The twentieth-century city: Socialist, capitalist, modern

Scholars of socialist cities have debated the extent to which the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries created their own socialist space distinct from capitalist space or whether capitalist and socialist spaces were simply different versions of modernity. As Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Sonia Hirt and Brigitte Le Normand discuss (each from very different vantage points), architects and planners in the early-to-mid twentieth century transcended the ideological divide and worked across geographical and temporal boundaries. They thus participated in the evolution and development of cities across the former Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe that have similar formal characteristics yet that function in diverse ways. Their residents have also experienced them differently depending on the intent of the ideological framework under which they were created.