Monika Grubbauer and Joanna Kusiak (eds), Chasing Warsaw: Socio-Material Dynamics of Urban Change since 1990, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013. 336 pages. $ 32.00, ISBN: 978-3-59339-778-8.

Historically cities have always been pivotal in the study and, more importantly, in the self-perception of East and Central Europe. They have been stages for cultural diversity, oppositional intellectual developments and, in the twentieth century, for radical nationalist and socialist makeovers. Now, in the post- Cold War era, East and Central European cities are not so much carriers of specific developments, trends or classes, but can be considered showcases or laboratories for post-socialist transformation at large.

In Chasing Warsaw Monika Grubbauer  and Joanna Kusiak try to chase one of these cities and its transformations. Chasing Warsaw is for two reasons an important contribution to urban studies. First, as the editors claim, Warsaw is an exceptional example among Central European cities. Warsaw has witnessed unparalleled changes, both historically and in the past two decades. Swept off the map during  World War II, the city was both reinvented and reconstructed during communist times and is now undergoing unmatched growth. Importantly, this unparalleled change is also perceived as such in Warsaw: a city of ‘chaos’. However, the editors are also much engaged in the theoretical contributions that they hope to provide with Chasing Warsaw. In the introduction and an additional theoretical chapter they try to break the boundaries between urban studies, post-colonialism and post-socialist studies.

Grubbauer and Kusiak’s introduction hinges upon two essential observations. The editors skilfully warn against the common trap that studies of post-socialist cities have fallen victim to. The (post-)socialist city, they claim, is being ‘overly  “orientalized” as radically different and yet at the same time this very difference is interpreted  as mere “backwardness” within the Western paradigm of urban modernization’ (page 14). Interestingly, they subsequently move on to interrogate this questionable paradigm through a post-colonial approach. In this way they hope to overcome traditional post-socialist perceptions and old Cold War dichotomies and replace them with attempts to do justice to the ‘intertwining of pre-socialism, socialism and post-socialism’ (page 19). This is a most welcome position, but still precarious, since using a post-colonial approach is essentially maintaining the focus (although now critically) on the dichotomies of post-socialist analyses.

After this well-considered goodbye to post-socialism the volume opens with two contributions that nevertheless still apply the post-socialist vocabulary. The selected excerpts from the writings of the godfather of Central European city-writing, Karl Schlögel, should be read of course as documents that reflect the time in which they were written. Grubbauer’s theoretical chapter on ‘linking post-socialist urbanism and urban theory’, however, is largely built upon Warsaw as a post-socialist city. The same holds true for the central issues that she raises, even though she uses these to interrogate both post-socialist analysis and urban theory. Grubbauer focuses on the extent of ‘diversity’ among post-socialist cities and on their ‘continuity’ and ‘discontinuity’ with the past. Though valid questions, they seem somewhat outdated at this point and would ultimately only lead to a rejection of post-socialism as central paradigm. For the moment, Grubbauer fails to draw this conclusion. Anyhow, enlightening examples about East European gated communities as a ‘locally grounded phenomenon’ (rather than as a US export product), or ways in which neoliberalism was domesticated in East European cities and countries make up for that.

All theory aside, the case studies are what make this volume a must read for everyone who is interested in urban change. First, the historical chapters give an idea of the scope and specificity of urban change in Warsaw, and especially  its characteristic ‘urban sprawl’. Urban sprawl is a common global phenomenon, but it seems also rooted in the post-Cold War transformation process in Warsaw. More generally, many East and Central European cities carry the after-effects of long traditions of ‘underurbanisation’ (Bittner: 68), which historically has connected cities much more strongly to the non-urban environment.

The chapters on Warsaw’s typical urban specificities, such as the large number of ‘enclosed housing estates’, Warsaw’s ‘waste management’, ‘civic cafes’ and Warsaw’s legendary ‘Bazaar Europa’, all successfully challenge well rooted perceptions.  Warsaw’s ‘enclosed housing estates’ are perceived as partially identical to the global phenomenon of gated communities. These are generally thought to be based on safety obsessions and economic (class) divisions. However, in Warsaw the context of post-socialist transformation and chaos impacts on these perceptions as well. Moreover, according to Jacek Gądecki, in the post-socialist city the ‘“beauty” of gated and guarded housing estates is the most significant distinctive feature of gated housing estates’ (page 125), which supports the claim that the successes of Warsaw’s estates are partly ‘aesthetical’. Similar claims are made in Włodzimierz Karol Pessel’s chapter on waste management. On the one hand waste and dirt are synonymous with a city in restless transformation and can be considered signs of deviation or the lack of order. On the other hand, and perhaps partially as a result of this, waste and dirt are aestheticized as well. The connection of Warsaw’s sewer system to the heydays of anti-Nazi resistance is a good example.

Warsaw’s infamous bazaar is without doubt the best post-Cold War phenomenon to re-evaluate the post-socialist paradigm, as is excellently done by Roch Sulima. In the late 1990s The bazaar was the largest open air market space in Europe. At first glance, it met all the criteria of post-socialism:  it was made possible by the lack of urban planning and triggered by the unrestricted, neoliberal economies that expulsed lower and middle class shops from the city centre. It was also deeply connected with the spaces of the city that were most affected by socialist urban development. ‘Bazaar Europa’, as it was called, was organized in and around the abandoned socialist 10th Anniversary Stadium (1955) that had been a highly symbolic place during communism, but was dilapidating at the time.  For both Warsovians and visitors the bazaar was evidently one of the recognisable outcomes of the chaos caused by transformation. Its disappearance with the construction of a new soccer stadium (2012) completes the post-socialist narrative. Nonetheless, the bazaar can also be read through other spectacles. It also narrates the impact of global economy and migrant cultures. Both sellers and sold goods were from different ‘Easts’: Eastern Europe (most notably Ukraine, Belarus or Russia) or Asia (China or Vietnam). The bazaar introduced Warsaw to alternative consumer practices, from the neutral or anonymous chain stores in downtown Warsaw or in suburban hypermarkets to the global rules of cheap copied (‘delayed’) fashion. Additionally, it also connected Warsaw to ethnic ‘others’, which was a major change in a city that still has very limited non-Polish communities. Similar developments can be found all over the globe, including Western Europe.

Warsaw and its others is also the topic of Aneta Piekut’s chapter about foreign residents and places of encounters. Encounters with migrant communities have increased, mainly because of their commercial activities, but still remain relatively limited. For non-ethnically Polish Warsovians these encounters do not seem to play a major role in the self-image of the city, which is the topic of Dominik Bartmański’s chapter. Here the post-colonial approach is embraced again since many Poles see their capital ‘in sceptical, self-deprecating, martyrological and  quasi-objectivist terms, thus evidencing a peculiar mixture of inferiority and  superiority complexes’ (page 147). Bartmański claims that Polish representations of Warsaw largely depend on East-West schemes, with Berlin and cities to Warsaw’s East as the strongest points of reference. This may very well be true, but other contributions in the volume show that the East-West backwardness narrative is only one of the ingredients of Warsaw’s self-perceptions, and perhaps not even the strongest. For instance, the contrast with the image of Warsaw and Warsovians within Polish society is intriguing. According to Kacper Pobłocki ‘Warszawka’ (‘petty Warsaw’) is the Polish equivalent of ‘champagne socialism’ that has roots in pre- and post-war history, but also in post-socialism. Dating back to socialist times, it has now merged also with nouveau riche associations. The book closes with another outstanding contribution of editor Joanna Kusiak that sheds light upon Warsaw’s real distinctive self-perception, that of ‘chaos’. Kusiak convincingly shows that what is perceived or narrated as chaos in fact hides ‘order’. Most of Warsaw’s urban development, including its growth and changing public space obeys to well formulated (albeit new) rules of the game.

Chasing Warsaw showcases Warsaw’s most interesting urban developments since the 1990s. It consists of mostly high quality chapters, though not all engage equally successfully with the central premises outlined in the introduction. Overall, one wonders if avoiding the post-socialist discussions at all, or making it less central, would not have made the analysis more solid and convincing. The introduction outlines this attempt, but some of the following (theoretical) chapters point in other directions. Kusiak’s final chapter implicitly solves the post-socialist problem. What is perceived as chaos is mostly order. Perceiving chaos is therefore a cultural act. Post-socialism is Warsaw’s chaos: it may (still) exist, but if at all, only as part of a much more complex historical and spatial context.