Capitalist Futures and Socialist Legacies: Urban Development in East Germany Since 1990
in German Politics and SocietyAll currencies in US Dollar
Since unification, the political, economic, and institutional structures
in the new federal states have been patterned in accordance with the
West German model. This is due in part to the extension of the
Western legal framework to the eastern Länder. The fact that the
political and economic actors of the once-socialist country are now
subject to the institutional conditions of the West encourages convergence
towards the western model. But questions have been raised as
to whether the cities in the new federal states are also adapting
rapidly to the western model of urban development. Their layout
and architecture resulted, after all, from the investment decisions
made by several generations and cannot be shifted or transformed as
rapidly as legal or institutional frameworks.