a long time

• Was it because of a conscious decision to limit markets? Or because of peculiarities of market institutions? Who was interested in the project? Did the level of commodification change later? Was there a political change behind that?

Municipal austerity and privatisation of municipal assets

• Was it because of neoliberalism? Or for example because of political conflicts between the local and state power?

Keywords: commodification, institutions, neoliberal.

Every society is affected significantly and permanently by demographic changes and the interactions they have with migration. In a world that is constantly changing and becoming more connected, Europe is confronted by several interrelated threats, including depopulation, excess mortality, healthcare risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, social inequality, public unrest, and various migration emergencies (Kashnitsky, Aburto 2020; Florida 2021).

Demographic changes can have both positive and negative impacts on society. The influx of new people can create a more diverse population, leading to greater creativity, innovation and economic growth. Migration can also provide access to new resources and skills, as migrants bring fresh ideas and perspectives. However, demographic changes can also cause a number of problems. For instance, rapid population growth can place a strain on resources and infrastructure. In addition, if not managed correctly, migration can lead to cultural clashes, increased competition for jobs, and increased social tensions. To manage demographic changes and the associated risks, governments must develop policies responsive to their citizens' changing needs. This includes ensuring access to quality education and healthcare, implementing measures to reduce inequality, and developing strategies for integrating migrants. Demographic changes and migration are inevitable and can positively and negatively impact society. Governments must take proactive steps to ensure that these changes are managed to benefit all citizens. Numerous European countries experience abrupt changes in all three major demographic processes: fertility, mortality, and migration (Fihel, Okolski 2020). One of Europe's crucial concerns for urban and regional development is the effects of demographic changes. Europe is experiencing a population drop.

Within the session, we would like to invite scholars who can contribute to the new knowledge and offer evidence-based solutions to the demographic and migration challenges. Topics, but not limited to the following:

• Social inequalities. Provide a comprehensive understanding of the social inequalities across different social groups and spatial contexts.
• Urbanization. Analyse urbanization processes, their drivers, and their effects on societies to identify and measure the factors that shape the development of cities and urban areas.
• Population health. Create a comprehensive, interdisciplinary research framework for understanding the relationships between population health and complex social, economic, and environmental factors.
• Ageing. Develop a comprehensive understanding of the implications of population ageing and its implications for social, economic, and political spheres.
• Post-truth urban politics?
• Cities impacted by tthe Russian brain drain.
• The deglobalization of cities in Russia and Belarus
• Cities and re-militarization
• (Border) cities on the new iron curtain
• Socio-economic residential segregation
• Ethnic residential segregation
• Conflict and coexistence in multinational cities in Central Europe.

Please feel free to address any of these topics:

- Post-truth urban politics

- Cities impacted by tthe Russian brain drain

- The deglobalization of cities in Russia and Belarus

- Cities and re-militarization

- (Border) cities on the new iron curtain

- Conflict and coexistence in multinational cities in Central Europe

- Can the concepts of post-socialism and of the post-socialist city be laid to rest?