262 BOOK REVIEWS © 2008 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG activism results in welcome new research directions, although research findings in this book are scarce. It is valuable to follow her train of thought but it is clear that at the dawn of the global age no firm directions are yet available. As Hegel knew and many said after him: ‘Minerva’s owl spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’. AMIDSt Herman van der Wusten NeighbourhoodDynamicsinInner-Budapest:ARealist Approach ZSUZSA FOLDI, Utrecht 2006: Nederlandse Geografishche Studies Series 350. 345 pp. This book provides an indepth examination of post- socialist neighbourhood renewal in inner-city Budapest. Budapest is the capital city of Hungary and the country’s centre of economic, political and cultural activities. Budapest’s economic structure changed dramatically in the 1990s as the country transitioned to a market system. During this transition, Budapest became part of the regional European Union economy, a major tourism hub, as well as a primary destination for migrants from surrounding countries. Rapid growth of the greater Budapest metropolitan area also occurred. However, this suburbanisation came at the expense of the city’s population. Between 1990 and 2001, Budapest’s population decreased by 14.3 per cent while the surrounding metropolitan region saw an increase of 18 per cent. In addition, private investment tended to gravitate towards previously undeveloped suburban locations rather than locating in the older sections of the city. In the North American context rapid suburbanisa- tion led to central city decline. But as author Zsuzsa Foldi points out in her book, the situation in Budapest has several interesting twists; twists that she argues cannot be fully understood through the more tradi- tional empirical frameworks of the social sciences. Specifically, at the same time that Budapest’s greater metropolitan area grew and the central city lost residents, various neighbourhoods within the city began to revitalise. In other words, in Budapest the processes of suburbanisation and urban revitalisation happened almost simultaneously. However, the renewal patterns were uneven: some formerly run-down neighbour- hoods emerged as hot-spots of commercial, cultural, residential and institutional activities, while other close-by areas remained in a state of decline. Foldi argues that explaining the uniqueness of Budapest’s revitalisation requires a more holistic approach than that of previous urban renewal research. For Foldi this approach is critical realism. At the core of critical realism is the assumption of interconnections between macro-level processes (globalisation and post-socialist transformation) and micro-level change (the uneven dynamics of neigh- bourhood renewal). Critical realism aims to explain observable phenomena in relation to underlying structures and mechanisms within an open system. As Foldi states, ‘the residential environment is far from being a closed system – neither on the conceptual nor on the spatial level’ (p. 42). Unlike positivism which relies on observation of patterns to identify cases and effect, critical realism seeks to identify relevant processes and relations in order to understand their operation in time and space. But methodologically this can get rather complicated because critical realism envisions the social world as a complex set of non-linear but interconnected processes occurring simultaneously within an open system. The critical realist method requires both abstraction and triangulation. The purpose of abstraction is to distinguish the internal (necessary) and the external (contingent) relations between relevant objects. The purpose of triangulation is to maximise the use of all available and relevant data sources without being confined by the artificial divisions between quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Indeed, Foldi utilises a wide range of data sources including published research on globalisation and the post-socialist market transformation along with census data from Hungary’s Central Statistical Offices, and primary research of four inner-city districts in Budapest. She also utilises local planning and development documentation, maps and photographs. The organisation of the book closely follows the logic of critical realism by beginning at the broader contextual level and then methodically narrowing the analysis down to the mechanisms driving uneven urban renewal at the local level. Chapters 1 and 2 explain the purpose of the study and provide a detailed rationale for using the critical realist approach. Chapter 3 describes the meaning of residential environment and the various factors that can lead to neighbourhood revitalisation and decline. In this chapter Foldi points out that inner-city revitalisation (sometimes referred to as gentrification) is a complex process with place-specific outcomes that unfold over several years – even decades – and involves multiple actors, institutions and economic mechanisms. Thus explaining the transformation of Budapest’s inner- city areas becomes a nuanced process. Chapter 4 focuses on the broadest context of neighbourhood change which, according to the realist framework has two levels: (1) the global and regional (European) and (2) the national (Hungarian). The