Join our Email List Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford
Browse All Books
If Cars Could Walk: Postsocialist Streets in Transformation

View Table of Contents


Series
Volume 7

Explorations in Mobility

Email Newsletters

Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.

Click here to select your preferences

If Cars Could Walk

Postsocialist Streets in Transformation

Edited by Ger Duijzings and Tauri Tuvikene

264 pages, 13 figs., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-80539-031-2 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (July 2023)

eISBN 978-1-80539-032-9 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390312


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“When, some fifteen years ago, I started writing about automobility in socialist societies, little could I have imagined that the postsocialist countries of Europe would inspire a profusion of young scholars to examine their specific mobilities. If Cars Could Walk conveys all the excitement and even frisson of a pioneering venture.” • Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Michigan State University

“This book is an important addition to urban mobility studies and it surely will enrich our understanding of the transformations of street connectivity in the countries of Eastern Europe.” • Elena Trubina, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Description

In the last twenty-five years, the explosive rise of car mobility has transformed street life in postsocialist cities. Whereas previously the social fabric of these cities ran on socialist modes of mobility, they are now overtaken by a culture of privately owned cars. If Cars Could Walk uses ethnographic cases studies documenting these changes in terms of street interaction, vehicles used, and the parameters of speed, maneuverability, and cultural and symbolic values. The altered reality of people’s movements, replacing public transport, bicycles and other former ‘socialist’ modes of mobility with privatized mobility reflect an evolving political and cultural imagination, which in turn shapes their current political reality.

Ger Duijzings is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universität Regensburg. He has done extensive research on the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and is currently studying urban transformations in post-socialist cities. His publications include Global Villages: Rural and Urban Transformations in Contemporary Bulgaria (Anthem, 2013) and, along with Ben Campkin, the co-edited volume Engaged Urbanism: Cities and Methodologies (I.B. Tauris, 2016).

Tauri Tuvikene is Professor of Urban Studies at the School of Humanities, Tallinn University. His research covers the intersection of urban cultures, mobilities, cities, and policies. He has published widely on these topics in various journals, as well as co-edited Post-Socialist Urban Infrastructures (Routledge, 2019) with Wladimir Sgibnev and Carola S. Neugebauer. He was Project Leader for a HERA-funded project on public transport as public space (2019-2022).

Subject: Transport StudiesHistory: 20th Century to PresentCultural Studies (General)
Area: Central/Eastern Europe


Contents

Download ToC (PDF)

Back to Top



Library Recommendation Form

Dear Librarian,

I would like to recommend If Cars Could Walk Postsocialist Streets in Transformation for the library. Please include it in your next purchasing review with my strong recommendation. The RRP is: $135.00

I recommend this title for the following reasons:

BENEFIT FOR THE LIBRARY: This book will be a valuable addition to the library's collection.

REFERENCE: I will refer to this book for my research/teaching work.

STUDENT REFERRAL: I will regularly refer my students to the book to assist their studies.

OWN AFFILIATION: I am an editor/contributor to this book or another book in the Series (where applicable) and/or on the Editorial Board of the Series, of which this volume is part.