The Builders of Socialism: Eastern Europe's Cities in Recent Historiography

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1469-2171|26|3|545-560

ISSN: 0960-7773

Source: Contemporary European History, Vol.26, Iss.3, 2016-11, pp. : 545-560

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Abstract

When the angry homeowners of a popular Seattle neighbourhood recently decided to rise in protest against the impending changes in the urban development code, they claimed that their chief goal was to protect the district from turning into an ‘Eastern Bloc city’. If the City Council allowed the new legislation to pass, reported The Seattle Times, Seattle was ‘in danger of becoming the Soviet Warsaw or East Berlin of the Pacific Northwest’. ‘I've been to Poland’, one protester said, ‘I know what they [Polish cities] look like. They're bleak. They're dead.’