Valentin Mihaylov - Böcker

Featuring up-to-date and insightful analyses and comparative case studies from a plethora of countries, this timely book explores ‘ideal’ socialist cities and their transformation under new socio-economic and political conditions after the fall of communism.With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book prioritises objective scientific knowledge and presents expert rethinking of the historical experience of urban planning in the former socialist countries of Eurasia. It draws on carefully selected examples of iconic cities of socialist modernism, from the post-Soviet space, Central Europe, and the Balkans. The book explores the ongoing transformation of these cities: from uniformed urban environment to chaotic post-modernist planning, from industrialisation to touristification, from deideologisation to making new and still highly contested heritage. Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in urban studies, human geography, sociology, social anthropology, spatial planning, and architectural practice.

Featuring up-to-date and insightful analyses and comparative case studies from a plethora of countries, this timely book explores ‘ideal’ socialist cities and their transformation under new socio-economic and political conditions after the fall of communism.With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book prioritises objective scientific knowledge and presents expert rethinking of the historical experience of urban planning in the former socialist countries of Eurasia. It draws on carefully selected examples of iconic cities of socialist modernism, from the post-Soviet space, Central Europe, and the Balkans. The book explores the ongoing transformation of these cities: from uniformed urban environment to chaotic post-modernist planning, from industrialisation to touristification, from deideologisation to making new and still highly contested heritage. Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in urban studies, human geography, sociology, social anthropology, spatial planning, and architectural practice.

This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation’s historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions.The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author’s model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians’ historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of ‘high’ geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing ‘low’ (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology.Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.

This book is about the geographic space as an inseparable component of a nation’s historical memory, territorial awareness, geopolitical visions, and obsessions.The empirical part of the book focuses on the critical analysis of first-hand sources containing representations of the imagined spaces and places of Bulgaria and Bulgarians from a long-term perspective. The research results are structured in accordance with the author’s model of an imagined national space. It contains three general domains: possessed national space, the ethnogeopolitical neighbourhood, and ancient and legendary spaces. The book also explores how Bulgarians’ historical and ethnic spaces are linked with specific geopolitics, such as passive internal geopolitics, soft revisionism, non-intervening geopolitical claims, blocking international integration as a disguised form of old territorial claims, and emerging historical geopolitics. It examines how the imagined national space is approached by statesmen, politicians, academics, and other creators of ‘high’ geopolitics. The book also pays attention to the role of spatial imaginations in growing ‘low’ (popular) geopolitics, which includes media, popular culture, and national mythology.Written in an interdisciplinary manner, this timely book will attract the interest of scholars and students in geopolitics, human geography, international relations, nationalism studies, and ethnic history.

This multidisciplinary book explores the utopian impulses in modern social thought, tackling the most pressing and interconnected planetary challenges. It combines a reconsideration of our dystopian present with a critical investigation of socio-spatial utopias, which suggest alternative modes for human-nature and inter-human interactions in an imagined sustainable, dialogical, and inclusive world.Based on a content analysis of scholarly publications, policy documents, and intergovernmental agendas, four analytical chapters systematise visions which shape the contours of contemporary socio-ecological, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political utopianism. Addressing the most existential global risks, utopian futures require more than sustainable development, degrowth, or global justice. The book explicitly underscores the urgent need for an open-minded dialogue, an inclusive knowledge order, lasting peace, and other marginalised concepts which can contribute to dismantling the bastions of particularism and facilitating collective actions. Among many competing visions, the main challenge is how to integrate the most progressive ideas into a coherent utopia for a future which all want and a future which fits all.The book is written in the common language of the knowledge that is co-created by the fields of global studies, political and cultural geography, environmental sociology, and international relations. The multidisciplinary approach makes this work appropriate reading for researchers, social thinkers, policymakers, and students who are interested in contemporary planetary utopias.

Presenting spatial studies into different cases of conflict in a cross-national context, the authors apply concepts of contested and divided cities, urban geopolitics, cultural atavism, contested heritage, etc.The book is divided into four parts.