East central European urbanization:
a political economy of the world-system
perspective
by Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith*
What is the nature of urbanization in eastern Europe, historically and in the
present day? Has it followed a single path related to other macrostructural
changes? Is the contemporary pattern of urbanization the result of the region’s
‘noncapitalist’ political economy? Is it a function of these societies’ ‘level of
development’? What effect has the region’s role in the world-system had on its
urban trajectory?
In an attempt to provide satisfactory answers to these questions, we develop a
synthetic perspective on urbanization and social change which emerges from the
confluence of two streams of social scientific inquiry: the ‘new urban sociology’
(Walton, 1979; 1981)and the dependency/world-system approach to comparative
development. Others have brought together these traditions in order to examine
urban patterns and processes in light of regional roles in the world system
(Walton, 1982; Chase-Dunn, 1984; Timberlake, 1985). We extend this effort in
several ways.
Our focus on east central European urbanization from the long sixteenth
century through to the second half of this one is an important departure for
theoretical reasons from the perspective’s main focus on dependent urbanization
in the third world. It enables us to sharpen the concepts of semi-periphery and
periphery. In particular, it shows the importance of transcending economistic
biases of some world-system formulations by theorizing the role of the state in
guiding urban outcomes.
We begin with a review of literature on the semi-periphery and periphery,
urbanization and the state. We then turn to an examination of contemporary
urban patterns in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Because these patterns
*Coauthors have contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order. We thank Lianne
Oakes, Cindy Buckley, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Robert Denemark, Bohdan Jalowiecki,
George Kish, John Liu, Linda Miller, Dorothy Solinger, and two anonymous reviewers for
comments on earlier drafts. Some of the data referred to in this text were collected and analysed
while Michael Kennedy was on a grant from the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the
American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council. Versions of this
paper were presented at the Southern Sociological Society annual meeting in 1987 and the
University of California, Irvine faculty seminar on ‘The State’.
598 East central European urbanization
have their roots in the region’s past, the bulk of the paper employs an
international political economy perspective to explain the historical trajectory of
east central European city growth. Our review of postrevolutionary urban policies
in these countries finds that they reinforce east central Europe’s semi-peripheral
historical legacy. In the conclusionwe return to the questions posed at the outset,
reflect on the adequacy of our theoretical approach applied to east central
Europe, and discuss the lessons these empirical cases provide for further
theorizing about urbanization and social change.
I Dependenturbanizationin the world economy
The concept of the ‘dependent city’ or ‘peripheral urbanization’ is presaged in
Frank’s description of world capitalist exploitation as a ‘metropolis-satellite
structure’ (1969: 6-9). Castells (1977) systematically related dependency and
urbanization, arguing that, like other processes of macrostructural change, urban
growth in underdeveloped parts of the globe is tied to capitalist penetration and
expansion. These initial formulations have been followed by a number of
empirical studies applying the logic of the international political economy
approach to comparative research on cities and urban systems (Walton, 1977;
Slater, 1978; Roberts, 1978; Friedmann and Wolff, 1982; Timberlake, 1985;
Meyer, 1986; London and Smith, 1988). Timberlake succinctly summarizes the
main premise of this approach:
Urbanization must be studied holistically - part of the logic of a larger process of
socioeconomic development that encompasses it, and that entails systematic unevenness
acrossregionsof the world. The dependence relationis an important theoreticalconcept used
to pry into the ways in which the processes embodied in the world system produce various
manifestationsof this unevenness, including divergentpatternsof urbanization (1985:10).
There are three types of ‘unevenness’which can be distinguished (Gugler and
Flanagan, 1977: 273). First, demographic and economic imbalances occur
between the urban and rural sectors, represented in the concepts of ‘urban bias’
and ‘overurbanization’. Secondly, skewed patterns of population distribution are
characterized by rapid concentrations of people and resources in the largest
towns, leading to debates about ‘optimal city size’ and ‘urban primacy’. Thirdly,
great material disparities within cities are reflected in ‘dualistic’ patterns of
housing, consumption, and access to political participation, generating a spinoff
literature on housing, slums, squatter settlements, urban poverty and the
‘informalsector’.
Social scientists have applied the concept of dependent urbanization to various
regions in the third world. Comparative casestudies and crossnational quantitative
research have linked some or all of the dimensions of ‘uneven urbanization’
to the subordinate roles that Latin American, African, and Asian societies have
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 599
played in phases of world economic expansion. Statistical studies indicate that
overurbanization is related to peripheral status (Kentor, 1981; Timberlake and
Kentor, 1983; Bradshaw, 1985; London and Smith, 1988). Historical analyses
show how differential patterns of incorporation into the world system help to
explain contemporary variations in lead-city primacy (Nemeth and Smith, 1985a;
Smith, 1985;Saueressig-Schreuder, 1986).
If a region’s role in the international system is useful for explaining third-world
urbanization, it seems logical to assume that the global political economy might
also influence city growth patterns elsewhere. A number of recent studies
suggests that urbanization in the advanced core needs to be understood in the
context of the international division of labour (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982;
Feagin and Smith, 1987). But eastern Europe presents a set of problems for this
approach.
Dependency/world-system writers treat noncapitalist societies with some
ambiguity. Although prerevolutionary patterns of urbanization might be understood
in a context of peripheralization, how are the declared ‘socialist’nations of
the twentieth century to be treated? Eastern European societies, whatever their
historical status, seem to be at an intermediate level in the global system. Have
they achieved mobility through processes analogous to those found in other cases
of semi-peripheralization? Is socialist transformation a means of dependent
development? The role of states and the relationship between them is obviously
important in these societies for understanding urbanization and other social
change. In what follows we suggest refinements of the international political
economy approach which can clarify these issues.
I1 Beyond core and periphery
Peter Evans (1979a) suggests that the promise of world-systemanalysis lay in the
elaboration of its seminal concepts, in particular, of the semiperiphery and of the
possibility of state-directeddependent development. Wallerstein locates the serniperiphery
‘between the core and periphery on a series of dimensions’and argues
that this stratum comprises a ‘necessarystructural element of the world-economy’
(1974: 349). This is a relational concept which can be measured according to a
nation’s position in trade networks, commodity chains, power structures, etc.
using social network analysis (Snyder and Kick, 1979;Nemeth and Smith, 1985b;
Smith and White, 1988). But because of its exacting data requirements, this type
of analysisis not useful for measuring world-systemstatus in most historicalcases.
It is therefore necessary to identify attributional characteristics of the semi-
periphery.
The semi-periphery differs politically and economicallyfrom either the core or
the periphery. The internal productive activities of semi-peripheral areas are a
mixture of ‘corelike’ industrial production and labour-intensive extractive
600 East central European urbanization
‘peripherylike’ production (Chase-Dunn, 1978; 1988). Development remains
‘dependent’ under these conditions because it is constrained by an international
economy dominated in the leading sectors by the superior technological,
financial, and commercial resources of the core. These mixed economic functions
of semi-peripheral nations change the nature of the dominant classes and enable
state policies to influence more directly local capital accumulation. Wallerstein
(1985: 35) argues that, ‘semiperipherality is important because it points to a
concentration of state-oriented political activity by major internal (and external)
actors’. Although there is considerable variance in ideology, from rightist to
socialist, semi-peripheral countries, ‘. . .tend to employ more state-directed and
state-mobilizing development policies than do core countries’ (Chase-Dunn and
Rubinson, 1977:472).
This idea of dependent development moves the state to a central place in worldsystem
analysis.Peter Evans’ (1979b)account of Brazil’smovement into the semiperiphery
highlights the role that the state can play as a mediator of continuing
international dependence and as a key player in economicplanning, co-ordination
and capital accumulation. Actors within the state form a shifting and somewhat
unstable ‘triple alliance’ with local and foreign capital to promote economic
growth. Far from being ‘epiphenomenal’, the existence of a stronger, more
interventionist state is the driving force in the rapid (if still internationally
dependent) industrialization of Brazil.
The state is not just relevant to Brazil. Evans argues that the developmentalist
state of the Brazilian model is a key element separating upwardly mobile thirdworld
nations from those which remain peripheral (see also Caporaso, 1981).
Cumings (1984) argues that the ‘bureaucratic authoritarian industrializing
regimes’ of Taiwan and South Korea enabled their economies’ ascent into the
semi-periphery. The concept of semi-peripheral dependent development has even
been considered, and hotly contested, for its relevance to postrevolutionary
Soviet and eastern European societies (Chase-Dunn, 1982; Clark and Bahry,
1983; Luke, 1984; 1985; Arato, 1985; Zaslavsky, 1984-85; 1985). The state has
moved therefore to the very centre of international political economy (Evans,
Reuxhemeyer and Skocpol, 1985;Evans and Stephens, 1988).
What are the implications of this notion of semi-peripheral dependent
development for urbanization? Until recently, most research has focused on
‘dependent urbanization’, making no distinction between city growth in the
‘As Amghi and Drangel (1986) point out, the precise nature of activities and products that are
either ‘corelike’or ‘peripherylike’is historicallybounded and related to current technology and
product cycles (Schumpeter, 1964; see Cumings, 1984, for a description of contemporary
northeast Asia). Core activities are highly profitable and embody the latest technological
innovation (Anighi and Drangel, 1986). In the eighteenth century, shipbuildingmight fit (ChaseDunn,
1978); in the twentieth century, automobiles or computers (Cumings, 1984). At any rate,
semiperipheralcountries, with a developing mix of such economic activities, are more likely to
attract foreign and local investment in manufacturing industries and develop or import new
productive technologies than is the periphery (where agriculture and mining remain predomi-
nant).
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 601
periphery and the semi-periphery. Statistical analysis now finds that the
contemporary semi-periphery generally has lower rates of urban primacy than the
periphery (Fiala and Kamens, 1986). Historical comparisons show that extreme
urban unevenness and inequality may be reduced even further in upwardly
mobile, semi-peripheral societies (Smith and Nemeth, 1988). For example, in
South Korea the logic of export-oriented industrialization has favored a relatively
decentralized spatial distribution of population and production (Nemeth and
Smith, 1985). But the state is the distinctive and formative actor shaping
urbanization and development in the semi-periphery:
In all the cases of ‘semiperipheral urbanization’, government policies toward tariff and trade
restrictions, infrastructural developments (especially regarding transportation/
communication systems), and the location of key industries, have led to more balanced urban
and regional economic and demographic growth (Nemeth and Smith, forthmming:30).
Because city growth and urban structure are the outcomes of political-economic
struggles and explicit and implicit policymaking by powerful people (London,
1979). and because the semi-periphery of the world-system is characterized by
state apparatuses which are particularly efficacious and prone to intervention,
one should expect a distinctive character of city growth in the semi-periphery.
I11 ‘Socialist’ urbanizationin the world economy?
Attempts to explain social change in eastern Europe usually begin with an
understanding of the nature of these societies, even though this is a most
controversial starting point. They have been characterized as socialist, protosocialist,
state-capitalist, in transition between capitalism and socialism and an
entirely new mode of production. But even for those who label these societies as
a kind of state capitalism, eastern Europe differs in basic ways from western
capitalist societies. There is no private ownership of the major means of
production: the state owns and directs all large industries. There is no real
competition in production among those who control capital, and enterprise
managers face fundamentally different kinds of budget constraints (Kornai,
1980).
There is also considerable state control over space in eastern Europe. If land
is not owned by the state, there are stringent limitations, especiallyin large cities,
over how it can be bought or sold. Meansof collectiveconsumption like electricity
and public transportation also lose their commodity status. Their production is
not designed to be bought and sold for a profit by producers. Ostensibly they are
produced with the consumption of the user in mind. The ideological principles
behind the allocation of housing in actual socialism illustrate the systemic
difference with capitalism: ‘1) housing should be a universal provision, not a
market commodity; and 2) its production and distribution should not be a means
of unearned income’ (Szelenyi, 1983: 28). Such principles of socialist urbanism
may not be realized in practice and recent reforms even cast doubt as to whether
602 East central European Urbanization
these remain the system’sofficial guidelines. Nevertheless, actual socialism ought
to produce a different pattern of urbanization than capitalism, even if it may not
realize socialism’s promise (for a similar argument about Chinese urbanization
see Whyte and Parish, 1984).*
While actual socialist societies may not be capitalist, they are nevertheless
affected by the operation of the capitalist world-system (Frank, 1977; ChaseDunn,
1982). Although most of the societies of eastern Europe and the USSR
are politically and militarily integrated, leading some scholars to call the region
‘a virtual Soviet empire’ (Chirot, 1986:283) or a Soviet ‘worldsystem’(Zaslavsky,
1984-85), the measure of economic integration among these east European
societies is far more limited. Each east European society cames on extensive
trade with the USSR, but there is an increasingly comparable level of trade with
the capitalist west, especially in Hungary and P ~ l a n d . ~Development in Soviettype
societies too has been forced to compete with capitalism on the global level,
since socialism has promised not only a more egalitarian form of development,
but also a more rational and satisfyingone.
Given these relationships between the world capitalist system and actually
existing socialism, an important question arises: to what degree do these
noncapitalist societies share important characteristics with other societies in the
capitalist world-system? Despite their special relationship to the USSR and
despite different internal relations of production, do east European societies play
a role structurally analogous to other semi-peripheral nations (Chase-Dunn,
1982)?How does this world system status affect urbanization?
A final theoretically relevant characteristic of eastern European countries that
cannot be overlooked is that they are industrial societies. Developmentalists
argue that essential features of these societies, includingpatterns of urbanization
and development, ought to share more in common with western Europe and
North America than with industrializing societies like South Korea or Brazil.
From this perspective, strategies of technological development and overall
’Incorporation into the capitalist world system in the middle of the nineteenth century changed
Chinese urbanization patterns. The even distribution of cities in independent China gave way to
the growing primacy of those ports which linked China to the capitalist core. These cities were
characterized by terrific poverty, crime and other social ills. Communist urban reform challenged
the legacy of capitalism by limiting migration to these larger cities, redistributing resources to
smaller cities in the interior and creating more equality in general. Indeed, Whyte and Parish
(1984:359)consider the primary features of actual socialist political economy (‘relative equality,
bureaucratic allocation, persistent political campaigns and penetrating organizational system’) to
be more developed in China than in eastern Europe. As China becomes less isolationist, might
its urbanization grow less distinctive?
3Poland’s imports from advanced capitalist countries increased from 25.8%in 1970 to 49.3% of
total imports in 1975; the proportion of exports to them was 28.3% in 1970 and 31.5% in 1975.
Even after the economic crisis began, in 1981 28.9% of Poland’s imports came from these
countries, and 29.5% of exports went to them (Rocznik Statystyczny,1983: 334). In 1981, the
capitalist industrial world provided 40.2% of Hungarian imports, and received 30.2% of its
exports (Kovrig, 1984: 107).
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 603
economic growth are the primary factors shaping urbanization (Lenski and
Lenski, 1987;Jalowiecki, 1982;Andrusz, 1984).
An adequate understanding of east European urbanization using a political
economy of the international system approach needs to address these alternative
formulations which stress the mode of production and level of development as
key explunuda.An investigationof cities in this region is especiallysuited to assess
the unique contribution of this perspective since these societies are industrial, are
not capitalist, and occupy an unclearly specified status in the world-system.
An analysis of eastern European urbanization goes beyond the bounds of this
paper. Viewing eastern Europe in a monolithic way is common given contemporary
geopolitical divisions, but these societies’ experiences with city growth and
urban development are heterogeneous. In this analysis we focus on three
countries of east central Europe with relatively similar experiences: Hungary,
Poland and C~echoslovakia.~
IV Contemporarypattern: ‘underurbanization’and low inequality
In the contemporary third world, dependent urbanization is often characterized
by extremely rapid city growth, overurbanization, lead-city primacy, and high
levels of poverty and inequality in metropolitan areas. Urbanization in eastern
Europe has followed an almost diametrically opposed trajectory, contrasting on
all three dimensions.
Rather than being overurbanized, underurbanization is more characteristic of
eastern Europe in general, and east central Europe in particular. Although Lenin
first refers to ‘under-urbanization’in prerevolutionary Russia (1956), the concept
was reintroduced to describe a pattern of urban population growth laggingbehind
industrialjob creation in east central Europe in the 1960sand early 1970s(Konrad
and Szelenyi, 1977; Szelenyi, 1981).5
In 1970just slightly over half of the Polish (52.4%) and Czechoslovak (52.2%)
populations lived in urban areas (Musil, 1980). This is quite low compared to
other societies at comparable levels of development (Musil, 1980).6By 1975,
4We do not consider East Germany, given its special relationship to the capitalist world-system
through West Germany. We also do not consider the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria, and
Yugoslavia, as they have been less industralized in both past and present, historically dominated
by the Ottoman Empire rather than Austrian, Prussian or Russian, and comparatively lacking
in native bourgeoisie or aristocracy in the prerevolutionary era. Yugoslavia is a special case in
itself, given its greater openness to western trade and ruling ideology of self-managing socialism.
Albania was excluded for the singularity of its contemporary path of isolated development, and
for the accompanying lack of data.
‘This concept of underurbanization examines the ratio of demographic growth in cities to either
participation in the industrial labour force or the rate of national economic growth (and is
therefore the precise obverse of commonly employed measures of ‘overurbanization’ (Kentor,
1981;Timberlake and Kentor, 1983; Bradshaw, 1985)).
bThese data depend on administrative definitions of urbanity, however, and therefore do not
take into account rural transformation that minimize the distinction between town and country.
604 East central European urbanization
Table l(a)
comparative cases
Patterns of urban primacy: recent data for eastern Europe and some
Standard primacy index % Cities
100ooo+
Country 1950 1960 1970 1975 1970" Lead city
Albania
Bulgaria
Czechoslovakia
Hungary
East Germany
Poland
Romania
Yugoslavia
0.78
5.70
3.32
12.71
-11.10
-1.31
5.57
-4.07
1.14
3.54
3.02
12.86
-9.77
-.39
5.53
-2.21
7.47
2.29
2.15
12.32
-18.62
-.75
3.66
-3.45
2.13
2.19
1.22
12.15
-18.68
-1.03
4.43
-5.57
8.8
20.9
15.81
24.7
23.7
30.9
27.2
13.6
Tirane
Sophia
Prague
Budapest
Leipzig
Warsaw
Bucharest
Belgrade
~~
Table l(b) 1970 data for some other nations
Country Primacy Index %Cities 100OOO+
Austria
Denmark
Finland
France
W. Germany
Japan
Norway
Spain
Sweden
UK
USA
USSR
China
Mexico
Philippines
S.Korea
Thailand
9.66
9.63
1.33
9.42
2.28
4.17
5.68
2.91
2.39
-10.20
-1.12
-3.45
10.24
14.25
5.72
17.82
-2.76
34.0
34.8
23.7
42.3
51.7
47.2
23.5
41.O
33.1
68.3
62.6
31.8
11.3
35.8
16.5
36.2
9.0
Note:The 'standard primacy index' data come from the unpublished results of work by
Christopher Chase-Dunn and his collaborators on a research project entitled, 'World
division of labor and the development of city systems', funded by the National Science
Foundation (of the USA) in 1979.The measure,explained in detail by Walters (19851, uses
the size of the largest city as a starting point and calculates deviations from the rank-size
rule. The percentage of the population in cities over 100000 was calculated directly from
United Nations data in Patterns of urban and rural development growth (UN, 1980).
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 605
Poland’s level of urbanization was even less than that of Finland, despite the fact
that Poland’s population density is eight times greater (Ostrowski and Valkonen,
1978: 266, 281-83). Furthermore, urban growth rates in eastern European
societies are modest - particularly when contrasted with very rapid city growth
in the less developed countries of the third world. In recent decades the
contradictions of underurbanization are apparently declining, especially as a
consequence of changing occupational structures (Murray and Szelenyi, 1984:
100-101). But while the divergent tack of socialist urbanization may abate and
underurbanization become a thing of the past, it nevertheless suggests that these
even urban outcomes have been realized through a fundamentally different
process, and suggests the possibility of alternative future trajectories.
East central European societies also lack the skewed urban size distributions
associated with dependent urbanism. Urban primacy is not characteristic. In fact,
national city size distributions are quite flat, with the obvious exception of
Hungary (Table 1). To some extent this exception proves the rule. The primacy
of Budapest is partly a consequence of changes in national boundaries. In the
postrevolutionary period, there also have been substantial efforts to contain the
growth of the largest cities and encourage the development of medium-sized
places (Dziewonski and Jercznski, 1975: 269-71). One of the most notable
patterns on Table 1is the stable or declining levels of lead-city primacy found in
all the eastern European nations (except Albania).
Material inequality is much more difficult to gauge than demographic
imbalances. Nevertheless, its rise or decline as urbanization and economic growth
take place is theoretically crucial. In terms of intraurban inequality there is good
reason to believe that eastern European cities have attained a more egalitarian
distribution of goods and services than advanced capitalist societies (and, of
course, a much more even distribution than in the capitalist third world). The
state has made large investments in huge uniform housing estates to meet the
needs of urban workers. This comparative equality has not eliminated chronic
housing shortages (Misztal and Misztal, 1984). Adequate housing is the good
most often reported lacking by Poles (Bialecki and Sikorska, 1982).
Although there are drastic shortages of housing, the homeless population is
not like those in the third world or even the advanced capitalist nations. Szelenyi
estimates the homeless to be about 10% of the Hungarian urban population
(1983: 51). But these are people who live with parents or in institutions of some
kind (like hostels). In eastern Europe, in contrast to the third world or even
advanced capitalist cities, very few live on the streets. After nearly a decade of
economic crisis, a catholic social worker estimated that in 1986there were about
2000 people without permanent housing in Warsaw out of a population of over
1.6 million (Diehl, 1986). No one lives in makeshift shanty housing typical of
capitalist cities in the third world.
Despite a relative lack of demographic overurbanization, resource allocation
and infrastructural investment does show urban bias. Szelenyi (1981) documents
how the Hungarian regional management system allocates a disproportionate
606 East central European urbanization
amount of state expenditures in favour of urban areas over their rural hinterlands.
For Poland, Weglenski (1983) uses regression analysis to demonstrate that city
size is a significantpredictor of family incomes, access to education, living space
and ownership of household appliances and other basic facilities, even when
controtling for social status variables. This concentration of amenities in large
cities has led to a pattern of residential segregation the opposite of that found in
the west, with professionals living in the central cities and workers residing in the
hinterlands (Demko and Fuchs, 1977; Szelenyi, 1983).
Despite evidence of urban bias in resource allocation, these data must be
interpreted cautiously. First, urbadrural inequality in these societies is occurring
in the context of declining regional inequality, at least through the 1970s(Musil,
1980; Ostrowski and Valkonen, 1978: 291; Szelenyi, 1981; Musil and Rysavy,
1983). Secondly, we need to keep urbadrural inequality in comparative
perspective. It is doubtful that the urban bias present in east central European
societies would be judged as very extreme by contemporary third-world
standards. It is also not obvious that the levels of regional inequality in eastern
Europe are much different from those in capitalist societies, although the pattern
of distribution of specific goods and services may be quite dissimilar. The east
central European urban-rural contrast is more similar to earlier periods in the
USA before the relative decline of poverty in rural areas and its concentration
in large central cities.
In summary, east central European urbanization has been characterized by
some inequalities and especially shortages that are particularly noticeable in
housing. These levels of inequality and poverty are, however, less serious than
those experienced by rapidly urbanizing third-world societies. The inequalities
are also distributed differently from the inequalities which occur in advanced
capitalist societies.
Having sketched the overall pattern of urbanization in contemporary east
central Europe our task is now to explain it. To do that, we must consider not
only the political economy of the present, but also the past, beginning with the
contrast between eastern and western Europe at the end of the feudalism and the
rise of absolutism.
V Historical divergence: cities in eastern and western Europe
In the 1500s and early 1600sPolish towns appeared to be on the same trajectory
as their west European counterparts. A number of them had some political
autonomy, guilds were becoming increasingly important, trade was flourishing
and a substantial merchant class had coalesced. Danzig (Gdansk in Polish), a
member of the Hanseatic League, was the most successful city under Polish
protection, because it channelled Polish grain to the rest of Europe. It enjoyed
considerable autonomy, having its own currency and its own naval fleet, and by
1500 it became the leading city in the League. In 1600, with some 50000
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 607
residents, it was the largest city in Poland, with five times the number of residents
in Warsaw and 3 times more than in Krakow or Poznan (Pounds, 1979: 131-32;
Davies, 1384: 271-72). Nevertheless, after becoming the capital in 1596,Warsaw
also grew considerably. The number of Warsaw residents increased from 4500 in
1500to over 20 OOO in the next century. Twentyfive percent of the population of
the Polish-Lithuanian Republic (formed in 1569) was urban (Pounds, 1979: 123;
Davis, 1984: 305-10). By the middle of the next century, economic and urban
prospects in Poland and eastern Europe changed for the worse, especially in
comparison to western developments.
Between 1648and 1660, Poland lost one-quarter of its population. The urban
population shrank to 15% of the Republic by the mid-seventeenth century
(Davies, 1984: 318). Of Poland’s cities, Warsaw fared the best, but it too lost
population, from 18 OOO in 1655 to 6OOO in 1659 (Davies, 1984: 315). Both
external and internal features account for this relative and absolute urban decline.
East of the Elbe, serfs were bound more tightly to the land both legally and
economically. Even after serfdom was officially abolished in the nineteenth
century, the economic dependence of the peasants was so great that there was
no mass exodus to towns (Szelenyi, 1981).
Eastern European towns also lost the struggle for political autonomy. Although
eastern urban autonomy was similar to that in the west before the 1400s, in
subsequent centuries urban privileges and prerogatives were gradually curtailed
by powerful feudal lords and emerging absolutist states (Anderson, 1974; Rev,
1984). As late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, serfs in eastern
Europe could be reclaimed by masters no matter how long they had been in the
city. These alternative urban histories played a key causal role in differentiating
west and east European development, even if urban autonomy was only an
important, but not sufficient, condition for the rise of capitalism (Holton, 1986).
The decline of eastern cities was also shaped by international conditions. In the
1500s, legal changes weakened the native burgher estate in Poland. Trade was
taken over by foreigners and agents of the nobility, contributing to the decline
of a native bourgeoisie and a weakening of the cities’ political position. But the
demographic decline of these cities was occasioned by the fall of the grain trade,
which happened alongside the plagues and wars which ravaged Poland in the last
two-thirds of the 1600s.
VI Preindustrial peripheral urbanization
Wallerstein (1974) claims that ‘the new European division of labor’ in the ‘long
sixteenth century’ is the beginning of a geographically based hierarchic capitalist
world-system. The grain producing regions of eastern Europe were the first
periphery (Denemark and Thomas, 1988). As in other monocultural areas in
colonial territories, the predominant form of agricultural organization became
‘coerced cash-crop labor’ (Wallerstein, 1974: 91-95). The result was a pattern of
608 East central European urbanization
core exploitation of the periphery. After many iterations of ‘cumulative
causation’, this led to a continuous amplification of the small economic lead the
western core initially enjoyed, and to the underdevelopment of peripheries like
eastern Europe.
What effect did this process of early peripheralization have on urban patterns?
These towns played different roles from those of towns in the core. In the colonial
Americas there were two basic functions: 1) trans-shipment points for the bulk
products of monocultural export; and 2) centres of elite consumption (Roberts,
1978;Smith, 1987).While there was little that was generative about these colonial
cities, the export economy did necessitate the growth of urban areas at major
ports. These cities also became centres of political control and administration
centres where local elites maintained residences so they would have access to
imported luxury items. In colonial Latin America the result was the growth of
primate cities which served as headlinks between the European core and the
agrarian hinterland (Roberts, 1978: 38-44).
The early peripheralization of east central Europe also led to the formation of
a few large urban centres. Gdansk most resembles the peripheral urban pattern
described above. As we noted, it grew to a size of 50 OOO in 1600,larger than any
other Polish town. In the process, it became something of a, ‘materialist Mecca
to which the Polish nobleman was drawn and tempted’ (Davies, 1984:272). This
large Baltic port carried out functions analogous to other peripheral cities, as it
was a key grain trans-shipment point and a centre for upper-class consumption.
But it was not a site of political control over its hinterlands.
Other towns were centres of political control and eventually became quite
large. But they were less like the dependent cities characteristic of other
peripheral areas since their size and importance were less related to external
factors. By 1795, Warsaw reached a size of 150000 (Davies, 1984: 315)
comparable to contemporary Berlin and Copenhagen. Prague had about 75 OOO
residents, and the three cities which later became Budapest had a population of
50 OOO at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Pounds, 1985: 176-78).These
cities were larger than contemporary North American ones: the largest of those,
New York, only had 40 OOO residents in 1776(Light, 1983: 196). Of course, none
of these cities was anywhere near the size of the core’s, London or Paris, which
in 1800had 800 000 and 670 OOO respectively (Mumford, 1961: 355).
East central European cities were larger than those in the colonies because they
were more than recently established peripheral outposts for a core power. These
cities were sites of longstanding independent political administration. Krakow
was the major royal city of Poland from the middle of the eleventh century until
Warsaw took on this role in the sixteenth. Buda, later joined with Pest to form
Budapest, first became the capital of the Hungarian kingdom in the thirteenth
century (Birnbaum, 1987).Prague was capital of the Great Moravian state of the
early middle ages, and remained important in the Austrian Empire. Thus,
peripheral urbanization in east central Europe must be analysed with reference
to the fact that core powers were not trading with politically subordinate colonies,
Michael D. Kennedy and David A . Smith 609
but with societies possessing historical legacies of political independence.
Consequently, some east European cities grew because they were the loci of
politicaYadministrativefunctions in independent states. In general, between 1650
and 1800, political centres increased in importance relative to trading centres in
central and eastern Europe (Hohenberg and Lees, 1985: 167).
Later peripheral urbanization in the region was complicated further by the
political power of the three great eastern and central European empires, the
Russian, Prussian and Austrian. The significance of the empires for east central
European city growth is more apparent as these cities begin to industrialize, but
even in the late 1700simperial power shaped urban destinies in the Czech lands,
Hungary and Poland.
Polish lands were partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century among the
empires. Krakow went to Austria, although it remained a ‘free city’ under the
empire’s hegemony until 1846, when the revolution inspired more direct control
(Davies, 1984: 335). Danzig came under Prussian rule, and its hinterlands were
lost to the Russian empire, leading to the city’s decline as a commercial centre
(Pounds, 1979:469). Warsaw came under Russian domination, and its population
growth stagnated for the first two-thirds of the century (Pounds, 1979: 172-73),
as the number of administrative positions in the state bureaucracy dropped
significantly (Zarnowski, 1964: 77).
Vienna was the centre of the Austrian empire and guarded its central position.
Vienna grew from 225 000 in 1810 to 2 080 OOO in 1910 (Pounds, 1985: 175).
Through the mid-nineteenth century, the development of Prague, Budapest, and
Krakow was limited by the restriction of their administrative function and the
concentration of commercial activities in Vienna. The Austrian capital fulfilled
the functions of administration and elite consumption provided by peripheral
cities in the colonies.
After the 1867 Ausgleich, however, Budapest became a political equal to
Vienna, and increased its own primacy within the empire considerably. In 1800,
Prague was one and one half times larger than Budapest. Even in 1850, after the
construction of the first bridge linking Buda and Pest, these cities’ combined
population was only 150OOO, with Prague not far behind at 118OOO. But in the
years following the Ausgleich, Budapest grew far more quickly than Prague. By
1870, it had reached 300 OOO, in 1900, 800 OOO, and by the beginning of the first
world war, 1OOO OOO. Prague’s population also rose steadily, but not at quite so
furious a pace: in 1870 it stood at 162OOO, and in 1910, 225 OOO (Pounds, 1985:
174-75). Clearly, the geographical closeness of Vienna to the Hungarian and
Czech peripheries discouraged the kinds of primate patterns normally associated
with urbanization in peripheralized societies. However, this was not caused by
periphery alone. The imperial state played a direct role in policies which
amounted to implicit urban planning. Once Budapest acquired greater status and
more political functions, its growth became more autonomous and less controlled
by Vienna.
Empires were not only significant for their domestic effects, but also for their
610 East central European urbanization
influence on the flow of international capital. Empires used political tools (tariff
barriers, tax laws and state fiscal resources) to try and steer development in their
own interests. To the degree they could pursue policies analogous to contemporary
dependent development, some of the features of classical peripheral
urbanization could be avoided.
Does all of this vitiate the usefulnessof the concept of peripheral urbanization?
We argue that it does not. Peripheralization occurs in different ways in different
times and places: explanations of urbanization in specific places and times must
take mitigating factors like geography or political arrangements into account.
Eastern Europe’s proximity to the metropoles of western Europe meant that 1)
no single central trans-shipment points were needed to prepare bulk products for
long transoceanic journeys, and thus several transportation nodes could compete
within a small area; and 2) the agrarian elites had easier access to consumption
in the major cities of the core of the world system or at least the centres of their
empires. Politically, these peripheral areas were not colonies of the core, and
were instead already urbanized independent agrarian societies, which allowed a
greater role for the state in channelling urban development. Regardless of their
commercial centrality, capital cities grew rapidly. Shifting political fortunes also
led to changing boundaries which cut thriving ports from their hinterlands, and
drastically altered the administrative functions of established capitals. This led to
an urbanization pattern that was more discontinuous and more widely distributed
among several cities. Some of the same political and economic pressures which
led to primate colonial cities in America were thus associated with more even
levels of urbanization in east central Europe.
Partly because of geographic and political factors, both peripheralization and
city growth did not proceed along the same trajectory everywhere in east central
Europe. There clearly were large pockets where the beginnings of urbanization
and industrialization took root at relatively early points. In contrast to most
regions in the overseas colonies, the economic peripheralization of eastern
Europe sometimes protoindustrialization (Pfister, 1987) rather than monoproduction.
Nascent nation states and empires had an interest and ability to shape urban
patterns through economic policies designed to promote indigenous industrialization
and development: colonized areas had no independent political apparatus to
promote local economic growth and ended up playingan economicallyspecialized
role that fitted the needs of the core powers. Eastern European empires,
particularly, had sufficient geopoliticalclout to contend more effectively with core
economic powers, promote domestically advantageous economic development,
and, consequently, foster a more even pattern of urbanization. The influence of
empires is especially evident in the development of the Czech lands.
By the mid-seventeenth century, English and Dutch traders were already
establishing a linen trade with Bohemia (Stokes, 1987) and later Silesia (Pfister,
1987). Raw linens were produced by protoindustrial rural small-scale producers
and exported to the west to be dyed and made into garments. This is not the
same as the autonomous economic growth of western Europe, as this incipient
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 611
industrialization was part of the peripheralization that produced the ‘second
serfdom’ in east central Europe. An abundance of increasingly exploited peasant
labour created an ideal situation for a rise in textile production which
international traders could sell very cheaply on world markets. Despite increases
in output, this production resulted in a, ‘low dynamic of industrial accumulation
and the absence of an industrial capitalist elite’ in Silesia (Pfister 1987: 16). In
Bohemia, however, political instruments channelled this growth in more
generative directions. Under Maria Theresa, an aggressivemercantilist policy was
established in the 1700s, attempting to restrict Bohemian trade within the
Hapsburg Empire. This led local aristocrats to dye and manufacture the linens
themselves. By 1789, there were over 528 OOO persons engaged in textiles, and
Bmo, in Moravia, had become the ‘Manchester of central Europe’. By 1880, a
substantial amount of genuine industrialization had taken place in the Czech
lands, especially in textiles, beets, coal and machinery (Stokes, 1987: 35-38).
Czech lands were thus industrialized early, largely as a result of Austrian
mercantilist policy.
The early start of manufacturing in Bohemia was important for urbanization
patterns in the Czech lands. Much of this industrialization and protoindustrialization
was dispersed, located close to the factors of production, facilitating more
even urbanization.
The Hungarian territory under the Hapsburgs followed a different path.
Protoindustrialization did not occur on a large scale here. Instead Hungary
remained a major agrarian power in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
exporting livestock and copper, and importing quality textiles from western
Europe. This export to the west, channelled through Vienna, continued even
after Hungary’sconquest by the Ottoman Turkish Empire and annexation by the
Hapsburg Empire in the first third of the sixteenth century. Its export prospects
were hurt more seriously by the growth of the Atlantic trade. Southern German
towns declined as centres of transit for Hungarian goods, and Austria came to
dominate the Hungarian territory more as it became the principal destination for
Hungarian exports. Austria also restricted manufacturing in Hungary through
differential tariffs, thereby reinforcing aristoctratic power and further underdeveloping
Hungary. In fact, ‘there seems to be a direct link between Austrian
industrialization and the expansion of Hungarian cereal production’ (Stokes,
1987:42). As a consequence, there was little growth of medium-sized cities, and
Budapest remained the administrative centre and towering primate city for the
Hungarian territory through the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century.
But how do we assess the comparative primacy of Budapest? Primacy in the
Austro-Hungarian empire is complicated by the difficulty of defining the
boundaries of urban systems. Is the entire empire the relevant unit of analysis?
Or just the official Hungarian territory? If the latter, our case is still complicated
since Hungary was historically much larger than it is now: contemporary
Bratislava in Slovakia was a first-order regional centre of the Hungarian lands,
as was Zagreb in Yugoslavia and Cluj in Romania. Changing national borders
612 East central European urbanization
have increased the relative priimacy of Budapest (see Enyedi, 1976: 20-21).
Changing political boundaries are even more critical when considering the
Polish case. Once a great kingdom like Hungary, Poland was partitioned at the
end of the eighteenth century by the Russian, Prussian and Austrian empires.
But Poland’spartition carried different consequences from Hungary’sdomination
by the Hapsburgs.
VII ‘Dependentdevelopment’ in the empires and new nations
Although some protoindustrialization began early, it was not until the late 1800s
that large-scale manufacturing began to make a significant impact in most of
eastern Europe. Even then, this industrialization was an uneven process which
had more in common with the development of manufacturing in the newly
industrializing countries of the twentieth century than autonomous capitalist
development in the core nations during the industrial revolution. It was heavily
financed by foreign capital, proceeded at differential rates in various locales, and
took place under the aegis of state intervention in both empires and independent
nations.
Industrialization took different forms depending on the empire and territory in
that empire we consider. The Hapsburg monarch encouraged industrialization
early on in the Czech lands, ultimately contributing to a more even urbanization
there. Major manufacturing began to develop in the early 1800s (Berend and
Ranki, 1974: 123).
The Austrian authorities discouraged industrial investment in Hungary, until
after the 1873 financial crash when a series of Austrian capitalists invested
substantially in flour production, on the raw cereals Hungary herself produced.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, foreign investment was 40% of all
investments in Hungary (Berend and Ranki, 1982:87). Much of this industrialization
took place in Budapest itself, reinforcing the primacy that city enjoyed as an
administrative centre (Stokes, 1987: 46; Enyedi, 1976: 16-17).
Rather than being underdeveloped by the centre, as Vienna did to Hungary
before the 1873 financial crash and the 1867 compromise, the Polish territory
incorporated into the Russian empire developed relatively quickly. In fact, the
Polish territories industrialized and urbanized more rapidly than any other part
of the Empire in 1885-97 (Fedor, 1975: 127). The Russian Empire was a huge
market for Polish industry, and foreign investors took note. Foreign capital
accounted for approximately 60% of industrial production in Russian Poland
(Davies, 1984: 163-77). In fact, after the Russian Empire established a protective
tariff against foreign goods in 1880, foreign (especially German) capital cooperated
with the Congress Kingdom government to build up Poland’s ‘Manchester’,
Lodz, to manufacture textiles for the Russian and expanding Polish markets.
In 1850, Lodz had about 16OOO residents, but by 1900 there were 321 0o0, and
by 1913over 500 OOO (Pounds, 1985: 409-10; Turnock, 1978: 176-78).
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 613
The industrialization of east central Europe, especiallyof Hungary and Poland,
depended heavily on foreign capital. But this dependency was not similar to the
kind of dependency peripheral nations usually suffer. In much of eastern Europe,
excluding the Balkans (Berend and Ranki, 1974:111),the state had considerable
power to counter the interests of the foreign (especially Austrian, German, and
French) capitalists, and thus minimize the ‘distortion’of development by foreign
interests (Berend and Ranki, 1982:81). Much of the capital which entered eastern
Europe entered through the local government or its own leading financialgroups,
so that investment led to indigenous development and capital accumulation.
Foreign capital was used to construct an extensive infrastructure, especially in
railroads, which would sustain domestic development (Berend and Ranki, 1982:
87).
Both the move toward state-centric development and its diversifiedproduction
mix suggests that east central Europe under the empires was moving from the
periphery into the semi-periphery of the world economy. A process analogous to
the dependent development of the contemporary semi-periphery was underway
in this part of Europe 75 years ago. But the first world war changed these
industrial and urban prospects.
War damage was considerable. The Russian revolution cut off a huge market
for newly independent Poland. Poland was forced to integrate territories linked
to different empires. The central powers were defeated, and Austria and Hungary
were reduced to fractions of their former size and influence. The Czech lands
were united with Slovakia, an agricultural area formerly part of Hungarian
territory. Czech development was greatest of the territories under consideration,
and promoted a rather even urbanization throughout the Czech lands.
Although there was industrial development in this region between the wars,
world economic and political problems posed serious difficulties. East central
Europe made gains prior to the first world war, but its economic development
fell even further behind the west in the 1920s (Berend and Ranki, 1974:241). In
Hungary, foreign investment declined dramatically, and trade dropped off with
the former members of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary became more
economically integrated with Germany (Enyedi, 1976: 20). Poland’s growth was
also limited for various reasons, but it did manage to integrate the country
economically, develop Gdynia as a Polish alternative to the port of the free city
Danzig, and build a large industrial sector in the middle of the country
(Dziewonski and Jerczynski, 1975: 26768). Still, it was not until the last years
of the 1930s that there was substantial economic recovery (Davies, 1984: 418).
Whether any eastern European country could have recovered enough to enter
the core of the world capitalist systembecomes a moot question with the outbreak
of the second world war. The war destroyed many of the accomplishments of
eastern European industrialization and urbanization. Over 38% of Poland’s total
wealth was destroyed, and over six million Poles were killed (Jakowicz, 1979: 14).
Hungarian losses were behind only Poland and Yugoslavia; over 600 OOO
Hungarians were killed and war damages were more than twice the GNP of the
614 East central European urbanization
year preceding the war (Enyedi, 1976: 20). Again, Czechoslovakia suffered less
and had a better base for development in the postwar world. But in the aftermath
of the war, the entire region was forced to recover from the ashes of ruined semiperipheral
industrializing capitalist societies.
VIII Semi-peripheralurbanization
Is there a semi-peripheral pattern of urbanization? Some aspects of dependent
urbanization’s unevenness may be mitigated in upwardly mobile capitalist semiperipheral
societieswhen their economies rely on export-oriented manufacturing.
This lessens the advantages of a large concentrated market of high-income
consumers, one factor encouraging primate cities in the periphery (Nemeth and
Smith, 1985; Roberts, 1978). Strong developmentalist-minded states also have
the will and capacity to fomulate and implement policies which promote more
balanced urban systems.
Although east central Europe historically had more evenly developed urban
systems upon which to build than most colonial societies, east central European
industrialization between 1860and 1940appears to have had some effects similar
to those occumng in other semi-peripheral cases. Cities, even in the region’s most
industrial areas, grew more slowly than those in western Europe during this
period. City growth also seems to have been more widely spread on small and
medium-sized places (Dziewonski and Jercznski, 1975; Musil and Rysavy, 1983).
Why was this?
As in the contemporary semi-periphery, one answer lies in the type of
industrialization. Manufacturing was more capital-intensive, needing less labour.
It was also oriented toward development of the means of production, not
consumption. The market concentration created by very large, inegalitarian cities
was not important for this industrialization path. A more spatially dispersed
production-oriented urban system could develop throughout eastern Europe
instead (Musil, 1980). In the Czech territory, early industrial development
stimulated the growth of small cities located near the factors of production (Musil
and Rysavy, 1983: 504). Spatially, even urban growth in Poland in the early
twentieth century was facilitated by the development of integrated transportation
and communications networks (Dziewonski and Jerczynski, 1975: 267-68).
There are two other factors which do not mirror conditions in the third-world
semi-periphery today, however. First, substantial numbers of Poles, Hungarians,
and other east Europeans (less so Russians) emigrated at the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Emigration absorbed between
one-fifth and one-quarter of Hungarian population growth between the 1870sand
the first world war, with about two million Hungarians leaving. Even more Poles
emigrated, with an estimated number of 3.5 million (Berend and Ranki, 1974:
20). Secondly, early industrialization in eastern Europe was accompanied by the
retention of a more labour-intensive agriculture. Rather than mechanizing
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 615
agriculture, estates relied on the cheap labour available in the countryside. There
was very high agricultural density and high rural unemployment rates, even
through the interwar period (Berend and Ranki, 1974: 294-96). Thus, there was
less cityward migration and more international outmigration in the prerevolutionary
eastern European semi-periphery than there is in the contemporary semi-
periphery.
IX Urban policy under ‘actuallyexisting socialism’
After the second world war, communist regimes came to power throughout
eastern Europe. The state in these actuallyexistingsocialist societieshas overseen
a planned and controlled process which Musil (1980: 6) calls ‘managed
urbanization’. The formulation of urban planning strategies has stressed both
productive efficiency and the ‘intensification’of the economy, with a subsidiary
emphasis on minimizing material and geographical inequalities. Musil (1980)
provides an overview of these policies and their evolution in particular countries.
These policies sought to avoid the diseconomies of very large cities, provide the
social advantages of more spatially dispersed development and to pursue
strategies that, at least, lead to ‘polycentricconcentration’ (p.11).
Generally the resulting patterns of urbanization reflect the attempt to stimulate
growth in small and medium cities and also reduce inequalities. Polish urban
policies, for instance, have suceeded in ‘. . . limiting the growth of the largest
cities (though not of the fringe areas) and in supporting development of mediumsized
ones’ (Dziewonski and Jercznski, 1975). Similarly, Czech industrial
recovery strategies in the 1950s were designed to exploit existing factories and
other infrastructure which was already distributed widely in small and mediumsized
towns (Musil and Rysavy, 1983: 522). This led to the rapid growth of
‘smaller towns, some medium sized towns and Ostrava as the only large city’
(Musil and Rysavy, 1983: 507). Even in Hungary, where Budapest continues to
tower over the rest of the urban hierarchy, comprehensive national urban policies
have been developed to combat the capital’s ‘excessive concentration’ of
population, resources and economic, administrative and service functions (Musil,
1980).Paul Beluszky (1978) documents how the urban hierarchy, while remaining
largely the same, has decreased the importance of regional centres in favour of
country seats, and decreased the significance of medium-sized cities in favour of
district seats. What is more, the regional centres are growing more quickly than
Budapest (Enyedi, 1976: 160).There are moves toward greater regional equality,
but differences remain (Enyedi, 1976: 117-18).
Socialist urbanization in east central Europe reflects the planned restriction of
the development of larger cities and the encouragement of smaller places, an
overall move toward greater regional equality and little ‘suburbanization’ in the
core capitalist sense but considerable commuting to workplaces. Even though
urban life continues to receive disproportionate shares of national resources, state
616 East central European urbanization
policies throughout east central Europe have also been designed ostensibly to
promote more equitable (if not always adequate) distribution of urban amenities,
addressing another facet of what we refer to as uneven urbanization.
Not surprisingly, there are considerable similarities in urbanization between
east central Europe and the PRC, given their common political economies and
similar urban policies (Whyte and Parish, 1984). But these policies of ‘managed
urbanization’ are also similar to policies in the capitalist third world designed to
promote decentralization and greater intraurban equality (Lo and Salih, 1978;
Mills and Song, 1979; Renaud, 1981). Might the similar policies of different
political economies be attributable to common problems and resources given
semi-peripheral regions in the capitalist world system?
X Conclusions
In what way does a region’s role in the modern world-system inform our
understanding of east central European urbanization? First, contemporary
urbanization patterns are built on patterns established in the historical development
of these areas. Urbanization and development in eastern Europe up until
the 1800s (or even later) reflected the peripherufizution of the region in the ‘long
sixteenth century’, although the classic patterns of peripheral urbanization were
mitigated by geographic and political factors.
Secondly, city growth is affected by recent and contemporary roles played by
regions in the international system. From protoindustrialization to the present,
east central Europe has shown signs of reaching the semi-periphery, through the
imperial practice of using state apparatuses to shape foreign investment to
domestic advantage. The Balkans resemble more the peripheral pattern, but the
urbanization of the Czech lands, Poland, and Hungary in the 70 years before the
second world war is characteristic of their status as upwardly mobile semiperipheral
societies.
East central European urbanization after the second world war fits the semiperipheral
mold even more closely. We have claimed that pattern bears strong
similarities both to societies with a common political economy, like the PRC, and
to the capitalist semi-periphery , including the newly industrializing east Asian
nations. Both east central Europe and east Asia had developed urban systems
predating world capitalist penetration, have experienced dependent development,
and today play similar roles in the world-system. In both of these capitalist
and noncapitalist semi-peripheries, there have been substantial loans made by the
core, and substantial debts remain. In both semi-peripheries, exports are made
more competitive by exploiting ‘cheap labour’: peasant-workers in eastern
Europe occupy a kind of semi-proletarian status, providing much of their own
food and thereby decreasing actual labour costs (Szelenyi, 1981; Wallerstein,
1984).In both semi-peripheries, development is led by a strong ‘state’, which uses
political repression to impose austerity while facilitating development.
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 617
Of course, there are a number of differences between these regions as well.
One important divergence for the world system approach may be these region’s
future trajectories. It appears that without substantial social transformation in
eastern Europe, western capital investments and successful exports have passed
their peak. The Asian rim, on the other hand, seems to occupy a fortuitous place
for ‘upward mobility’ in the international system.’ We might therefore expect east
European semi-peripheral urban patterns increasingly to resemble city configurations
in other cases where societies are in decline. Instead of talking about some
generic form of semi-pheripheralurbanization, it is more useful to see the process
as one connected to upward or downward mobility in the world economy (Smith
and Nemeth, forthcoming).
Speaking of trajectories raises the connection between the past and present.
Some have noted that semi-peripheral status in the contemporary world system
is correlated highly with an agrarian technoeconomic heritage and geographically
advantageous accidents (Lenski and Nolan, 1984). Fairly arbitrary national
boundaries which assigned large reserves of oil to Nigeria and a huge resource
base and population to Brazil have promoted dependent development in both
countries; the Korean peninsula’s isolation from major world trade routes helped
protect that society from early peripheralization.
A major issue confronting world-system approaches is accounting for
technoeconomic heritage and other historical legacies in explanation. One reason
for the more even urbanization patterns of east central Europe, the PRC and
South Korea is their commonly advanced agrarian background. Socialist
urbanization in east central Europe and the PRC and semi-peripheral South
Korean urban development are building on comparative regional equality that
existed before revolution and world system incorporation. Macrostructural
phenomena like urbanization patterns have a significant degree of institutional
momentum. World-system ‘status’at any given point in time can only shape what
has come before. Likewise socialist transformation. A holistic international
political economy approach cannot just search for the variable that explains the
most variance in urban outcomes. It must seek to understand how different
combinations of circumstances lead to various types of historical change.
Consequently, it becomes important to select cases carefully for comparison.
To address the distinctiveness of socialist urbanization as opposed to capitalist,
one presumably ought to compare East and West Germany, North and South
Korea, or even Bulgaria and Greece. To address the significance of semiperipheral
versus peripheral status before socialist transformation, one ought to
compare the PRC or the Balkans with east central Europe. But before such
contrasts are made, one must define ‘socialist’and ‘semi-peripheral’ urbanization
in theoretical terms that are appropriate to these various regional experiences.
We have sought to contribute to this conceptual development by rethinking the
meaning of these ideas for interpreting east central European urbanization.
’Although this is not guaranteed. See Cumings, 1984for a discussion of ‘Korea’s export-led trap’.
618 East central European urbanization
Use of this approach to explain this region’s urbanization leads to several
problems. One of the most prominent that we have encountered is the
demarcation of urban systems for definitions of urban primacy. What were the
meaningful boundaries at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the
twentieth? Were they empire boundaries or national ones? How then do we
compute primacy ratios? (see Walters, 1985).
The problem reappears in modified form when it comes to identifing societies
in space over time. Hungary lost significant cities and capital investments as a
consequence of being on the wrong side in the first world war. Poland gained an
important industrial urbanized area after the second world war when its borders
were moved 150 miles west. When boundaries change, so do urban systems and
their comparability in history. Do we leave these issues as caveats, or can they
be incorporated into a more systematic perspective on urbanization? The only
way to incorporate these historical particulars theoretically is by using them as
data with which we reformulate concepts themselves.
The world-systemperspective has introduced an important interpretive schema
to the comparative historical analysis of cities, but conceptual development of
peripheral and semi-peripheral urbanization has focused almost exclusively on
third-world regions that are former core colonial dependencies. Eastern Europe
offers a valuable opportunity to ‘deepen the analogy’ (Stinchcombe, 1979) of
‘dependent urbanization’ by recasting general notions of peripheral and semiperipheral
urbanization.
The region’s geographic proximity to the core and the power of the
independent kingdoms and empires of east central Europe altered the urban
outcomes of peripheralization, and later facilitated the process of dependent
development. Wars and the redrawing of political boundaries led to different
effects, leaving Hungary more primate and Poland more urban than otherwise.
The initial years of socialist transformation had a more consistent impact
throughout the region, as the state utilized central planning to augment the
decentralization characteristic of upwardly mobile semi-peripheral urbanization.
It is unclear, however, whether Soviet-type economies are so upwardly mobile
today.
Bringingthe state into the centre of the world-systemperspective has improved
our ability to explain semi-peripheral urbanization in eastern Europe. Simultaneously,
examining eastern Europe through a world system lens sharpens our
image of variations in urban pattern and process in the semi-periphery. Cities and
urban systems in contemporary east central Europe can be partially understood
as products of industrialization and socialist political economy. But our research
demonstrates that an international political economy approach, placing this
urbanization in the context of dependent development in the semi-periphery of
the capitalist world-system, provides an analyticallypowerful framework too.
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, USA
University of California at Irvine, USA
Michael D. Kennedy and David A. Smith 619
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In the 1980s global political economy approaches have dominated comparative research on
urbanization and development. Most of the literature focuses on rapid peripheral urbanization
in the third world or the growth of ‘world cities’ in the core nations. These approaches have paid
relatively little attention to urbanization in the ‘actually existing socialist societies’. Urbanization
in east central Europe (Poland, Hungary, the Czech lands) is examined in light of the political
economy of the world-system perspective. The periperalization of east central Europe in ‘the
long sixteenth century’ was complicated by the region’s proximity to the core and by the power
of independent states. Beginning in the eighteenth century empires in this region limited the
economic penetration by the core and facilitated dependent development in some parts of the
area. Current patterns of ‘underurbanization’, modest regional inequality, and low urban
primacy rest on this historical foundation. Policies of ‘managed urbanization’ in postrevolutionary
societies reinforce the semi-peripheral legacy of decentralized, relatively even city growth.
Illustrating the advantages of this perspective, urban similarities are noted not only to socialist
countries, but also to those in the capitalist semi-periphery. The key role of the state in reshaping
dependent urbanization and development, highlights the importance of ‘bringing the state back
in’ to research on global political economy.
Pendant les anntes 1980,les theories en economie politique gtnerale ont domine les recherches
comparatives sur I’urbanisation et I’urbanisme. La plus grande partie de la litterature centre sur
I’urbanisation peripherique rapide dans le tiers-monde ou sur la croissance des megalopoles dans
les pays cle. Ces theories ont & peine consider6 I’urbanisation dans les ttats socialistes actuels.
L’urbanisation dans I’Europe centrale de I’Est (Pologne, Hongrie, territoires tchtques) est
etudite dans le cadre de I’economie politique du macrosysteme. L’organisation des zones
periphCriques en Europe centrale de I’Est au cours du ‘long seizitme sitcle’ a ete compliqute
par la proximite de la region au noyau et par la puissance des ktats independants. Dts le debut
du dix-huititme sitcle, les empires de cette region restreignaient la penetration economique par
le noyau et facilitaient le developpement dependant dans certaines parties du territoire. Les
formes actuelles de sous-urbanisation, d’inegalite regionale moderke et de faible primautt
urbaine reposent sur cette base historique. Les politiques d’urbanisation contrdee dans les
soci6tCs post-revolutionnaires Ctayent I’hkritage d’une organisation semi-pkripherique dans un
developpement urbain dkcentralise et relativement homogtne. Demontrant les avantages de
cette perspective, les ressemblances urbaines se distinguent non seulement dans les pays
socialistes mais aussi dans les regions semi-periphkriques des pays capitalistes. Le rBle clC de
I’ktat B remodeler I’urbanisation et le developpement dependants met en lumitre I’importance
de le ramener
Vergleichsstudien in den 1980erJahren iiber Urbanisierung und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung sind
in den Augen der Autoren relativ einseitig, da sie im wesentlichen nur von Ansatzen einer
globalen Volkswirtschaft ausgehen. Der gral3te Teil der Literatur konzentriert sich auf die
schnell fortschreitende Urbanisierung der Peripherie in den Landern der Dritten Welt oder das
Wachstum von ‘Weltstadten’ in den Kernstaaten. Diese Ansltze lassen jedoch die Urbanisierung
in ’tatskhlich existierenden sozialistischen Landern’ weitgehend auBer acht. Der UrbanisierungsprozeI.3im
astlichen Mitteleuropa (Polen, Ungarn, Tschechoslowakei) wird in Zusammenhang
mit einer vom Weltsystem abhlngigen Volkswirtschaft betrachtet. Die Verdrangung des
la recherche sur I’tconomie politique globale.
624 East central European urbanization
ostlichen Mitteleuropas an die Peripherie wahrend des ‘langen’ sechzehnten Jahrhunderts wurde
sowohl durch seine geographische Nahe zum Kern als auch die Machteinflusse unabhlngiger
Staaten erschwert. Zu Beginn des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts wurde der wirtschaftlichen
Durchdringung seitens des Kerns Einhalt geboten und eine unabhangige Entwicklung in einigen
Teilen gefordert. Die gegenwlrtige ‘Unterurbanisierung’, ein geringes regionales Ungleichgewicht
und eine schwache Dominanz der Stadten sind auf diese historische Entwicklung
zuriickzufiihren. Politische Maonahmen einer ‘gelenkten’ Urbanisierung in postrevolutionaren
Landern verstlrtken die historische Tendenz zu einem dezentralen, relativ gleichmafligen
Stldtewachstum. Der Autor nennt die Vorteile einer solchen Entwicklung und stellt nicht nur
Ahnlichkeiten von Stadten in sozialistischen Landern, sondern auch in der kapitalistischen
Semiperipherie fest. Die Schliisselrolle des Staates bei der Urbanisierung und Fiirderung der
wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung macht deutlich, wie wichtig es ist, den Staat in globale
volkswirtschaftliche Untersuchungen mit einzubeziehen.
En la dtcada de 10s 80, 10s planteamientos de la economia politica global han dominado la
investigaci6n comparativa de la urbanizaci6n y desarrollo. Gran parte de 10s textos especializados
se centran en la rhpida urbanizaci6n periftrica del Tercer Mundo o en el crecimiento de las
“ciudades mundo” de las naciones importantes. Estos plantearnientos han prestado relativamente
poca atenci6n a la urbanizach de las ‘sociedades socialistas realmente existentes’. La
urbanizaci6n en la Europa Centro-Oriental (Polonia, Hungria, Checoslovaquia) es examinada
bajo el tinte de la economia politica de la perspectiva del sistema mundial. La periferalizaci6n
de la Europa Centro-Oriental del ’largo siglo dieciseis’ se complic6 debido a la proximidad de
la regi6n a1 centro y al poder de 10s estados independientes. A partir del siglo dieciocho, 10s
imperios existentes en esta regi6n limitaron la penetraci6n econ6mica por parte del centro y
facilitaron el desarrollo dependiente en algunas partes de la zona. Los modelos actuales de
‘infraurbanizaci6n’. la desigualdad de las regiones modestas, y la poca primacia de 10s centros
urbanos descansan en sus fundamentos hist6ricos. Las politicas de ‘urbanizacibn controlada’ de
las sociedades postindustriales refuerza la herencia semiperiftrica del crecimiento descentralizado
y relativamente ecuhnime de las ciudades. Ilustrando las ventajas de esta perspectiva, las
similitudes urbanas son perceptibles no s610 en paises socialistas. sino tambitn en la semiperiferia
capitalista. El papel clave del estado en la reforma de la urbanizaci6n y desarrollo dependientes
resalta la importancia de “volver a atraer al estado” hacia la investigaci6n relacionada con la
economia politica global.