829 Urban Geography, 2012, 33, 6, pp. 829–849. http://dx.doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.6.829 Copyright © 2012 by Bellwether Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved. COMPARATIVE DEBATES IN POST-SOCIALIST URBAN STUDIES 1 Karin Wiest 2 Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig, Germany Abstract: Recent urban research on post-socialist cities includes a wide range of empiri- cal studies dealing with processes of sociospatial change since 1990. Despite this accumulated knowledge, studies that explicitly question the underlying comparative assumptions involv- ing post-socialist cities are rare. Against that backdrop, this study seeks to contribute to a self- reflective debate on understanding post-socialist cities vis-à-vis wider debates on comparative methods in urban studies. The starting point is the new interest in comparisons as a way to stimu- late critical thinking in urban research in the wake of postcolonial studies. The main intention is to transfer some parts of this debate to the context of post-socialist urban studies, and to raise awareness of the often implicit comparative assumptions that underpin such research. Drawing on an extensive comparative study of sociospatial differentiation in Budapest, Vilnius, Sofia, Leipzig, and St. Petersburg, this article focuses on the challenge of explaining the diversity of post-socialist urban forms in relation to an increasingly interconnected globalized world. The argument here is for the need to widen the research agenda on post-socialist cities in order to raise consciousness for implicit comparisons with Western experiences, to address the global interconnectedness of the urban experience, and to call the reification of the post-socialist city as the basic entity for comparison into question. [Key words: comparative urbanism, post-socialist urban development, entangled modernities, socio-spatial differentiation.] The recent resurrection of critical debate on comparative urbanism is closely related to a postcolonial understanding of the city, especially concerning the question of how com- parison might take place across the “North-South divide” and the demand for a more cos- mopolitan approach to the multiplicity of urban life forms, which are mutually interrelated in a global context but also unique to particular cities (McFarlane, 2010; Stenning and Hörschelmann, 2008; Robinson, 2004; 2006). Considering post-socialist urban studies, we can identify a gap between a (minor) debate on re-thinking urban theory critically from the perspective of post-socialist cities on one hand, and the very rich empirical material docu- menting urban developments since 1990 on the other. Thus linking a discussion of the ways of comparing that characterize detailed empirical research, and the idea of comparison as a strategy of critical urban thinking, could be an important starting point for reflecting on post-socialist urban theory (McFarlane, 2010). There are a large number of case studies of post-socialist urban development, but they are seldom examined from the perspective of an explicitly comparative analysis (e.g., Enyedi and Kovács, 2006; Eckhardt, 2005; Hamilton et al., 2005). But even though the epistemological basis of comparison is hardly discussed, the implicit comparative assumptions are often oriented toward a Western model of urban 1 Many thanks to Jennifer Robinson and Colin McFarlane for constructive comments and recommendations. Thanks also to members of the research group “Sociospatial Change and Persistence in Residential Areas of Selected Urban regions in Central and Eastern Europe”: Konstantin Axionow, Isolde Brade, Iskra Dandolova, Günter Herfert, Zoltán Kovács, Dovile Krupickaite, Carola Neugebauer, and Christian Smigiel. 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karin Wiest, Leibniz Institute for Regional Geog- raphy, D-04329 Leipzig, Germany; telephone: 0049-89-775205; email: K_Wiest@ifl-leipzig.de